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Pinterest Tips

Guerrilla Marketing Tips for Pinterest

Guerrilla marketing tips
Guerrilla Marketing Tips For Pinterest

So without going into lengthy and useless words and phrases, we are going to draft out essential marketing tips which can ACTUALLY do wonders for your business.

Pinning & Integrate

Make sure that your account is set up properly and that it is branded with your logo, also remember to create boards that would interest your target customers, especially the ones in your industry. It is extremely important to integrate Pinterest with other social media platforms.

There are a few perks to cross linking your different social networks. First off, linking your you social networks will keep your customers abreast of your progress and your brand identity. Moreover, you can (and must) pique your customer’s interests. Share a cool little montage featuring your products on YouTube or a use-based post on Facebook.

Simple. Effective. And minimal (do not overdo it!). 

Participation is Key

Make it a rule to comment, and interact. That would mean, liking other pins and tagging other pinners by mentioning their names. A simple ‘Thank you’ can take you a long way in terms of customer goodwill.

Customer engagement could be increased by running contests, extracting user-generated content or jumping into customer forums and groups. All of these 3 options have their own pros and can significantly improve your Pinterest views and results.

Beware the Copyright!

It is vital that you are not pinning images that have copyright. If you do, then make sure you have permission and always remember to mention your source. Pinning copyrighted images without mentioning the source can get you into legal troubles.

Generate Interesting Pins

Being an entirely visual medium, Pinterest requires a constant input of high-quality images. Add images of your products, related to your products, images highlighting your products. Then add some images of your product’s habitat ie How the product would look in a real (customer-oriented) setting. Create an assortment of appealing images.

This would help you create an organized, enticing collective of your boards and pins, which in turn would pull your audience to your boards, hopefully amounting to a purchase.

As for Interesting, you need to post images that connect with your audience, reflects their interests and map the current trends. Posting images that are aesthetically pleasing and relate to your customer’s wants (research, fellas!) will pull your audience to you boards ans eventually your website.

Create and Curate

It is better to curate other users’ quality images rather than just re-churning your images. Collaborative sharing of their quality images and photos can be mutually beneficial. This is where you can leverage Pinterest’s repin feature to collect pins related to your product.

Curate separate boards that outline your brand identity and motif. Avail a possible opportunity to co-brand your product with other services. The possibilities are endless. Just remember to use quality images for your pins.

Optimize Search Engines

Google keeps a track of fresh content and monitors social signals. By optimizing your pins with hashtags, links, categories and keywords, you can get yourself into Google’s good books, that is, on top of a search result. It is imperative to pin images and content directly from your website. Pinterest can bring back a lot of hits to your website- if you connect it properly.

Apart from a regular search, you need to optimize Pinterest SEO to feature in Pinterest search results. Here a few quick tips to ace Pinterest SEO –

  • Optimize your profile – Pick a right username, the one that reflects your product or activity.
  • Optimize your boards – Curate your boards. Pick images to reflect the content present in your Pinterest boards. Choose a succinct title as well.
  • Use Keywords  – Perform some extended research for keywords associated with your brand. You can try Viralwoot’s Pinterest analytics to select niche keywords to potentially feature in several thousands of search results.

Evaluate Your Traffic

This is the best and most basic way to find out what works, and what doesn’t work for your website. It is also wise to monitor what your competitors and other brands are doing. You can learn a lot from your competition.

For updated on information on using this platform, take a look at our updated guide to Pinterest.

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Pinterest Tips

7 Steps to Improve Your Pinterest Visibility

7 Steps to Improve Your Pinterest Visibility

We have outlined seven Pinterest tactics gathered from successful social media practitioners guaranteed to raise your Pinterest visibility.

#1: Price Tags

godiva earrings pin

Ensure that your products are labeled with their price information. More often than not, product cost occupies top priority for mental note-taking amongst the customers. Since pins are more easily and conveniently shared by users, driving traffic to your site might as well bring you customers ready to purchase.

Apart from that, Pinterest offers a thematic product display in a very convenient and organized manner. Therefore, this catalog with a price tag on each product can help you direct sales from Pinterest.

