If you ask most bloggers or online business owners, they’ll say there are two main areas they get traffic from. One is organic traffic from Google and other search engines. The other is Pinterest traffic. In comparison, social media often brings much less traffic.
But why would Pinterest send traffic to your website? And how does it end up being one of the two top traffic sources for so many digital businesses? Let’s dive into a beginner’s guide to using Pinterest for digital marketing and explain how you can use it and mistakes to avoid.
If it isn’t for you remember like you can hire a writer for your website, you can hire a Pinterest VA too!
What is Pinterest?
The first thing to understand about Pinterest is that it isn’t a social media site. It is a visual search engine. While it does have some social features to it, it is a search and discovery platform. It is similar to a Google search but with pictures. A way of finding things you like the look of predominantly by pictures alone.
Now, this does mean there’s the very occasional business that doesn’t really work so well on Pinterest. The local garage trying to advertise their car servicing might not find Pinterest hugely useful. It isn’t visual and Pinterest isn’t the best for local traffic.
But for any business with an online presence and who can create some kind of graphics for their content, Pinterest is a must-have part of the marketing arsenal. Unlike social media, which doesn’t really like to send people off the platform, Pinterest is about providing users with information that they follow through to the website to explore.
How does Pinterest send traffic to your website?
Pinterest works like a digital version of those old pinboards made of cork that we had on our walls as kids. You know, where you pinned the magazine page of your favourite boy band? Or the latest lip gloss you wanted to buy?
The idea is that businesses pin images that relate to their content, products, and services. They use keywords in the descriptions they add to those pins and when someone searches the relevant term, that pin appears.
Let’s say I’m looking for a new cocktail recipe to use my tasty gin with. I might search for ‘gin cocktails’ or ‘drinks for gin’ or even a specific gin cocktail. If you have a recipe on your blog that is for a gin cocktail and you’ve pinned an image of it, then your recipe could appear in my search.
Getting that all important click
Appearing in search is one of the key ways you drive traffic to your website. But you need to compel me to click your recipe over the others that appear on the screen. That’s where a few factors come together:
- The pin image – in this case, a photo of the cocktail that looks tasty or maybe a shot of the finished drink with ingredients scattered around it
- The pin headline – the words on the pin that tell me what the cocktail is and pique my interest
- The pin description – the part that tells me more about the drink and prompts me to click the image with a call to action to visit the website
Strategy and tactics
Now there’s a bit more to driving traffic from Pinterest than just popping up a nice image with a headline, a good description, and expecting hundreds of people to click. But they might!
Strategy and tactics are the key things to understand. Strategy is the overall why you are using Pinterest and what you want to achieve with it. Tactics are the things you will do to drive that traffic and get in front of your audience.
Building for success
Pinterest is a great platform to market almost any type of online business. It can be amazing if you create content and also if you have products. Even service-based businesses can find they can drive traffic to their websites from it. But you do need to learn the basics so that you can make the most of it.
5 common mistakes you may make with Pinterest
One of the big problems with Pinterest is that there’s lots of well-meaning but not always accurate information out there. That’s why experienced marketers turn to specific people to get the best information and be sure that they are following best practices. There are also some really common mistakes that people continue to advise beginners to make. Here are 5 mistakes marketers make with Pinterest that you can easily avoid.
Mistake 1: Treating Pinterest like a social media site
This is the easiest mistake to make because there are some social media elements to Pinterest. There are comments and followers and even groups (boards). Google Analytics even lists it under the social tab but it is always important to remember that Pinterest isn’t a social media site.
Instead, it is a visual search engine, a search and discovery platform. It is more like Google search than Facebook, despite those social media style features. Therefore, it is important to approach it like a search engine with things like keywords being front and centre of what you do.
Mistake 2: Focusing on monthly views
The monthly views figure is prominently featured on your profile when you look at the saved or created tabs. So it is logical to think it is an important metric that you should track. Lots of people get excited by reaching a million or other milestones with this figure.
But the reality is that it tells you little about how your account is really doing. That’s because it is based on the whole account including any content from other people. And the view is like an impression – it means the pin has appeared on someone’s screen. But it doesn’t mean they took notice of it, clicked it for a closeup, or clicked the pin. Because we are focused on clicks o the website, the monthly views figure doesn’t tell you anything useful.
Mistake 3: Stressing about follower numbers
This is another carryover from social media marketing – being stressed about follower numbers and focusing on growing it, without any context. After all, more followers are good, right?
Wrong! Followers who are interested in your stuff, will repin your pins and click your links are good. People who save your pins to their boards are brilliant. But just random people who inflate a number but never interact with your content aren’t helping at all. So don’t stress about increasing followers, focus on improving your SEO and getting more clicks.
Mistake 4: Not doing keyword research
This one applies to both Pinterest and organic traffic. If you don’t do your keyword research, you run the risk of using the wrong words, and that people can’t find your stuff. Now there are no dedicated tools to do keyword research on Pinterest like there are for Google search. But you can look at terms in the search bar and see what long-term and associated keywords appear.
Plus if you are researching keywords for SEO, there’s a good chance these will work on Pinterest just the same. Remember, visual search engine!
Mistake 5: Expecting quick results
With SEO we are taught that it takes 12-18 months at least for Google to trust our sites and start to send consistent traffic. But people often expect Pinterest to be much quicker. While it can be, it still takes a good amount of time to get that consistent traffic.
Most experts will say that you need at least 3-6 months of consistent pinning with quality pins and content to start to see good results. Sometimes it can be longer if you are in a very saturated niche. But lots of people get disheartened when they’ve been pinning for a few weeks and nothing happens.
Don’t fall into that trap – start with the knowledge that it takes time.
Avoid these common mistakes
Mistakes are a natural way of learning and there’s nothing wrong with them. But you can avoid these common mistakes with Pinterest marketing and you can enjoy the benefit of others who have made them and bounced back to get ahead with your efforts.
