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11 Easy Methods To Double Your Pinterest Audience

February 8, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Pinterest is a big player in the social media space. With over 100 million monthly active users and a platform where content you’ve posted a few months ago can still go viral, Pinterest is a no-brainer for marketers of all backgrounds.

More people are going on Pinterest, but one of the first questions people have is always the same.

How do I get more Pinterest followers?

Having the large audience allows the content you share to spread farther. You’ll get more blog traffic and subscribers as you grow your Pinterest audience (assuming you promote your blog and landing pages).

Regardless of why you want more Pinterest followers, you want more followers. Getting more followers on Pinterest is easy, and with the right methods, you can double your total followers quickly.

Here are 11 methods to help you out with that.

#1: Follow Other People

When you start out on Pinterest, most people won’t know about you. You may have an audience on your other social networks and promote your Pinterest account there to build some leverage.

However, even if you have thousands of followers on your other social networks, this method won’t immediately translate to thousands of Pinterest followers.

If you want to grow that rapidly, you need a lot of people to know about you…fast.

The best method to quickly get found by a lot of people is by following other people. They’ll receive a notification that you followed them, and then some of these people will follow back.

I know there is some debate about a tip like this. “Following others” can imply going after the number and not caring as much about who your audience is.

However, if you follow the right people, not only will a lot of people know who you are, but you will also have a targeted audience.

As a digital marketing expert, I only follow people who follow other digital marketing related Pinterest accounts or boards. That way, I am guaranteed to be getting followers who are already interested in digital marketing before they stumble across my account.

#2: Pin Popular Content

One feature that gets underutilized from a marketing perspective is Pinterest’s search engine.

Pinterest’s search engine allows you to see what pins are performing well within your niche. You’ll get to see the pins that are getting hundreds of likes and repins.

Once you see the most popular pins related in your niche, you have several options.

One option is to like and repin some of those pins on your own boards. That way, your boards have a greater variety of content, you are pinning pins with high social proof, and you provide your audience with more value.

The second option you have is to use those pins as models for your own pins. What were those pins about? Can you create a picture that looks as good as the picture from the popular pin (or hire someone to do that for you)?

#3: Pictures Are Key

The picture you use for your pins plays a large role in how much engagement they get. A fascinating blog post with a bad picture won’t get much exposure on Pinterest.

The picture matters, but not just on Pinterest. They increase engagement anywhere you go—on Facebook, Twitter, your own blog, or anywhere else.

If you create bad pictures, then hire someone else to create the pictures for you. And even if you are good at creating picture,s I still recommend hiring someone just because it will save you time.

Here are the specifics of what type of pictures get a lot of engagement on Pinterest.

WARNING: It’s a giant-sized infographic that ironically (in a good way) is optimized for Pinterest.

#4: Leverage Hashtags

When you use hashtags within your pins, you make it easier for people to find your pins using the search engine.

People search for hashtags in the same way they search for keywords without hashtags. However, there are several pins that will use your hashtag.

Take for instance #blogging. This hashtag finds its way on many blogging related pins. If you click on the hashtag, you will automatically be brought to a search for that hashtag.

If you include the hashtag in your pin, and your pin becomes popular, your pin will get more exposure because of that hashtag.

People who click on the #blogging on any pin (it doesn’t have to be my own pin) will end up seeing some of my pins that I included #blogging in the description.

#5: Pin Consistently And Frequently

One study will say that 8 am is the best time to pin and the other study will say that 6 pm is the best time to pin.

The truth is that you have to pin consistently and frequently. That way, more people see your pins which translates to more traffic and engagement.

But there is also a common sense reason to pinning consistently and frequently (I’m talking at least once per hour).

When I get ready for school, most people in California are sleeping.At the same time, students in the United Kingdom are in the middle of their school day.

I am a New Yorker, and that means I go by the eastern timezone. The eastern timezone is just one of the many in the world.

When you are sleeping at 3 am, some people are waking up and logging into their Pinterest accounts.

