My favorite part of Pinterest is that followers do not matter. For those spending vasts amounts of effort trying to get followers on Instagram this will be a very welcome relief! There appears to be no correlation between the number of followers and the volume of traffic an account can get. The fact is a lot of Pinterest users do not think about following people. It is more important to use the right keywords and title your boards and pins well than trying to build a follower base.
If you are providing value in your content and are solving problems that will help others then Pinterest will bring you traffic. However, like everything, it is important to be continually putting out quality content.
It is important to set up your profile. Create it around what you and your business represent, not from a personal perspective. Try to use the same profile photo (or logo) across all of your social media channels — this makes your accounts instantly recognizable to others. Describe what you do in your bio–it is important to use keywords that are relevant to your business here.
Convert your account to a business account in order to be able to unlock analytics that Pinterest offers. You can also access paid ads with a business account – get started with it by going to business.pinterest.com . It is extremely helpful to see which of your pins are getting the most engagement–allowing you to understand your audience better and tailor your pins accordingly. Also, Pinterest launched Audience insights. These analytics show you some keywords people are using to find your content in addition to categories, demographics and interests of your audience.
It is recommended that you start with 10 boards for your account that match up with your business and the type of content you are creating. Also, try to have at least 10 pins on each board–this makes you look more active on Pinterest and attracts more views. It is recommended to pin at least 5 times a day. I personally find this number a little daunting. Try to pin as much as you are able to, but more importantly, be consistent with posting.
Try to be very specific with naming your boards. Doing so will help the people who are searching for your type of content to find exactly what they are looking for. It is important to be specific. The Pinterest algorithm looks at what other people are pinning to your board and then recommends them to others – which will result in more engagement for you.
It is easy to forget making a description for your board. It does not hold a lot of SEO weight, however just writing a couple sentences can only help.
Try to be more reliant on including your own content instead of pinning a lot of other people’s content. Pinterest wants to see fresh content from the user. There is no SEO reward for pinning other people’s content.
Some tips for optimizing pins
Enable rich pins – Rich pins mean that Pinterest will add the title from your content under the image and tie the content in with being from your site — you just need to add a description with your keywords in. If you google ‘Rich pins validator’ you will find insctruction in how to enable rich pins.
Hashtags – Use 1 – 2 super relevant hashtags to your descriptions.
Plugins – The wordpress plugin Social warfare
Design – try using bold text and colors to make your pin stand out. Pinterest also uses visual search recognition – so it is important to have images that really match what you are talking about.
I hope all of these pieces of advice regarding Pinterest are helpful to you. I think Pinterest can be a helpful tool for artists as it has the potential to give you much traffic when used right with little time and effort put into it.