Of course, provide a holistic mix of creativity, inspiration and product details so your brand does not get labeled instantly to be purely sales oriented.

(Tip from Ekaterina Walter, co-founder and CMO of Branderati and bestselling author of the Power of Visual Storytelling)

#2: Pin It for Later

one red lipstick

You can help your readers bookmark your articles quickly and easily through your “Pin it for later” link for later reading.

All you have to do is include not just a link to the blog post but also your “Pin it for later” link on your Google+ post. This works best if added at the end of the write-up or the bottom of the Google+ post.

(Tip from Brian Honigman who is a social media enthusiast, a freelance writer, and a marketing consultant.)

#3: Mixing Pinterest with Emails

michaels on pinterest

What better way to keep your readers posted but to include a screenshot or link of your Pinterest account in their email inbox? This is definitely an easy and direct way to connect your reader to all your Pinterest boards and products. Adding “Pin this” to your post will open more positive responses now that your pins are more within reach.

(Tip is from Jason Miles who is Liberty Jane Clothing co-founder and CEO and author of no less than the #1 bestselling book about Pinterest marketing– Pinterest Power.)

#4: Most Popular Group Boards

pingroupie

Entering group boards is another fool-proof way of guaranteeing repins, followers and traffic and this can be done with PinGroupie which is a hassle-free tool in finding boards that would best help you.

On PinGroupie’s home page, fill out the search fields then choose a specific category that is aligned with your Pinterest categories. Then sort according to which parameter you wish to filter. What is highly recommended is to sort according to the number of repins because this helps in ascertaining the traffic to the board. Once all of the above are done, click “Filter” and the group boards will be sorted accordingly.

(Tip is from the author of White Paper Marketing and founder of Social Marketing Writing, Mitt Ray.)

#5: Promote

gap on pinterest

Cross-promoting your account profile can be done via other social media platforms. Try to be up to date and capitalize on a newly created board or pin, the latest trend or a holiday.

You can keep your followers and subscribers posted by tweeting about Pinterest at least two times a week and posting on Facebook at least once every two weeks. Or you may also just add a free Pinterest app on your Facebook account. Profile widgets and “pin it” buttons embedded on your images also do the trick.

(Tip is from HelloSociety’s Social Media Manager, Zoe Waldron.)

#6: Blog Boards

grandimage pinboard

Blog boards allow your followers to be informed every time you post a new blog on your board. Using relevant keywords can help you get featured in the search results.

Once you’ve created a post, pin it to your board and include some brief information. Add a link to the post itself and a high-quality image to attract more audience.

(Tip is from Anna Francis is the Content Manager at My Social Agency.)

#7: Pin Alerts to track Pinners

pinalerts

Tracking people who pin items from your competitor’s website can actually be an opportunity for you to find new leads. Pinalerts helps you find the pinners by setting alarms when a certain items are pinned from a specific domain.

From here, you can do your reviewing of a pinner’s followers, boards and number of pins. Remember, the higher the number, the more active the pinner. And that’s the lead you want to follow. By the way, we created a guide on using Pinterest, for those who are getting started.

(Tip is from the founder of RazorSocial, Ian Cleary.)

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Pinterest Marketing Pinterest Tips Social Media Tips

Don’t Buy Pinterest Followers. Do This Instead.

Don't buy Fake Pinterest Followers
Don’t buy Fake Pinterest Followers

Pinterest is one of most important social media properties in the world right now. For an artist, a blogger mom or any big businesses, its a great way to grow your business and get new customers. Because of this characteristic, people try everything and anything to get more followers – they pin a lot, read a lot about Pinterest tips and on failing to gain some sizable number of followers organically, they buy new followers, which is a HUGE MISTAKE.

Buying Pinterest followers increases your follower count but dilutes the value of each follower you have. It brings down the quality of your community. Hence, you end up losing the money you put in getting the followers and also, the perception of real followers keeps getting less favorable with time on seeing less engagement/followers per pins.

What does “less engagement/follower per pin” mean? Let’s understand this with an example: Let’s assume you had 100 followers before buying the fake followers. For every pin, you used to get on an average 3-4 repins. So the ratio becomes, 3/100 or 0.03. So. your engagement score was 0.03.

