Completely Filling Out Your Business Profile
Before you do anything on Pinterest, make SURE that you have a business profile set up. If you have a personal profile, you won’t be able to access all the great bonuses like analytics. You can either set up a brand new business profile, or you can convert your personal profile to a business one. To learn how to set up a business account, go here.
Once you’ve set everything up, it’s time to fill out your profile. And one of the most important things to do when filling out your profile is to be thorough! Have you ever seen one of those Pinterest users with just a thumbtack for a picture? No one wants to interact with a brand that can’t even be bothered to put up a decent photo. Take the time to put up a profile picture and fill out your most important information: business name, a user name that reflects your business name, a little bit about you, your location, and your website. Make sure everything is consistent with your other social media profiles–if you’ve recently changed websites, make sure you update correctly. If you use a specific username on Twitter, you might want to consider using the same for Pinterest (both Twitter and Pinterest have limited characters for profile names). Put your most important keywords in your “about me” section. Finally, validate your site for analytics purposes. More on that below.
Validating Site for Analytics
One of Pinterest’s best business account features is analytics. By enabling analytics, you can gain valuable insight about which pins are driving the most traffic to your site. All it takes is a little bit of code, and you’re ready to start tracking. To validate your site, simply:
- Go to Account Settings.
- Scroll down to where you see the field to input your website. There should be a message next to it saying that your site needs validation.
- You can then choose from one of two ways to validate your site: a meta tag or an HTML file. Depending on your level of skill with code or your hosting platform, you’ll want to pick the way you’re the most familiar with. If you have no idea what any of this means, contact your webmaster or visit Pinterest’s help center for tips and videos. There is another walk-through here.
- Once you’ve completed the steps here, refresh the page and you can see whether it worked.
- You’re finished!
To check up on analytics, simply go to the gear on the right-hand side of the page and select “Analytics”. From there, you can see which of your pins are performing the best, who visits your site, and more!
If you want to know more about using analytics, Pinterest has put together an in-depth PDF that covers the topic thoroughly. We highly suggest you check it out, since that’s well beyond the scope of this article.
Updating Strategically
Some people forget about Pinterest, only to remember later during the month and then frantically spend 3 hours pinning things. This might not seem like a terrible thing to do, but if you understand how Pinterest boards work, you’ll soon realize just how frustrating this is to your followers.
You see, when someone pins to a board, all of her followers will see the pin at the top of their feed. So imagine what it must be like to see a flood of 50+ pins in under an hour. You’re going to make some people very agitated, and as a result, they’re going to unfollow you very quickly. This is not a good way to go about using the social media platform!
Instead, take the time to learn when your clients are online and pinning. According to most studies, Pinterest users are active later at night (perhaps with a glass of wine in hand, browsing before bed?). Take advantage of this and add to your content a little bit every day during these hours. Your boards will grow slowly over time. Keep adding valuable content and you can be sure that you’ll gain followers!
Creating Boards for Multiple Things
So let’s say you’re an expert at knitting crazy hats. You’re going to want to pin articles about knitting, creating your own patterns, which kinds of yarn are best, and different ways to wear your hats. All kinds of craft-related things!
But while your focus should be on your main product, you should also make sure to pin other things, too. People like mindless entertainment, and they like knowing your brand is human. So go ahead and start a cute kitties board, or pin recipes you’d like to try. Have your boards reflect your own unique interests, and people will be more likely to stay interested in you.
Repinning After Some Time
So you pinned your blog post to a board three months ago. You’ve been adding to that board daily. What do you think the chances are that someone will find that pin? Not as high as if you repinned it, that’s for sure! Every once in a while, take the time to repin your posts so that they appear at the top of your followers’ feeds. You’ll get a bump in impressions and probably a few more pins and clicks, too!
Check Pin Details
Have you ever pinned someone’s pin and found that the link is broken or that it’s misleading? It happens to everyone. But the best way to avoid these things is to simply take a second to check that the link works before you repin it. If the incorrect info is listed in the pin description, take fifteen seconds to attribute it to the correct source. After all, would you want someone doing this to your work? Probably not. Spread the love and you’ll not only benefit from a better board, but you’re being helpful to the person who wrote the content as well as to your followers.
Place a Widget on Your Site
By placing a widget on your site, people will know immediately that you’re on Pinterest. You can design anything from a simple button to a gorgeous board showcasing your pins. Then any visitor can click to follow you and take a look at your content. If you choose the type of widget that showcases your boards, all of your most recent pins will show up, helping you to get the impressions and repins you want! Check out Pinterest’s widget builder here to get started.
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