Have you expanded your marketing efforts to Pinterest yet?
You might think Pinterest is a ‘soft’ social media platform. Full of cupcakes and kittens and moms saving images of the home DIY projects they want to make and ideas for their kid’s birthday party.
There’s no serious marketing going on, is there?
There is. And the stats are compelling:
- There are over 150 million monthly active users on Pinterest as of October 2016.
- Pinterest is responsible for 17% of traffic to eCommerce sites.
- And, almost 75% of Pinterest users have purchased something they saw on the platform.
“So, yeah…” in the words of Gary Vee… “I’d say you should get serious about Pinterest. Now.”
With that in mind, here are seven things you can do right now to improve your Pinterest marketing efforts from your WordPress website.
1. Pin It With Me Now
Pinterest gives you the ability to create a widget to display one of your boards on your site.
Most people put this into their sidebar. But with sidebar blindness only on the increase and many sites going completely sidebar free, why waste your time?
So, where else you can put a ‘pin with me’ widget?
One thing you can do is put a ‘pin with me’ widget for a related board into your blog posts. Your visitors will see your related pins and be able to follow you on Pinterest by clicking through.
It’s kind of like the content upgrades craze, only using it to grow your Pinterest following instead.
2. Using plugins for your pins, and an alternative
One of the best plugins for boosting your Pinterest is Social Warfare. Using Social Warfare you can upload your pinnable graphic into a specific field in your blog post backend.
Social Warfare automatically opens Pinterest pre-loaded with your pinnable graphic when someone hits the social sharing button. What does this mean? No more weird images shared to Pinterest!
If you’re happy with your current social sharing plugin and don’t want to add Social Warfare, you could choose to hide your pinnable graphics in your post.
Let’s face it, not everyone wants to see an enormous big pinnable image taking up all the space above the fold.
Hiding your graphic is as easy as clicking into the text side of your WordPress editor and typing in this code around your image:
<div style="display:none;">Your Image Goes Here</div>
What happens now is that when your visitor hits the Pinterest share button, they’ll be able to choose from any image on your blog post. That’ll include images that you’ve hidden.
There’s a little bit of trust involved with this method that your audience is going to choose the right image, however, you’ve also got the opportunity to hide more than one pinnable graphic. This could make for an interesting split test between different pin styles!
3. Verify your website & Get Rich Pins
SEO algorithms are complex and Pinterest’s is no different. Pinterest’s trust of your website is a factor in how often your content is shown.
One way to make sure they trust you is to verify your website. It’s quick and relatively painless — you just need to add your website URL to your Pinterest profile and click Confirm.
A pop-up will appear with a code enclosed in a meta tag.
If you have one of these plugins:
- JetPack
- All In One SEO
- Yoast
there’s a Pinterest verification field for you to paste just the number part of the meta tag into.
Another change you can make on your WordPress site is to add rich pins. It helps your pins stand out in the feed.
A rich pin:
- Has the article title in bold.
- Has a short description pulled directly from the site
It makes your pins stand out a little bit more in the feed and look more professional and polished. There are six different types of rich pins as of January 2017, and each is a little different.
Follow the instructions provided by Pinterest to get rich pins set up.
For Article pins, if you’ve got Yoast SEO installed all you need to do is make sure you’ve got the “Add Open Graph Meta Data” box enabled then head on over to the Rich Pin Validator to validate your pins by following the prompts.
4. Optimize your Pinterest SEO
SEO begins at home and, in the case of Pinterest, you can make an impact by:
- Naming your images using keywords.
- Including keywords in your alt text descriptions.
The first thing you need to know about Pinterest SEO is that Pinterest is a search engine. It’s not a social media platform.
SEO rules apply.
When you’re naming your pinnable images, make sure you give them a keyworded name. For example, call your image “repurposed-blog-content-example” rather than “IMG104350”.
You should also include keywords in your alt text descriptions because that’s what Pinterest will pull as the description of your pin (if you aren’t using a plugin like Social Warfare).
5. Getting descriptive
Do you know where the description text for your pinnable graphics come from?
It’s actually pulled from the alt text of your image.
So, if you aren’t using a plugin like Social Warfare, you’ll want to make sure you fill in the alt text of your pinnable image.
This way when someone decides to share one of your pinnable graphics, they’ll have your pre-written description ready to go.
And what exactly should you include in your Pinterest descriptions?
You need to use keywords to make your pins more attractive to the Pinterest algorithm, the Smart Feed. But at the same time, you need to be writing for the real humans who’ll be pinning, sharing, and clicking your content.
Some tips for great descriptions:
- Write for real people first.
- Posing a question makes a good opener.
- Try to work in your keywords as close to the top as possible to avoid cut off.
6. Try the MiloTree app
If you’re an avid blog reader, you might’ve noticed a new type of pop-up in town. The MiloTree app.
For those who haven’t seen it, it’s a small pop-up that appears relatively unobtrusively in the bottom corner of your screen and suggests that you follow the blogger on social media or like their Facebook page.
It’s commonly used for Pinterest and can help you grow your Pinterest following by channeling your visitors to your Pinterest profile.
Using MiloTree, Kate Ahl of Simple Pin Media increased the number of followers to one of her Pinterest accounts from 15-20 per week to 50+ per week.
7. Make pinnable graphics for your landing pages
Got a free download you use as a lead generation tactic? A free course? Or even a sales page for your latest product?
If it has a landing page, make a pinnable graphic for it.
An attractive pin with a compelling headline can start getting shares and bringing in traffic which will help you make more sales.
For the overachievers, make multiple pins in different styles!
Wrapping It Up
If you’re convinced you need to start taking Pinterest seriously, act on these seven things.
Try the MiloTree app, experiment with different ways of sharing your Pinterest boards on your posts, and find the plugins you like to use. Test your results and double down on what works.
Over to you — what’s one thing you’re planning to do to improve your Pinterest marketing?
Cath Oneissy is a freelance writer for hire, specializing in digital marketing, social media, and all things blogging. She works closely with B2B companies looking to increase their visibility through engaging and actionable content. When not writing, you can find her whipping up tasty treats to appease her picky toddler. Follow her on Twitter @thismamalearns.