Now, you bought 1000 new followers from any fake followers supplier for $100. Your pins are still getting, 3-4 repins/likes/comments. But now your, engagement score is 90% less (3/1100). This will hinder in the calculation of your Social ROI. This is because you are doing well from the follower count perspective, but practically the number of users engaged with your pins is still the same. Hence the $100 can be termed as a loss item in your Profit & Loss calculations.

Your motive should be to gain more and more REAL PINTEREST USERS who like what you pin about. There are 2 ways of doing it :

1. Slog, Slog, Slog i.e. Keep pinning good stuff in wait of getting new followers to get 1-10 new followers per day.

2. Use tools like Viralwoot – Thousands of Pinterest users will see your Pinterest follow button on Viralwoot and follow you within a month.

You can create a Viralwoot account now (its free), add your Pinterest account, choose your interests and Voila! You’re all set to grow your Pinterest community automatically without compromising on the quality of your followers.

I really hope that this post will help you understand the drawback of buying fake Pinterest followers and save you some money. If you’re just starting out, take a look at our guide on how Pinterest works.

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Pinterest Tips

How to Pin on Pinterest?

Branding on Pinterest always goes in hand-in-hand with the way you pin. You could create a niche board or just pin randomly on your Pinterest profile. Nevertheless, there are several direct implications to any pinning method that you employ.

pin on pinterest

Well, this is the basic steps to guide you on how to pin something by yourself on Pinterest, how to pin from a website and how to pin someone else’s pin.

1.   Pin Yourself

Log in to your Pinterest account and hit the ‘+’ icon on the left side of the page indicating add your pins.

upload a pin

Clicking on it will give you options such as upload a pin and pin from a website. To add images from your computer just click on upload a pin.

upload the pin prompt

You will be directed to choose the file from your computer to upload. As soon as you select the image, a thumbnail format of the same will reappear.

upload pin tab

Just select the board you want to choose the image or create a different board by clicking on ‘Create a board’. Add a description below the image thumbnail and click on save it. Your image will be pinned in few clicks!!!

2.   Pin from a website

I will prefer to my readers to install & use ‘Pin it’ or ‘Save it’ button on your bookmarks bar. After adding the save button, open the image on the website you want to pin.

Tool-Bar-Pin-It(2)

Just click on the ‘Pin it’ button on your bookmark page and all the available images will appear on your screen. From those, select the one you want to post. This will redirect you to the ‘pin boards’ drop down menu in a new window. Choose the relevant board, fill in the description and click on pin it button.

Also, Pinterest will link back the image to the original website automatically.

Although this is a bit direct way, Pinterest also provides you another way to Pin from another website.

Alternate Way

  • Open the image on website you want to pin
  • Copy the URL
  • Open Pinterest Page
  • Log in
  • Click on ‘+’ button and then click on ‘Pin from a website’
  • Paste the URL

pin from a website

After this a fresh new window will open, displaying a number of options for the link. Choose your image, select the board and click on save it. Your pin is posted right away!!

3.   How to Repin

This is the simplest one.

Just log in to your Pinterest Account and stay on the home page. Go through all the pictures available on the home page and select the one you wish to repin.

repin

Click on the save button on the left top corner and add the description.

You will also get an option to choose from your own boards.

Select the most relevant board for it.

You can simply add or edit the description as per your liking.

After this, just click on save and you are good to go!!!

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Others Pinterest Tips

Why Pinterest for Indian Brands?

In an earlier time, people could not even think of an e-commerce as a platform for buying products and services. Whereas today, we’ve come to a whole new arrangement, where shoppers are just choosing what to buy on their mobile sitting in their living room.

This immense shift in shopping style has occurred almost everywhere on the globe. Even in India, 292 million people use smartphones and even more use E-commerce services on their laptop or desktop.

Pinterest for Indian Brands

As you may know, Pinterest is a visual platform, where images are pinned on boards and can be liked & repinned. Users extract images from different sources and pin it on Pinterest. Followers see this pin and can like or repin the post depending on their preference.

So essentially Pinterest acts as a catalog of images, in which each user has their own personal collection. This collection is intimate and can give a pretty great perspective into the lives and likes of the user.