You need to have a pin waiting for them, and the way you do that is by scheduling those pins in advance. You can use ViralWoot to schedule pins in advance.

You can schedule up to 100 pins per month without paying a penny. If you want to schedule more than 100 pins per month, these are the rates:

#6: Set Your Account Up For Success

The simple things like your bio, avatar, and board structure can go a long way. The best bios are simply a list of your top credentials and hobbies, separated by commas.

Your avatar should either be a picture of yourself or your brand’s logo. Any other avatar doesn’t create trust.

You should have your most content-rich boards up on the front to build upon the impression that you pin a lot of valuable content.

#7: Create Group Boards

Group boards are huge on Pinterest. When someone becomes a contributor to your group board, your board appears on that person’s profile.

That means when someone clicks on “Follow All” when on that person’s profile, your group board gets another follower.

In addition to getting more followers, you have a free army of pinners who will be sure to keep your board updated.

I have several group boards that I rarely updated anymore. I have hundreds of contributors who add the valuable pins for me.

#8: Become A Part Of Other People’s Group Boards

Group boards are a win-win. When you become a contributor to other people’s boards, you instantly get another person’s audience that you can promote your content to.

I have joined several social media related boards with tens of thousands of followers and shared my blog posts on those boards. The result is more traffic from little to no work.

All I did is asked people if I could contribute to their group boards, and they let me in.

Two things to note. The first thing is that you only want to target group boards with a lot of contributors. The more contributors a group board has, the more likely that group board will accept your request to become a contributor.

The second thing is that if you over-saturate the group board with your own content, you may be asked to leave.

To determine how often you should share your content, get a feel for the group board first. Get an idea of how many pins are getting posted on that group board each day.

The more pins that get posted, the more times you will be able to promote your blog posts. However, don’t pin your blog content to someone’s board more than three times in one day.

You can put any extra content on the other group boards that you join. And getting three pins on a popular group board each day would result in some extra traffic.

#9: Promote Your Pinterest Account On Your Other Social Networks

This method is something that you do as soon as possible, but not too long.

Promoting your Pinterest accounts on your other social networks is a way for you to quickly gain some momentum on Pinterest. You’ll have enough social proof to get discovered and then followed by more people on Pinterest.

When you promote your Pinterest account, you still want to provide value without the “Follow me, follow me” tone. There are two ways to do that:

Lead people to one of your top pins

Lead people to one of your top boards

You should lead people to your top boards far more often than you lead them to your top pins because it’s easier for people to follow you when looking at one of your boards than looking at one of your pins.

#10: Use Your Blog To Drive Traffic To Your Pinterest Account

It’s the same concept as promoting your Pinterest account on your social networks. Feel free to use your sidebar to promote your Pinterest account. However, promoting your Pinterest account should not be the focus of your blog.

You can use that space to promote more valuable things such as your products and affiliate links.

#11: Continue Sharing What Your Audience Likes

As you grow your Pinterest audience, there are two things that you need to focus on:

Growing the audience even more

Keeping your audience

You achieve both of those goals by sharing what your audience likes. And it’s easy to figure out what your audience likes.

They tell you what they like each time they like and repin your pins.

Some of your pins will get more engagement than others. You may get a few super pins that get hundreds of likes and repins. That’s the type of content your audience wants more of.

Give it to them.

Occasionally pin about different things to diversify your boards, but focus on providing your audience with what they like.

That way, the people in your audience will come back for more and engage with your pins. That engagement will lead to more exposure and grow your audience.

Feed two birds with one scone.

In Conclusion

Pinterest is a growing social network that is easier to go viral on than most of the other social network. Many people who get on Pinterest immediately want to discover how to get more followers.

The key to getting more followers is to consistently implement what works. Maybe you use these methods and get 10 followers on the first day. Maybe a little less or a little more.

As you continue using these methods and experimenting with your Pinterest strategy, then that’s where the magic happens. But you have to be consistent and working on your Pinterest account every day.

