Pinterest(hasbeen(hugefor(thelast(coupleof(months,(and...

Pinterest has been huge for the last couple of months, and by this time you have likely heard some crazy-‐sounding stories about business owners who are driving an avalanche of traffic to their blogs using Pinterest. But you’re probably confused. How exactly are bloggers and businesses getting traffic from Pinterest? Why is the traffic everyone else is getting with Pinterest whizzing past you like a freight train in the night? As I researched my recent book on Pinterest marketing, I dug into some of the web’s most successful Pinterest case studies to find out what really makes their traffic-‐boosting systems work. By dissecting these case studies, I’ve compiled a list of methods you can use to drive traffic to your website or blog. Let’s get started.

Beth Hayden | www.bethhayden.com

Use images that tell a story One of the best ways to rally visitors to your site is to create blog post images that are highly pinnable. Not only do you need to make sure that every single post on your site has an image embedded in it, but each image that you add to your posts needs to be great. Nester Smith is a pro at creating highly pinnable images for her website, and it pays off. Smith runs a home decorating blog that has close to 30,000 subscribers. With every post Nester writes, she publishes a beautiful, evocative, funny or inspiring photo. She’s a fantastic photographer, so many of the photos she uses on the blog are her own snapshots. At minimum, Smith adds a clear, good quality photo to each post. But on some posts, she takes it a step further. She creates a gorgeous photo badge that just begs to be pinned on Pinterest.

For her photo badges, Smith usually takes the title of the post and adds it to a photo. She makes sure that the text is easy to read and that the entire badge is attractive and compelling. Then she pins that image to her one of her pinboards on Pinterest and makes sure that the photo badge links back to her blog post. This technique works. Smith’s simple-‐but-‐beautiful photo badge for this blog post has successfully driven 90,000 visitors to her website. This badge has also been pinned 55,000 times on Pinterest. Other tips for photo badges:


o Use real photos – pins that use real photos as a background will get more traction than ones that use text over a plain background

o Use light and visually appealing colors (think light blue, pink, or yellow) rather than neutrals or dark colors

o Keep your pins under 5000 pixels high – the taller the pin is, the harder it is for pinners to repin it

o The better your blog post title is, the better this technique will work. Write compelling, interesting, attention-‐grabbing headlines for your blog posts and articles.

o Use online photo editors like PicMonkey to create easy, professional badges.


Get Your Timing RIght One of the downsides to Pinterest is that pins have a short shelf life. Once you pin an image or video, it will immediately be posted to your followers’ “New” pages. After that, you have a very short window of time for it to go viral on Pinterest. Some say this window might be as little as 20-‐30 minutes. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re saying, “But people will be able to see my pinboards on my profile page for a long time after I initially pin an image!” And this is true. Your pins do stay visible on your pinboards. And occasionally one of them will get picked up by another user, and may even get repinned a few times. But compared to the amount of people who will see your image when it’s new, the number of people who will bother to pick through your old pins is minuscule. So maximize your time in the Pinterest spotlight by pinning your images when the greatest number of people will see them. And until Pinterest releases its API to developers the way Twitter and Facebook have (so the geeks can come up with cool pinning dashboard and pin-‐scheduling tools) you’ve got to be online and pinning during Pinterest “peak times.” Some business owners who have closely monitored their Pinterest traffic have noted that they get a ton of traffic from pinners at 6 AM and 6 PM, Eastern time. You could use this information to estimate that you will likely want to pins links to your own blog posts around 5:30 AM and 5:30 PM (in order to leverage the power of those “before and after work” pinners.) But finding the peak times for your audience may require a little research. Your peak times may be different than other people’s – so experiment with different times and find out when you need to be on Pinterest is order to get the most traffic. Pinterest just added a new Analytics module, so you can track which pins are performing well and which ones are sending the most traffic to your site. You can also use this data to discover the best time for you to pin. To get the new


Analytics module, you must switch to the new Pinterest look AND verify your website within your profile. To switch to the new look, just hover your cursor over your name (or business name) in the upper left corner on any Pinterest window. Then scroll down to “Switch to the New Look.” Pinterest will ask you to confirm your choice – click on “Get It Now” to confirm. ��

To verify your website, follow these directions from Pinterest: If you have an HTML website, follow these directions from Pinterest: www.blog.pinterest.com/post/34315137913/verifying-‐your-‐website OR, if you have a WordPress website, use this plugin: www.wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pinterest-‐verify-‐meta-‐tag/ When you’ve verified your website AND switched to the new look, you can access to new Analytics information. Just scroll over your business name on the top right corner of any Pinterest screen, and select “Analytics” in the drop down menu. You can view all kinds of great data from within this analytics tool, including stats on how well your pins are performing – so make sure to use this info to calculate YOUR Pinterest peak times.


Pin New Stuff Pinners love new and original content, just like other social media users. So instead of just repinning tired images from other users, find new stuff on the web to pin. Be original. Take chances. Be interesting. If you pin new content to Pinterest once a day, you will gain new followers consistently, and your Pinterest platform will grow. And the bigger your Pinterest platform is, the more people will click on links to your blog posts and articles when you pin them (and the more traffic you will get from Pinterest!) Get the Pin It bookmarklet for your browser, so you can pin images from almost any website: www.about.pinterest.com/goodies


Collect and Curate Awesome Content Your job on Pinterest is to gather and display awesome content in your niche -‐ and that makes you a curator. In the real world, professional curators gather, organize and display items for museums and galleries. Your job as an online curator is to do the same thing for your virtual audience. Being a content curator means that you pick the best images, resources and ideas on the Web –– then organize that “stuff” in a beautiful way for the benefit of your core audience. It means you cherry-‐pick all the best information on your topic and display it online in an attractive way. The word “curator” is derived from the Latin word “curatus,” which means “care” – and you need to consistently and thoughtfully care for your audience when you use Pinterest. Being a great curator means that your audience depends on you as a trusted expert in your field. And when that happens, you can bet that they’ll come back to you (and your blog) again and again, because they know you’ve got the goods. So get the goods. And then pin the goods. Because when you’re a great curator, your site traffic will grow exponentially.


