Subscribe to Book Marketing Mag’s YouTube channel. By Andrea Kalli.
Pinterest is turning into one of my favorite places to visit when it comes to sharing knowledge and tidbits surrounding my business and my industry. I think the things I like most about it are that it is visual and it is quick. Well, relatively quick! You can get sucked into foodie posts and cute pet posts just as you would with any other social network, but if you go in with a goal in mind, I find it’s still a much more enjoyable place to spend some solid business marketing time.
It will help to keep you on track and focused if you go onto Pinterest a few times a week (daily, if you can) with a plan. For example, you could plan to spend 5-10 minutes pinning items of your own creation related to your business and industry. Then spend 5-10 minutes pinning items from others that are related to your business and industry. And finally, spend 5-10 minutes pinning fun items and information that will feed your downtime and fun-time needs.
This is totally doable if you get into a rhythm and are comfortable with what you’re doing.
When you’re pinning your own content, have a plan and a goal. You’ll want to include these 5 items every time in your description:
- Give lots of detail in your description. You have 500 characters to use. Fill it up to enhance the interest!
- Use one or more of your keywords in the description. If your keywords sound awkward in the description text, use hashtags at the end of your description (#mykeyword). These are great to help searchers and for SEO boosters.
- Be sure to include a URL link to your website, web page, or your specific blog post. These become live back links to your website and are great for traffic increasers and SEO boosters.
- Make sure you use a Call to Action.
- Examples could be >Read the full information on my website<, >Please repin this pin<, >Sign Up on my site to receive the free ebook<. It’s perfectly OK to guide readers on what you would like them to do next.
If you have a service or product you want to pin, include the price for it by using the $dollar sign in front. It will automatically place a price banner across the pin corner and it will automatically be included in Pinterest’s Virtual Gift Catalog. Cool, huh?!
If you are actively blogging and creating valuable and helpful posts, then you’ll want to pin those particular posts onto Pinterest.
Remember though, that not every blog post may be “pinnable” content, so save your pins for content that is information-rich. It also helps if you have an image in your post, but you don’t have to.
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