A fun fact about Pinterest is that “number of people who see your pins is larger than number of people who follows you”. That’s Pinterest for you. Still need more reason? Ok, here they are.

As per a study, 88% of the users who pin a product on Pinterest, make a definite purchase. That’s a pretty solid percentage when you compare it to other social media networks where even ads are unable to pull these kind of numbers.

For example: 80% of the Pins on Pinterest receive a repin compared to 1.4 % retweets on Twitter. This gives us a basic view of Pinterest’s efficacy when it comes to business oriented aspects.

And if we look at the Pinterest ads; my God! Aren’t they beautiful?

Pinterest ads

You cannot ignore the fact that how exquisitely South African Airlines have given a beautiful impression along with the promotion of their airlines.

User loves what they see and that is why Pinterest can be seen as a galleria of several gorgeous images pinned on variegated boards.

Well, let’s see some listed reasons, why Indian brands should use Pinterest as their marketing platform.

Demographics and Stats

Out of 1.23 billion people, only 243 million uses the internet. It’s good because 243 million still uses the internet and we have 81% of prospects left.

As per predictions, total users may increment up to 500 million. What does it mean for marketers like you?

A totally new customer pool of 250 million users is under process. There will be millions of users to reach with such a simple and elegant platform, where you can simply promote your products by pinning images.

Talking about mobile integration with social media platforms, around 92+ million active users are there on mobile. Much to your amaze, this is only 41% of total mobile internet users, which means a huge chunk is still left to tap (which is already predicted to come to play in next 2 years).

Alongside, Digital media market in India is also increasing at a swift rate. With already 8.9 million active users in India, Pinterest is swiftly penetrating the Indian markets with ease.

As per the research, around 58% of the digital marketers are still focusing on customer acquisition, which means there is huge untapped customer-pool. It also, means 42% of total digital marketers have controlled the market.

 

Predictions

Many marketers are predicting that Pinterest’s buying user number will see an increase of 24% till 2019; i.e. reaching 60 million. In the month of November 2014, it was studied that this impeccable platform has doubled up the number of men signing up as compared to 2013.

Since times have changed now; Marketers are now assessing social media by not seeing the number of followers but by actual sales conversion done there.

You may say that Facebook has 66% bigger customer base than Pinterest. But have you accounted that people come on Facebook with a purpose to interact, do networking and see the news. Facebook too has not set its focus from being a social networking site to a marketing-focused platform.

This has opened a gate for Pinterest in India since India ranks 2nd in Facebook users across the Globe, U.S. being the first.

A Toddler now Maturing

Pinterest was started by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp as a closed beta in the year 2010. In the preceding years, Pinterest has matured a lot in terms of user engagement, UI and design parameters.

Many brands still talk of Pinterest as a ‘Toddler’ in the context of advertising but no one debates about its immense potential. The introduction of promotional pins has been an open declaration from Pinterest of their arrival in the field of advertisement.

Pinterest has always been a bit different and quite visionary when it comes to social networking mediums. Comparing to the existing social media platforms, one could say that Pinterest is ‘the best’ platform available for users to product sales. The same goes for the sellers; as a marketer you get ample space and audience to communicate the intended message effectively.

Compared to Indian user number of 2.1 million in 2014, now Pinterest has been able to tap 8 million users in 2016. That is just not a sign of toddler anymore. Showing an increase of around 400% is just another example of saying that Pinterest is going to be “The next big thing” on Internet very soon.

What Does Pinterest Offer?

A lot has been already said for the Indian market and users. We’ll discuss more about Pinterest and its offerings.

This image-based social platform is becoming more than what it was aimed to be. Owing to its elegant UI, large user base, and shopping-oriented design, Pinterest is becoming a major tool for shoppers of today.

Let us go through some of the basic terms related to Pinterest:

  1. Pins: It is simply the pins posted by you
  2. Boards: Collection of pins categorized as per your preference
  3. Followers: People following your profile, pins or boards
  4. Repin: If someone likes your pin, he/she can repin it.

Some more terms are there; go here for further clarity.

Since social media is considered as the best form to perform research on products/services, so how should you use it?

