“A picture is worth more than a thousand words”. And no one knows it better than Pinterest users. Facebook might be a giant, a “Goliath” among the social networking websites but Pinterest is coming out as a “David” in this rat race. On Facebook, people come mainly to socialize and therefore, might lend a blind eye to the ads. However, on Pinterest, visitors actively look for products. So, there is a huge advantage for a business or a brand on Pinterest.
Pinterest has become the savior for businesses as the chances of turning visitors into potential customers/ buyers are higher on this website. At the end of the day, a sale is what it matters to a business and Pinterest seems to be effective in increasing the sales.
But how to get the traffic from Pinterest? Many of us are still not aware about the various features of Pinterest and so it becomes important to know how to target your audience through this medium and obtain higher sales.
Notification:
Make your clients aware that you have joined Pinterest. Share with them a catalog of your products along with the link to your Pinterest profile. It is a good way to start with your clients being your followers on this platform.
Invitation:
Invite your contacts from Facebook and Twitter to increase your networking on Pinterest.
Following:
It is very important to find boards that host relevant content or content similar to yours and attract audience. Follow popular boards with large followers as well as boards with similar sized followers as yours.
Content:
As it is with any social media platforms/ blogs/ websites, the content should be original-valuable visual content. To market your products, put good quality images of them. Personally, I drool over the pinned images of cakes and pastries in Pinterest. The good quality images compel me to click on them to know about the way to order them. You can also put charts, videos, infographics etc.
Timing:
It is very normal for your visitors to be hyper active on weekends in Pinterest. After all, they have all the time to search for what they want to shop, find information about the products and buy. So, pinning your products on weekends would definitely drive more traffic. Also, pinning more images before and during the festive season attracts more traffic as people are frantically searching for products to shop.
Call to Action:
It is very important to guide the visitors. Featuring “Call to action” increases the engagement. Captions like “Click here”, “Comment below”, “Repin this” helps the audience to understand a pin better.
Hashtags:
Hash tags are popular in every social website. Putting the hash tags and categorizing the pins helps in making them look organized and easy to find. However, excessive use of hash tags might make the pin look like a spam.
Repin:
Repinning interesting things or relevant content allows you to be more visible with increased activity and chances are high that your pins would be repinned, getting you more traffic.
Promoting the link
At the end, you want your audience to view your blog/ website. So, it is necessary to put your website/ blog link along with every pin.
“Follow me on Pinterest” button on blog/ website:
The blog or the website should have a “Follow me on Pinterest” button just like the way the share buttons for other social websites are put.
Promotion through free gifts:
It is good way to promote your products. We all like free gifts. Luring your visitors with free takeaways makes them take note of the products that you want to sell.
Promotion through contest:
Inviting the visitors to participate in a contest launched by your blog/website will help to increase the traffic. You can promote your brand, be more visible and give away your products as the winning prize to promote them.
Promotion through Social Media:
Through Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, Instagram etc you can promote your Pinterest profile.
Tutorials and Guides:
I love those pins which talk about how to make a chicken sandwich or how to make that shiny Chinese lantern or how to knit that awesome woolen scarf. Yes, tutorials or guides are an interesting way to promote your product. It is better to tease your audience through such tutorials and guides and eventually make them buy your product.
Mentioning prices:
Not many pins mention it, but it is very handy to put prices against your products in your pins. Visitor like me wants to check the product and its price at one glance, rather than visiting the website, liking the product and then getting disappointed if the price does not match my budget.
Image courtesy of Flickr, mkhmarketing
Kumar, thanks for sharing a picture is really worth a thousand words. I haven’t been active on Pinterest but know the importance of images.That is why tweets with images draw in more that 90% increase in retweets.
And this why thumb nail post have little or no engagement on Facebook and Google +. Even heard some people call Google plus a ghost town. I guest they are just into promoting their stuff. They’ve forgotten the principles of sharing other people’s content
If Pinterest is done right it can be a great source of traffic. Most times people underuse this social media platform and don’t get the best of it but if you can follow the guide here, you sure can get the best outta Pinterest. Thansk for sharing.