Or hire someone to do the work for you.

What are your thoughts about Pinterest? Did you like one of the tips more than the others? What tips do you have for getting more Pinterest followers? Sound off in the comments section below.

4 Ways To Get More Blog Traffic From Pinterest

January 15, 2016 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Pinterest has emerged as one of the premier social networks on the web. With over 100 million monthly active users who typically spend 1.5 hours on the social network every day, Pinterest is a critical social network for all bloggers to focus on.

Pinterest has a completely different set up from all of the other social networks. While Twitter and Facebook continuously copy each other, Pinterest has an approach that no social network can rival.

The way pins can be organized into boards makes it easier for your followers to find exactly what they are looking for. Think of blog categories on steroids.

The visual cues Pinterest generates can lead to a big increase in blog traffic. Not only does the design of Pinterest encourage traffic, but it is also easier to go viral on Pinterest.

While on other social networks you typically need thousands upon thousands (if not millions) of followers to go viral, it is possible to go viral on Pinterest with only a few hundred followers.

All you need is a powerful picture that catches people’s attention.

But let’s now shift gears and focus on using Pinterest as generating a consistent stream of blog traffic. Imagine getting dozens of daily visitors from Pinterest. Then imagine that traffic growing to hundreds of daily visitors from Pinterest alone.

It’s possible, and it can happen for you. In order to get more blog traffic from Pinterest, follow these four tips.

#1: Pin Consistently And Frequently Throughout The Day

For a long time, I took every article I read seriously. Then, after reading enough articles, I ran across some articles that were contradictory to one another.

One article said tweet four times per day while the other article said tweet 10 times per day. It is impossible to agree with both articles. At that point, it’s one or the other.

Confused about what to do next, I experimented and decided to tweet once every 15 minutes. Each time I increased my tweeting frequency, I got more blog traffic.

So I decided to apply the same methods to Pinterest and see what would happen.

When I started to pin more often throughout the day, I saw a significant increase in my blog’s traffic. Within days of trying this out, I was averaging 50+ visitors per day just from Pinterest.

I started this strategy when I had less than 10,000 Pinterest followers. But in my experience, you don’t need a massive amount of followers to gain a lot of traction.

One of the pins I sent went viral and got hundreds of likes and repins. The funny thing. I only had 500 followers when I published that pin, and it went viral a few days after I pinned it.

#2: Use ViralWoot To Get More Followers

The size of your audience does impact how many people see your pins. Therefore, your audience size also impacts the blog traffic you get from Pinterest.

However, deciding to buy 100,000 fake Pinterest followers doesn’t mean your blog will get thousands of visitors from Pinterest overnight.

You need real people who will look at your pins and engage with them. You need those people who will click on the picture and read your blog posts.

Following people who are likely to follow back is the best way to get targeted followers. However, if you follow too many people and not enough of them follow you back, then you right your ratio going out of control.

At one point, I had 13,000 targeted followers and was following 50,000 people. While it beats having no followers, it took me several months to bring the ratio back to a 1:1 ratio.

The best way to get REAL followers in bulk is with ViralWoot. The way ViralWoot works is that you follow people and get awarded with some points (these points are referred to as seeds on ViralWoot). The more points you have, the more people can follow your account.

The more points you have, the more followers you can get. The cool thing is that some of the people who you do follow to get the points may decide to follow you back.

If you don’t have the time to follow people on ViralWoot, or you want to maintain a certain ratio, then you can buy points from ViralWoot. This is different from buying fake followers since ViralWoot is a website that real people use to follow other users.

#3: Include A CTA In The Description

Not all of your followers will know that by clicking on the picture, they will get led to the blog post. Some people go on Pinterest to look at the nice pictures and share the pictures that they like.

Not all Pinterest users are thinking, “Let me see what this blogger wrote.”

However, many people are used to clicking links on social media that lead to blog posts. Most of us are so comfortable with clicking links that we don’t even think about what we are doing before the link gets clicked.

