Visual content isn’t the future of content marketing… it’s here now. And Pinterest is currently one of the top social media channels for visual content.
Pinterest isn’t just for arts & crafts, clothes and recipes. It’s relevant to more niches than most people realize, including niches like real estate and even online marketing.
Want to know how to grow your presence on Pinterest? Here are some tips.
1. My #1 Tip for Growing Your Pinterest Presence
The easiest thing you can do to grow your presence on Pinterest is to get into the habit of pinning consistently. While this tip may seem simple, it’s where most people fail with social media marketing.
Pinning consistently will allow you to grow your views and followers over time, similar to how blogging consistently will send you more and more long tail SEO traffic over time.
It also keeps your followers engaged and it only takes a few minutes each day.
2. Follow Other Like-Minded Pinterest Users
Following other Pinterest users is another tactic that can help you grow your own following.
When you follow someone on Pinterest, by default, Pinterest will send an email notification letting them know that they have a new follower. Some people will follow you back if they find you interesting.
You can view these followers by finding similar pinners and then clicking on their followers tab.
You can also use Pinterest search to find people that have created boards and pins pertaining to your topic of interest. In this example, I search for the term “baby shower food” and then click “boards”:
One huge benefit of following a good number of like-minded people is that you can see what visual content is popular in your niche. Finding content to re-pin also becomes easier if you are following other users that pin similar images.
3. Optimize Your Boards and Pins for Search
Another important thing you should spend time on is optimizing your boards and pins for Pinterest search. Users can search for boards, pins and other users using Pinterest’s search bar so ranking well for your keywords can be helpful.
If you’ve done SEO, then you’ll be glad to hear that optimizing for Pinterest is much easier than optimizing for Google. It mostly involves keyword research and incorporating those keywords into your boards and pins.
Google Keyword Planner can be a good starting point, but you should also do keyword research on Pinterest. Here are the steps I take:
Step 1. Start typing your target keywords into Pinterest search
Pinterest will suggest keywords that other people have searched for. These keywords can be good target keywords to include in your boards and pins.
Step 2. Check the search results to see what boards and pins show up
Do the boards that show up have a lot of followers? Are the other boards that are ranking targeting that keyword phrase?
If the answer is yes to these questions, then you may want to create a board for that keyword phrase.
You don’t have to go crazy over keywords for your pins. Rankings for pins can change daily and most of the search traffic from pins will often come from long tail keywords.
Pinterest tries to keep pins fresh based on what is popular and getting re-pinned and favorited. But you should still try to incorporate some keywords from time to time so that your pins have a chance of coming up for pin searches.
Step 3. Engagement is important, so stay active
If people are pinning images from your boards, then Pinterest will rank those boards higher. You don’t have to add new pins to every board every day, but try to pin new images to boards regularly.
4. Focus on Creating a Valuable Resource for Your Target Audience
One common mistake that people make on Pinterest is only pinning their own stuff. Be sure to take the time to follow other pinners and pin images from other people that your audience might be interested in.
Identify your target audience and focus on creating a useful resource for them by creating boards that they will find interesting. Update those boards with regular content.
Taking this approach will allow you to grow your Pinterest following faster than if you only pin your own stuff.
5. Pay Attention to Seasonality & Trends
Be sure to also pay attention to seasonality and trends. If you are active on Pinterest regularly, you may notice people pinning different images based on trends and seasons.
For example, when Halloween approaches, people in the party-planning niche will start pinning Halloween related images.
When I first noticed this trend, I created a Halloween board and started pinning Halloween related recipes and images to it.