Are you pinteresting enough?
29th February 2012
What is Pinterest?
Well pinterest is the latest social media craze and actually the fastest growing website to date, now with over 10 million active users. So why should you sign up to yet another social media? Well pinterest is slightly different, there's no status updates and talking about what you did last weekend, its a purely visual social media.
On average people spend 15.8 minutes on pinterest per visit which is substantially longer than written social media platforms like twitter that only keep people engaged on average for 3.3 minutes each time. Pinterest is actually only beaten on engagement time by the holy grail of social media platforms, YouTube, which again comes down to visual engagement, through video.
Do we need another social media?
If you're not overly comfortable with social media, but have a facebook page perhaps, stick to what you know and persevere with one social avenue. If on the other hand you love social media we would certainly recommend getting involved with Pinterest. Why? Well its still relatively new, which means you can make a difference and build your profile ahead of your competitors. Also, it usually means you can get your actual user name, i.e. pinterest.com/lloydmorgan, instead of /lloydmorgan168!
What should I pin?
Pinterest is not all about pinning items relating to your business, its a very personal platform. You can create boards of topics, interests or hobbies that you like. Pin pictures and photos from blogs of interest and/or to websites you enjoy and are relevant to that topic. Pinterest is a social platform that allows you to express your personality and gives others an insight into your likes and dislikes.
Certainly try and squeeze in some links to your website, but only if they are relevant!
Pinterest has more referral traffic that LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube combined, that's a lot of referrals. This is due to profiles only being a collection of photos, so to find out more the user needs to click through to the link. This has made us think a lot about the photos and images we use in our blog posts. Its vital to have an image that tells a story itself, that engages people and intrigues people to find out more.
5 tips to be more Pinteresting!
- Original Source - when pinning an image make sure you 'Pin it' from its original source so people can easily follow the link to find out more. This also applies when re-pinning someones else's pin.
- Exact source - make sure it is the exact URL to the blog post, not a link to a websites home page, because as the website updates the link may break.
- Short descriptions - keep your descriptions short and relevant to help people find your pins
- Connect with people - the whole point of social media is to be 'social' and interact. Comment on other peoples images and re-pin them if you like them. This is a great way of building up followers and hopefully they will re-pin your images in return.
- Profile Links - ensure your profile is linking to your other social media pages and most importantly your website!
Pin Video!
Lets not forget about this extra bonus feature. You can pin your videos! The video section of pinterest is relatively quiet at the moment in comparison to the picture aspect, which allows great opportunities to get your videos seen, so make sure you are pinning your videos for maximum exposure. With video SEO every link will help organic search engine rankings, so make sure you are posting your videos across all your social media platforms regularly for maximum exposure and remember to use key words in your video description.
Happy pinning! Feel free to come on over to view Lloyd Morgans boards.
