How to boost your brand engagement with Pinterest

Several reports have placed Pinterest as a top business referral source, second only to Facebook. It’s an impressive achievement if we take into account Pinterest’s reduced reach of only 70 million worldwide users compared to a few hundred million on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook’s and YouTube’s billions monthly users.

Unlike most social networks, Pinterest focuses on passions, interest marketing, and the relevance of content rather than on the social graphs. This is how Pinterest has become a social media darling, gaining impressive popularity and keeping users active by giving them the opportunity to contribute and engage with visually appealing content. Across the platform only around 30% of brand engagement is generated by brand pins, the rest originating from community pins.

If you are looking into ways to leverage its potential and bring more referral traffic to your website from this platform, here are seven phenomenal tips to increase your visibility and get better brand engagement with Pinterest:

1. Devise a strategy for the content you are promoting

First step: build your collection of boards. Your boards and pins should showcase your products or services in context, reflecting how they can be used, in an aesthetic manner. With Pinterest’s main function as inspirational source, you’re more likely to gain followers and start conversation when you’re offering original, attention-grabbing content.

Your engagement strategy should revolve around the authentic story of your brand, conveyed through imagery. All tactical activities should derive from this, from research to pinning and activity analysis.  More specifically, find out what your audience is searching for and put across the right images or videos. Even small details like placing your most popular boards above the fold can have great impact on how your profile is perceived.

2. Initiate communication

Be proactive and don’t just wait for followers or other pinners to engage with your boards. Take initiative, recognise users’ creativity and involvement with your brand by putting them in the spotlight. They’ll get their moment of fame and you’ll win loyal customers.

Sharing content from your website should be your main focus, but transform this process into a two way street: repin from boards you’re following, comment and offer timely responses to questions or enquiries. People will appreciate this and become more open to engaging with your brand.

3. Set up a competition

There are several goals you can achieve by launching a competition, like gaining more followers or receiving feedback on your products. Offer them an attractive incentive in return for their actions. For a wider reach, spread the word about your Pinterest competition across other channels like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Vine, Google+, or Instagram.

4. Befriend influential pinners

Reach out to influential pinners and invite them to be guests on your boards. Just like bloggers, these users are opinion leaders; their positive views on your brand can weigh the balance in your favour and attract more fans, more followers, and finally more traffic to your website. The right influencer can boost your visibility and help build relationships with contributors.

5. Optimise the content for search engines

Optimise your account for keyword search and make it visible to search engines. Include keywords in the “About” section, for boards names and pins descriptions. Link pins back to your website, use hashtags for content your audience will be searching for and include rich pins where possible as they see up to 36% more interaction.

6. Make your followers feel special

Give your customers a preview of products you are about to launch and ask for their opinions or suggestions. This will work in your favour in two ways: you’ll receive quality feedback and gain their loyalty by making them feel exceptional.

7. Analyse and measure

All your efforts to increase customer interaction should not be limited to pinning and repinning. It’s highly recommended you analyse the impact your content sharing has generated. Find which topics were most attractive to your audience, which time of day and day of the week are best to post or which conversations produce more buzz. By continuously analysing your Pinterest marketing activity you’ll be able to adapt the engagement strategy accordingly.

Key takeaways:

• Build your Pinterest strategy
• Initiate communication
• Create a competition
• Invite influential pinners
• Use SEO
• Optimise your strategy

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