Pointers for Positive Pinterest Practices

With approximately 25 million users globally, Pinterest has become increasingly popular, especially among brands. Piqora recently released a whitepaper on a set of best practices for Pinterest. Here are some of the highlights, along with some brands that do these well:

• Create a Unique Board Strategy - Organise and curate your boards in a way that they deliver a different experience from your website. Interesting and edgy board names and descriptions provides good reason to explore them. Here’s an example of a strategy that was used by Etsy which attracts more engagement by using Pinterest’s group boards feature to ask people to create guest boards:
  
• Mix up your board content - Your boards should not simply be collages of product imagery. Focus on mixing up your content with complimentary lifestyle and related imagery. Some leading brands on Pinterest have a policy to use a maximum of 60% their own pins, and the remaining 40% of content must be from other influential pinners and tastemakers, or complimentary products.
  
• Make content your king –  Your Pins are your content here, and they will be what really moves the needle in driving virality, awareness, follower growth, and click traffic to your website. It is also advisable to use appropriate hashtags and keep Google search in mind when naming your images.

• Re-Pin content from other Pinners - Perhaps best reserved for identified influencers, repinning a Pin is the highest form of compliment you can pay within Pinterest. Repinning sends the message that you recognise their taste, believe it aligns well with your brand, and you want to incorporate that content into your boards. If the content is original, be sure to recognize the source of it in your description and an @ mention.

• Use calls-to-action sparingly - In the occasional instance where using a CTA is appropriate, make sure that the directions you give are evergreen (your content might not be discovered immediately) and specific to the platform. Tune-in messaging, for example, might not prove ideal as content continues to receive views and engagement long after it was originally pinned.

How do you ensure that your efforts don’t get wasted?

• Keep a watch on the time of the day, and Pin when followers are most engaged.
• How often should you Pin?- There’s no hard and fast rule here, the general thumb rule is 10 – 20 a day but spacing your content out gradually is important.
• Link your pins - Make sure to link your pins to the right place, usually your website.
• Connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts to your Pinterest, especially if you believe many of your Pins will be relevant to your Facebook and Twitter audience. Do keep in mind that this can cause over-messaging in those channels, so be aware of this and plan accordingly.
• Build and leverage influencer relationships - Pinterest influencers can have very broad reach and even just a few repins from your profile can do wonders to grow awareness for your brand. Many of these influencers are already popular bloggers, so there’s a chance your PR team may already have a relationship in place.

You can view the entire whitepaper at Piquora here.