Just put an image of the product as a pin and ask the customers for their feedback.

Mentioned below are few offerings by Pinterest that can surely help you are a marketer to promote your brand and increase the sales:

Boards

A board is a collection of images or pins on your profile. Once you log in to your Pinterest account, just create a board by clicking on your account name on the top left side of the page.

Pinterest boards

The main advantage of having boards is that if your business is targeting a specific group of audience, you do not have to promote your product like a blind marketer. Instead, you can select what sort of boards covers your audience, make that category and cover a larger client pool.

Brands having niche marketing goals should take Pinterest as their mentor because a board simply solves all the bottlenecks that were previously available in all other social media platforms.

For example, if you are selling luxurious watches, just make a board naming it relevantly and selecting groups such as luxury, fashion, men’s watch, and watches. You will cover a larger segment of users who are following these categories and will be interested in purchasing the product.

So, Pinterest filters out a large group of people and lets you target users relevant to your brand or product.

Action Oriented

Do not get misinterpreted by the fact that Pinterest is a place, where users just give an impressive look to the images and move on. No. As said earlier, most of the shoppers get influenced by Pinterest to make a purchase. Also, most of the pins on

Pinterest pins are themselves action oriented.

Recipe pins aid users in figuring out what to cook, home décor pins helps people decorate their place as per their preference and fashion pins enable the user to decide what to buy.

Serving as a mechanism of discovery, Pinterest has users who tend to spend more money. Pinterest users are 10% more likely to make a purchase on e-commerce platforms than users who are referred from other social media platforms.

Another important feature of Pinterest is that users can save the pins they like for later; thus serving as a bookmark for products. For a bride, who is planning her marriage Pinterest can serve as a digital wedding planner, where she can save whatever she likes and can review the options later to make a purchase.

Advertising Platform

Pinterest has been taking a special interest in the promotion of brands. The introduction of promoted pins or Rich Pins has been a major step in advertising by Pinterest. Rich Pins are total of 6 kinds:

  • Recipe
  • Product
  • App
  • Movie
  • Article
  • Place

Each meant for the different purpose, these paid/promoted pins are utilized for getting a better & effective user engagement.  For example, app pins include an install button, which enables users to download the app without even leaving Pinterest.

For people who love traveling, Place pins tell them everything about a place such as providing a map and giving address & phone number.

Indian brands who wants their products to be showcased on Pinterest can use product pins, which makes it quite convenient for the buyers to reach and purchase your product.

Campaigns

It is quite hard to engage customers with your brand on social media platforms, especially when there are so many. Pinterest includes Campaigns, where you as a marketer can start a contest or campaign to bring more and more users at a single platform to discuss.

Pinterest indian brands campaigns

You can see here, two different kinds of campaigns are available; Engagement campaign and Traffic campaign.  Either you can choose to engage customers by boosting the interaction with your pins or you can direct a motivated audience towards your content.

Brands that are finding it difficult to start a conversation or do not know how to tap the client pool, can utilize this feature and benefit themselves by engaging with users at a macro-level.

Pinterest Analytics

It is every marketer’s dream to track even the minutest activity of their strategy to assess its performance accordingly. Pinterest has made this dream come true for marketing professionals. Although, many social media platforms have their own analytical tools, but none has such a huge shopping enthusiast users on their platform.

So a combination of millions of users (80% of them) who just want to shop and a tool, which can help brands to monitor their activities in order to promote the product in accordance with the consumer behavior, can be a deadly one.

Pinterest analytics

Not only analytics tells the performance of your Pinterest profile, but it also gives insights on small issues such as what kind of pins are performing best & worst, when are your target audience online most, what does your target audience like most (which boards and pins), and so on.

