Ten Pinterest Marketing Mistakes
Pinterest is a great social media channel to use to market your business, brand or product. It’s mostly female users are affluent and stats show they are willing to spend money on brands that attract their eye. When they do buy, they generally spend more per transaction than a Facebook user. If you brand fits into one of Pinterest’s Pinterest popular categories – food travel, do-it-yourself, crafts, or fashion – Pinterest may be a good fit for your business!
As with any social media, building a following takes time and practice. You also have to figure out what content works for your social following. The right content for Facebook is not necessarily the best content for Pinterest. At the very least, the images are not interchangeable. There is more to Pinterest marketing than just posting pretty product shots. Below are ten Pinterest mistakes to avoid when working on your Pinterest marketing campaign!
Are you making any of the ten ten Pinterest marketing mistakes?
Small images
Pinterest is unique in many ways. This includes the size of the images used for the pins. What makes Pinterest unique is that the pins can have unlimited height. The minimum size for an image is 236 pixels wide for the in-stream view. Pinners should use images that are 736 pixels wide. The height should be at least 1100 pixels high, but there is no limit. Your pin will take up more vertical space in the stream and earn more clicks because it is easier to notice. Be mindful of your ratios too, pins with an aspect ratio of 2:3 earn more clicks than other proportions.
Description too short
Pinterest gives you 500 characters to fill in a good description of a pin’s image. Use this space to include a relevant description, hashtags, price, and a call-to-action. Stats show that pins with longer descriptions get more clicks. A description full of relevant text is more likely to turn up in searches. Long descriptions also cause the pin to take up more vertical space in the stream which makes it easier to stand out in a sea of pins! Try to get as close to 500 characters as possible, but make sure the text fits the image and landing page.
Forget to fill in the links
Be sure to fill in the URL when pinning. If you pin from a website or use the pin-it button the URL is automatically filled in. Pinterest users who upload an image or photo from a laptop or mobile device have to add the URL but need to take an additional step. To add the URL after uploading, save your image with a long description. Next, go back and edit the pin to add a URL. If you don’t add a URL, users will simply get an enlarged, close-up view of your image when they click on the pin. Your goal with Pinterest for business is to get more website traffic and sales. Users cannot buy form you if they cannot easily navigate to the product page.
Never set or change your cover board images
Rotate the images you use as cover images on your boards. You can change them with the seasons, for new promotions, or pick a color scheme to go with you brand. It’s up to you. Changing your cover images keeps the account looking active and fresh!
Fail to fill in board descriptions, bio and account photo
Be sure to fill in board descriptions as well as your biographical description. The board description is the information at the top of each Pinterest board. It tells other Pinterest users what the board is about. Your bio tells other users about you or your brand. Both description areas help your Pinterest content turn up in searches.
Forget to verify your business account
Verify your Pinterest account to associate your Pinterest with a website domain name. This is a feature is available only to business accounts. Pinterest business accounts are free. Verifying the domain name takes a little programming skill. You only have to add a meta tag to your site’s code, copy and paste a tag into a WordPress plugin, or upload a file. It is fairly simple. The account verifies instantly!
Don’t use descriptive names for board names
Use descriptive boards for Pinterest board names. A Pinterest board’s name becomes it’s Pinterest URL with each word separated by hyphens. For example, my “Pinterest Tutorials” board’s URL is https://www.pinterest.com/pintalk/pinterest-tutorials/
Don’t forget to use descriptive names for Pinterest board names and get SEO friendly URLs with it!
Don’t miss out on group boards
Group boards are a good way to get more followers. A group board is a board you create on your Pinterest account then invite other users to pin to it. Group boards give pinners the opportunity to share content on a specific topic with each other. It makes them feel like they are part of your squad. Group boards also help keep your content looking fresh, even when you don’t have time to pin.
Fail to engage with users
Like all social media channels, Pinterest is supposed to be a conversation. Although it’s admittedly a little more challenging to talk across Pinterest, it can be done. The best way is to leave comments on other users boards. Be sure to use their handle (mine is @Pintalk) in the conversation so they get a notification.
Giving up too soon!
It takes a while to build up a Pinterest following. I’ve found that 400 followers seems to be a magic number. Once you get your account to that number, attracting more followers seems to get much easier. I guess it makes you look legit. However, be sure to converse with fellow pinners and share their content as well as your own.
Pinterest pins have a long shelf life. That means a pin make take some days or weeks to gain traction and gain more re-shares. Don’t sabotage your digital marketing by making these ten Pinterest marketing mistakes! Keep pinning quality content with relevant descriptions, and clear images. Your followers will help you by doing some of the re-sharing! For more Pinterest for business tips, check out my Pinterest for Business webinar!
