How to Create an awesome Pinterest Graphic?
A guide to help you win at Pinterest!
Using Pinterest can help a business get a good amount of traffic. But, many struggle to get pinners ever to click on their pins, let alone click through to their websites. If pinners bypass your pins altogether, using Pinterest will end up being a poor strategy for your business.
There are some ways to optimize your pins so that they gain more attention with pinners. A major factor is the graphic or image that you use. The image is the primary means for which people will become interested in exploring more about you. You need to make it stand out.
How do you make your graphic stand out?
Size and Shape!
The first aspect of a Pinterest graphic is its size. The key is to make it longer rather than wide. If you were to make a wide graphic, Pinterest would truncate it, and pinners won’t be able to see the graphic, especially if there is any text on it. Pinners scroll down by nature when using Pinterest. Therefore, the longer your pins, the longer they focus on them. Pretty easy to understand,eh?
Colour!!
This is especially true if you make each section of the pin something they want to see. Consider using color to make your graphics stand out. Experiment with different colors and even add some blends or gradients into the mix. You should try to split test based on colors. For instance, try a blue pin and a green pin at the same time to see if one is favored over the other.
Supplemental images!
You can add a significant number of supplemental images to your Pinterest graphics, but don’t overdo it. The images should be relevant to the message you are trying to convey. Too much flash, however, will get pinners to bypass your graphics.
Don’t take copyright lightly!
Make sure you have the rights to use the graphics you include in your pins. Don’t take this issue lightly as there are companies that are paid to monitor copyright infringement. It is a serious offense that is likely to cost you several thousands of dollars. If you find a website that claims royalty free access to images, make sure you know their claims policy. You want them to fight for you if it ever comes down to that.
Font!!!!
When using text, make sure you are consistent with your font selections. Each section can have a different font but try to keep to no more than two or three fonts. You want to ensure that the website you link to is relevant to what the graphic portrays. If not, you can expect to have your pins reported to Pinterest.
How to Get Better Results from Pinterest
Pinterest is shaping up to be one of the most important platforms for businesses to use.
- It’s easy to get your message across.
- It has millions of members who love the platform
- It funnels mass amounts of traffic to websites.
If this isn’t a recipe for success, nothing else is. Just like anything else, there are right ways and wrong ways to approach the platform. One obvious wrong way is constant boasting about your business. No one cares, for the most part. You need to focus on what members are searching for and why. Keep selling or promotions down to a minimum.
A much better approach is to convince people of how your products or services can help with their situations. Obviously, this is not an easy task by any stretch. If you take the time to reach out to people and find out what they want, your Pinterest strategy becomes more defined.
Most people ignore the newsletter that Pinterest sends. This is a mistake. They are the authority on their platform, after all. They give tips and report on trends. It’s like having your own mini-marketing department. Granted, they are trying to hook you into advertising with them. But, this doesn’t mean the information they provide is useless.
Another way to get better results is to pin frequently. You obviously have an audience. As long as you stay focused on your market or niche and you find that people are sharing what you post, you should continue to post. Set up a schedule for what and when you are going to post.
There are reports published that state the best times to post on each of the social media channels. This is mostly noise that should be ignored. The biggest problems with this are people who miss that window of opportunity often wait until the next one. And if they miss it again, there goes yet another day of inactivity. If you decide to use these optimal times, make sure you set up a service that can post for you at those times. You also need to ensure that you trust the service you enlist. If not, it can be difficult to get your account unbanned.
Overall, don’t expect instant results. Like all social media platforms, time is going to be your greatest ally. Stay focused on your strategy and keep going until your results start heading in your desired direction.
How to Manage Pinterest Boards
Pinterest is a great platform for businesses. One of the key features is the ability to create boards. These are much like categories. When you pin, you will be asked which board to pin to. Here are some guidelines for the best uses of these boards:
- Before dealing with your boards, make sure your profile is set up and that you have a decent picture along with a description of your business. You may believe people don’t read your profile but in fact, many will.
- Also, include your website address as you’ll get a good number of pinners that will use it. This is free traffic to your website.
- It’s usually best to have Pinterest accounts with a specific theme or niche, and this is key when determining what to name your boards.
- As of this writing, Pinterest does not prohibit people from multiple accounts. So, keep the accounts separate from personal and business. The downside is you will need to manage these multiple accounts.
- When setting up your boards, keep the subject in mind and stay on focus for your niche. Having diverse boards that are not centered around a topic will confuse your visitors.
- As you develop your Pinterest following, you will start to receive requests to join other pinners’ boards. The advantage to joining them is you are given the green light to pin to these boards.
- When they are actively followed by thousands of members, this can mean good exposure to the pins you post. Many of these boards will have rules. Usually, they specify how many posts you are allowed per day or per week, etc. It also gives guidelines about inappropriate posts such as nudity, etc.
- Pinterest used to prohibit nudity of any kind. It has since relaxed its prohibition to some degree.
You want to make sure you follow the rules. Otherwise, you can be deleted from a great board that drives a lot of traffic to your website. You may also get reported if the offense is large enough. Arrange your boards to the top of your profile, followed by any of the group boards you have joined. People will take a look at your boards which means you want the ones you created to be at the forefront. It’s unlikely for people to scroll down past one or two pages of your board list. When considering joining group boards, be sure to keep the number that you sign up for to a minimum. Pinterest views having an inordinate amount of group boards as spamming and your internal ranking will be affected by it.
Is Pinterest Good for Generating Traffic?
If you track the sources of your traffic (and you should) you will find that a majority of your traffic is coming from Pinterest. This is only true, of course, if you are sharing what you create on Pinterest. Other social media platforms will be included in this list. But, unlike Pinterest, the traffic that you get from these is not likely to stick around.
Why Pinterest?
For instance, the next time you create a blog post, try posting it on Twitter. Even if you have a decent following, you will find that followers will go to your site, but the activity will be minimum. The bounce rate will be high and the average time spent on the page will be on or close to zero. The same is true for Reddit.com. You’ll get a fair number of hits from Reddit, but it won’t amount to any engagement. This means that if you have a call-to-action on the page, it won’t be activated. Facebook is a bit of a mixed bag. People will go to your website, and some will engage. But, remember, you can use Facebook to capture emails and other call to actions, etc.
This leaves Pinterest as a traffic generation machine. More people are looking to Pinterest as a search engine rather than a social channel. When I find useful resources that I pin for later recall, you can bet that my followers will find it useful as well. I simply need to put a link into the pin to my website, and these information seekers will find more information on the page. Which brings up an important point, make sure you have valuable information on the page you are sending them to.
What to promote?
If you pin promotional material, expect them to leave your website quickly. Another factor is to make sure the pin and the content match. There is nothing worse than someone clicking on a Visit button in Pinterest, only to find something entirely unrelated. They may even ding you with a bad comment if you take this course of action. It’s not worth it and is unnecessary. Since many people are looking to Pinterest as more of a search engine, that should be how you approach it when you plan your pinning strategy. Keep focused on the fact that people are looking for specific tidbits of information. Supplement that information with a post on your website, and you’ve got a great strategy for generating targeted traffic for a long time into the future.
I have previously used Pinterest for a few of my clients and I haven’t yet adopted the strategy on this website yet. So, I will be starting now and will be posting the results of my case study soon. Also, although more women prefer Pinterest and there is a lot of talk about Pinterest being good only for some woman-related niches, it is not like it is completely useless for other businesses. You can still use Pinterest to drive decent traffic to your business! There is literally no harm in trying! Social Media is an important part of any business strategy, it is better to try everything and see what works.
Until next time.
Originally published at makeyourlists.com on August 13, 2018.
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