10 Tips to Promote Your Website on Pinterest

Pinterest might seem like just another social media craze, but with $120 million funding behind them and the buzz still as high as ever, it looks set to stick around for a good few years yet.

Falling just behind Facebook and Twitter in the ranks and with 40 million global users and counting, Pinterest has already cemented its status as one of the most rapidly growing social networks and is fast becoming one of the best ways to promote and market your business at little to no cost or effort. With the recent release of business profiles for Pinterest – now is the perfect time to climb on board and check out what it’s all about. If you’ve signed up and are seeing little results or are in need of some advice to pick things up or even start things off, the following tips will help you get the most of out of your Pinterest account.

1. Get a Widget for your WordPress Blog

If you’re using WordPress, you can get a Pinterest RRS Widget that will show your latest Pins in your sidebar. It’s easy to install and manage, and will also help direct traffic to your content on the site.

2. Keep An Eye On The Trends

Keep a tab on the ‘Popular’ link that’s under the Pinterest logo on your homepage, and try to merge any loosely related ones into your content strategy.

3. Be Descriptive

– don’t just pin images! Make sure you write a good description under anything before posting. This will stay there when other people repin it, so be savvy and include some reference to your business there. But…

4. Don’t be Too Obvious

There’s a fine line between being bold and being obvious. You need to make sure you get your business out there, but don’t be too over the top or users will see straight through your marketing ploy and be put off.

5. Use it For Other Things As Well

Driving people to your board is one thing, holding their interest is another. To hold their attention, you’ll need to do more than just post promotional images. If you do that, people will get bored and click off. Be clever, make it fun, and throw in some subject-related things that will interest and benefit them among your marketing.

6. Try and befriend the big shots

Follow big, influential names, and eventually you are bound to get some of them following back. This will spark interest and curiosity, and you never know, they might take genuine interest in your products and offer a help in hand.

7. Keep it clean

Don’t clutter your board. Clutter is unattractive and will detract attention away from what you are trying to draw attention to, so put extra effort into maintaining a crisp, simplistic appearance. After all, Pinterest is all about the aesthetics.

8. Engage

Instead of just posting, try to communicate with other people and show interest in their posts and things too. Like or repin other peoples’ photos from time to time, and try to build up a warmer, community feel over a corporate one.

9. Cross-promote

If you or your business has a Twitter and/or Facebook, don’t be afraid to link your Pinterest to them both, but keep the number of shares under control to avoid losing followers or friends.

10. Run a contest, promotion or giveaway…

…and make it exclusive to Pinterest users. This is a great way to get people interested in what you’re trying to sell. There’s no better way to capture people’s attentions than with discounts or free stuff, and you are likely to keep a large % of followers once the contest is over, too.

Most of all, make sure that your business is suited to the kind of thing Pinterest caters for. If it isn’t, then it’s not worth spending time trying to make it work. If it is compatible, be persistent, and you will see results.