website-marketing-07012015

There are a million ways to market and promote your website.

Some are new some are old. Some website promotion tactics have been around for a long time and now everyone is doing it. Many of the tactics lose their effectiveness over time.

A great website marketing strategy is to try newer tactics before they get old.

It’s true that Pinterest has been around for a while, but it is still one of the newer website promotion options. There are a lot less businesses use it than Facebook or Twitter, even though Pinterest had recently served its 50 billionth pin. Impressive. Isn’t it?

Compare the 70 million Pinterest users with 1.35 billion Facebook users or 288 million Twitter users. Pinterest has less users, but there is less competition for eyeballs too.

Pinterest is especially effective for marketing to women since 85% of it’s users are female.

Contact us if you want help with marketing your website.

The most important Pinterest categories are:

  • food and drink
  • diy crafts
  • home decor
  • women’s fashion
  • weddings
  • design
  • hair and beauty
  • art
  • kids
  • photography
  • humor
  • holidays
  • education
  • travel
  • film, music, and books

Add the Pin it button.

The Pin it button makes it easier for your visitors to easily pin your website post. It provides the pin description when you add the button to your website. This way, your visitors can click the button and pin your post easily.

Add images to each post.

You can only pin your website post to a board if it has at least one image. The minimum size of your image should be 110 x 100 pixels.

If you don’t include images in your website posts or if the images are too small, you won’t be able to pin the post. Add at least one image to each post.

You can add default images to your website that will be visible on every page. This way if you forget to add an image, you can be sure that your post is pinable.

Any image won’t do. It has to be relevant to the overall topic of your website.

Create pinnable images.

There are a few important points to consider as you make your images more pinnable:

  • The ideal size is 700 pixels x 1000 pixels.
  • Keep the photo simple. Don’t overwhelm people. Avoid grainy, fuzzy, or stretched images.
  • Collages are less effective.
  • Single photos are the most effective.
  • Don’t go crazy with the fonts. Use one or two fonts max.Whatever you do with the font make sure it’s an easy to read font. According to a study done by the Software Usability and Research Laboratory, the most readable fonts online are Arial, Courier, and Verdana.
  • Allow your image to tell the story not the text. The text is only there to complement your photo, not the other way around.
  • A white background seems to be the most desirable.
  • Include warm colors. According to studies people are more likely to click on warm colors.
  • Remember to include the correct alt tags. A great way to do this is to use SEO Friendly Images free WordPress plugin.

Use likes.

Like and thank people who share your content. Repinning is an effective way to engage with your Pinterest fans, but avoid using repins to show your appreciation for sharing your content. It is better to like the pin and leave a comment. It shows your fans that you go the extra mile.

Because your likes on Pinterest are visible to everyone, unlike Facebook likes, you want to be careful about what you “like”. You don’t want to embarrass your business liking the wrong stuff.

Not everything is created for Pinterest. For example, time-sensitive content is not the best because of the evergreen nature of Pinterest. You might pin something that expires by a certain date and it won’t be relevant passed that date. “Like” the pin that way you can find it again and share it on one of your social networks.

Create a website board.

To make it easy for your followers to find your posts, create a board for your website articles. Use the same title for your website board as you have for your website. For example, if you are writing about financial advice for physicians, name your Pinterest website board the same as your website name such as “Financial Advice for Physicians”.

Naming your board with your relevant keywords makes it more likely to show up in search engines.

As you pin your website post, include:

  • One sentence summary from your post.
  • Pinterest optimized image.
  • Link to your post.

Don’t overdo it. 4-5 boards is more than enough to start with.

Allow your fans to pin with you.

Once you create a board, invite your fans and followers to pin with you. First you have to follow them to add them to your board. Then, you will have a board with followers, and the pinning is done for you. At times, you can take links and pin them to your other boards, and promote your own website there.

This is an excellent way to find new followers.

Pin a lot of images.

You need to share not only your images, but the images of others. To gain greater credibility, pin content from your own website and other websites.

Avoid human faces.

Images without human faces are repinned 23 percent more often.

Find followers.

There is a good chance that you already have other social network accounts like Facebook, Google+ and Twitter. Promote your Pinterest page through your other social accounts. Post on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. Share with the world that you want to see their boards. At the same time share with them your boards.

Search in Pinterest, type in your niche. Then, you will get an option to select pins, boards, and people. You want to select boards. Start following quite a few boards. Don’t go crazy here, no more than 100 to start.

Once you have followed some boards, take the next step and like 2-5 of their posts. Find the best content, and click like. It takes time, but you should do this with every board you follow. This way they will see you in their notifications, as a result they will more likely check out your profile.

Install the right plugins.

It is important to verify your website in Pinterest. There are several ways to verify your site within your Pinterest profile. One of them is to install the Pinterest Verify Meta Tag plugin. Once you have verified your site, people will see a checkmark next to your domain. It is a credibility booster.

You can add a simple Pinterest “Pin It” button to your posts in no time, using the “Pinterest “Pin It” Button.

Your “Pin It” button will enable your website visitors to:

  • Let the visitor select an image when pinning.
  • Pre-select an image for the visitor to pin.
  • Default to the first image within a post.
  • Hide the “Pin It” button on certain posts.
  • Place “Pin It” anywhere using shortcodes.

Add the “Pinterest Follow Button” to reach a maximum number of followers.

In case you want to block selected posts from getting pinned on Pinterest, use the “Pinterest Block” plugin.

Create infographics.

Infographics work well on Pinterest for several reasons. First, infographics are visual and will work great on a visual medium. Second, they tell a story with a lot of useful information. People love to pin infographics.

Create Pinterest boards for your website categories.

This is a bit more advanced and time-consuming tactic, but it can be very effective. You can basically take your entire website and put it on Pinterest.

Here is how it goes:

  • You should already have your posts in the correct categories. If you don’t create the correct categories and move each post in the appropriate category. I know that this will take some time, but it’s worth it.
  • Your categories will become your Pinterest boards.
  • If you don’t already have at least one image in each post, create a Pinterest optimized image for each.

This is a great strategy even though it can be a little time consuming. To make it easier on yourself, you can do it in phases.

Automate with Pinterest RSS.

Whenever you pin a link that lands on your website, click on “Post to Twitter”. This will drive traffic, and it will drive traffic to your Pinterest simultaneously. To streamline this process add your Pinterest RSS feed to your favorite social marketing tool. This will tweet everything you pin, and you don’t have to worry about it. You can find your Pinterest RSS feed by going to your boards and add /feed.rss.

Don’t be too salesy.

It is better to be interesting than salesy. When people see that your only interest is to sell your stuff you turn them off. It makes people feel that you are too pushy, almost like cold calling. Keep giving value, provide them with interesting information. Give 90% of the time and sell 10% of the time.

Use analytics.

You can learn a lot from the free Google Analytics (GA) tool, so use it. The great thing about GA is that it works in real time.

In GA under “Real-Time” select – Traffic Sources – Referrals – Pinterest, and it will list all of the pins that are linking to your site.

You can also look at Acquisition – Social – Network Referrals.

If you want to dig deeper, use one of the many Pinterest specific analytics tools such as tailwind.

With Pinterest, just like several other social networks, the sky is the limit. If you are willing to put in the time.

Contact us if you want help updating or marketing your website.

 

photo credit: SMM-Jigsaw-Banner via photopin (license)