However, there are some third party tools also available for managing the business account of Pinterest to fill some uncovered issues. Viralwoot is an M&M (management & marketing) suite of Pinterest. Using a simple UI that users can handle, monitor and track, Viralwoot is able to tap around 70000 users and associate itself with 4000 brands across the globe. Some of the brands that are using Viralwoot are listed as following:

  • Industry:       Company
  • News:             Buzzfeed
  • Knowledge:   Wikipedia
  • Travel:            Trivago and Cleartrip
  • Clothing:        Wrangler and Lifestyle
  • Retail:             Infibeam
  • Jewelry:          Nakshatra
  • Movies:           Bookmyshow

This M&M suite Viralwoot has following main attributes:

  • Pinterest Scheduler
  • Promotion on Pinterest
  • Pinterest Analytics
  • Content Manager
  • Influencer Manager

Top 10 Indian Brands on Pinterest

I will now list the top 10 Indian brands that are using Pinterest as a platform to market and promote their products:

1.    WedMeGood

WedMeGood is a new wedding planner destination for all the to-be brides & to-be grooms. Incepted in 2014, this firm has been using Pinterest solely for the purpose of marketing their services and reaching a larger audience.

Wedmegood Pinterest Dashboard

This is one of the few companies in India, which is wise enough to utilize the potential of Pinterest in order to reach their sales target. With 35k followers, WedMeGood is quite popular on Pinterest and hence it remains active by continuous engagement with the customers.

2.    Myntra

Launched in 2007, Myntra is an e-commerce platform for branded apparels. Ranked as top four startups for India, Myntra is aggressively using Pinterest for increasing their visibility.

Myntra Pinterest

With 3000 followers, Myntra is surely using Pinterest as a booster to increment its sale and build a bigger customer base.

3.    Jabong.com

Incepted in the year 2012, Jabong.com, one of the leading e-commerce sites in India, has been able to mark its presence on Pinterest. Seeing the Jabong.com Pinterest account, you can simply figure out that it has been effectively using this exquisite image-based platform to ensure a proper customer engagement.

jabong Pinterest

Jabong has been using promoted or Rich pins continuously to showcase its product for the target audience.

4.    Times of India

Pinterest has been a wonderful place to start a discussion; i.e. interacting with customers on a large scale. Times of India, country’s leading print media player has been taking full advantage of Pinterest. With around 10k followers, TOI has been gaining a competitive edge as it started before everyone else.

TOI Pinterest Page

5.    ScoopWhoop

ScoopWhoop is a new-bee internet media and news company launched in the year 2013. Started as a viral content generating and sharing website, the company is now providing news on the portal and also acts as a medium for discussing & sharing social concern issues. Pinterest has been an active stage for ScoopWhoop altogether with approximately 1.4 thousand pins and 2.5 thousand followers.

scoopwhoop

6.    PepperFry

One of India’s most eminent names in online Furniture and Home & Living destination, PepperFry is making the difference at Pinterest. With around 6ooo pins, PepperFry is drawing the attention of customers quite smartly.

pepperfry Pinterest

7.    FabFurnish

Started in 2012, FabFurnish is making its name in the online furniture, furnishing, décor, and kitchenware. If you see its Pinterest page, you will know how FabFurnish is highly involved with the customers by pinning different pins.

Fabfurnish Pinterest

8.    Swayam India

Swayam India is an online store for home furnishing products, which is covering around 70 cities in India at 400 plus counters. This E-store has been promoting its product line effectively on Pinterest. Different boards of varied categories show the diverse products Swayam India can offer.

SwayamIndia Pinterest

9.    Utsav Fashion

Shipping to over 200+ countries, Utsav Fashion is a leading online name in Indian Ethnic Fashion. Utsav Fashion’s exclusive designs and appealing color combinations have been exquisitely exhibited on Pinterest, so much so that it has more than 30 thousand followers.

utsavfashion Pinterest

 

10.    Fabindia

Being an Indian chain store, which is involved in the retail of fabrics, garments, ethnic and furnishing products, Fabindia is truly a treat to watch on Pinterest. With its followers reaching two thousand, Fabindia is surely cashing the sales opportunity at the Pinterest platform.

Fabindia Pinterest

 Conclusion

A lot has been discussed about why Pinterest is important for Indian brands for various marketing purposes. The Indian market is still nascent in social media and marketers should leverage this opportunity to scale their businesses. Then only you can be termed as a smart marketing professional. So, Pinterest gives you an opportunity to engage large customer pools. You can sit back and use the traditional mediums or let Pinterest reel in the sales. Choose wisely!