Don’t Pin Your Own Stuff All the Time While you’re curating all that great information, you might be tempted to only pin images from your own website and blog. You might want to create boards that only feature your products (if you sell products) or your blog posts (if you’re a blogger or other content creator.) Resist this urge. Resist it with all your might. If you only pin your own stuff on Pinterest, you will fail as a pinner. You’ll never see that consistent flow of targeted traffic that you’re longing for. Some folks say you should limit the amount of pins that link to your own product pages or blog posts – some experts even say that once a day is plenty. I’m not a fan of arbitrary rules like this, but I think you’ll know when you’re pinning your own stuff too much. You’ll feel like a schmuck. And it won’t feel good. So follow your gut. And don’t be a social media weenie! Stick to posting good content from other places, and when it feels right, pin one of your own posts, too. This will get you much more traction that constantly promoting yourself.


Give ‘Em More of What They Want Want to find out what images and videos people have been pinning from your site? You can find out by viewing your site’s source page on Pinterest. Go to: www.pinterest.com/source/[yoursitehere.com] to see your source page. Need an example? Check out how many people have pinned images from Copyblogger.com, a popular blogging and social media blog (get to this page by going to www.pinterest.com/source/copyblogger.com):

By checking out your source page on a regular basis, you can see which images are resonating with Pinterest users. And once you know what pinners like – give ‘em more of that!


Build Your Platform If you want massive amounts of traffic from Pinterest, you need lots of followers. Get more followers by:

o Pinning a little bit every day, preferably at peak times o Following other people – find other interesting users to follow by

going to the “Popular” or “Everything” tabs on your Pinterest navigation bar

o Cross-‐post your pins to Facebook and Twitter using the built-‐in social media tools within Pinterest

o Show some personality. You don’t need to stick to pinning images and videos that fit within your niche – you can pin stuff that is interesting to you! Try travel destinations, recipes, hobbies, activities, etc..

o Following other pinners. If you follow 5-‐10 people every week, a substantial portion of those folks will follow you back. And if you choose those pinners strategically (and pick people who pin cool stuff) you’ll get more interesting content to re-‐pin from your Pinterest home page.


Sponsor Contests You can overdo contests on Pinterest, just as you can on other social media sites. And some folks may criticize you for “buying” followers using contests. But I think you can run ethical Pinterest contests. Done well, contests can create buzz for your business AND be exciting and interesting for contest participants, too. To run a good Pinterest contest:

• Ask your followers and readers to create pinboards based on a theme you select. Harrod’s department store in London recently held a contest that asked their readers to create storefront ideas based on the theme of Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee this summer. (www.pinterest.com/harrods/harrods-‐street-‐party-‐window-‐inspiration/) Better Homes and Gardens also ran a similar “Dream House” contest for their Pinterest followers.

• Keep it simple. Don’t ask contest participants to do five different things in order to enter. Make it a two-‐step process: Create a board, and tell you about that board (whether it’s on Twitter, email, or blog comment)

• Make sure you spell out the rules clearly on your website. Then link to that blog post or web page on a dedicated contest Pinterest board.

• Open and close your contest on time. • Make a really big deal of announcing the winner. You want that person to

get lots of good press, so publish the winner’s board on your blog, talk about it on Twitter and Facebook, and make a big fuss about it on Pinterest. The more you publicize your contest AND the winner, the more people will likely participate in your next contest.

• Don’t do contests too often. Once or twice a year is plenty.


More Ideas

√ Make sure you’ve got a “Pin It” button on every page of your website or blog. Get one for your site by going to the Pinterest “Goodies” page – www.pinterest.com/about/goodies.

√ Create good website content that people want to share on Pinterest. Great blog posts and articles will attract more traffic than ho-‐hum content.

√ Pin tutorials and how-‐to content that links back to your site. Pinterest users

love how-‐to content, so create tutorials and other educational content for your site, then pin that content to Pinterest.

√ Incorporate trending topics from Pinterest into board titles and pin

descriptions. Pins featuring trending topics see a 94% increase in click-‐though-‐rate. [Source: Pinerly]

√ Featuring a “call to action” like “click Here,” “comment below,” or “repin

this,” increases the engagement (repins, comments, likes) of a pin by 80%. So include those calls to action in your pins to drive traffic to your blog posts or website!


Your Turn Turns out that getting tons of traffic from Pinterest is more than just an urban legend -‐ it is happening to smart bloggers all over the world. But you can’t just sit back and wait until the pinners come to your site and start buying -‐ you need to take action. So stop pinning random stuff and hoping the traffic will flow in – pick one of these suggestions and take a step toward putting it into place. Just one baby step. Then go out there and grab yourself a piece of that awesome Pinterest pie. It’s rich, luscious and definitely worth fighting for. Need a little more help? Contact me for information on Pinterest coaching and upcoming Pinterest marketing classes. www.bethhayden.com [email protected] Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/bethhayden 303-‐888-‐4999

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