The way you entice people to click on your pictures is with a call-to-action. In the description of my pins, I will either write the title of the blog post or a brief intro that leaves the follower waiting for more. After I write that part of the description, I will tell the person to click on the picture to read the rest of the blog post.

Here’s one of my pins where I did that:

As you can see, the pin picked up more engagement than my average pin. Part of the reason that pin generated more engagement was because of the CTA within the description.

The CTA’s main function is to simply tell your followers what to do next. How can you expect one of your followers to click on the picture if that follower is not told what to do next?

Remember that this is Pinterest we are talking about. The typical user experience is to browse through pictures and stay on the platform for as long as possible. A CTA encouraging your followers to visit your blog will get your followers off Pinterest (temporarily) and onto your blog.

#4: Pin Your Content On Group Boards

I know what some people are thinking right now.

“But Marc, I don’t have a large Pinterest audience. How am I ever going to get blog traffic from this thing?”

Everyone starts out with no audience—even the famous people. So for any social network, including Pinterest, you just have to put in the work and grow your audience.

But Pinterest is, in part, special exception. It is the ONLY social network where you can get tens of thousands of followers OVERNIGHT.

I’m sure that got your attention.

All you have to do is get invited to become a contributor on a group board with tens of thousands of followers. You don’t get all of those followers for your account, but as a contributor, you can pin anything relevant onto those boards that you want.

You can even pin your blog posts onto those group board.

The next time you are looking through popular boards in your niche, look for the boards with a lot of contributors. If you see this icon next to a board, then that board is a group board.

At that point, you must get the person to accept you as a contributor. Some of these group boards will have descriptions that give you an email address or form you can use to submit your request.

If not, the next approach you should take is messaging the owner of the group board and ask if you can become a contributor.

The very final approach would be to comment on one of the pins asking if you could be a contributor. The worst thing that can happen is that the owner of the group board says no and then deletes the comment.

While you shouldn’t rely on contributing to other people’s group boards for having a large audience, incorporating group boards within your strategy will expose your pins to a larger audience.

In Conclusion

Pinterest is a mammoth of a social network. It’s growth has outpaced the other social networks by a landslide, and Pinterest is continuing to gain momentum.

While Pinterest may not be as big as Twitter and Facebook, my belief is that Pinterest will eventually reach the same user numbers as Twitter and Facebook. All of the top social networks will eventually hit the one billionth user milestone.

Facebook was the first to reach that milestone, and it won’t be the last. My belief is that Pinterest will eventually surpass that milestone as well.

Pinterest is rapidly growing. If you aren’t using it seriously now, then it’s time for you to start.

What are your thoughts about using Pinterest for getting blog traffic? Which of these tips was your favorite? Do you have any other tips for boosting blog traffic with Pinterest? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Start A Successful Pinterest Board

June 26, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Are you leveraging Pinterest for your brand’s growth? Pinterest is increasingly growing in significance and user base, and some brands rely on Pinterest for their overall social media strategy. While the results for each of these brands differ, some brands have gone viral on Pinterest and tapped into new audiences. Many brands go on Pinterest with an aspiration to achieve the same success.

Becoming successful on Pinterest requires a plethora of successful boards. It takes time to create successful boards that generate massive audiences, so instead of focusing on creating multiple successful boards, focus right now on creating one successful board. If you can create just one successful board, then you know what it takes to create multiple successful boards that generate massive audiences.

All you have to do at this point is know how to create a successful board and then create it. Content factors into the value of a board, but there are other factors that impact the experience the people in your audience have when they visit your board.

#1: Keep Your Board Fresh With New Content

When people visit your board, they want fresh content. If the last thing you pinned on your board was from a year ago, then that board won’t be attractive enough to keep someone’s attention for a long period of time. All successful boards do an excellent job at keeping people’s attention over a long period of time over a series of encounters. That means a first-time visitor who enjoyed your board then must still enjoy it a week later (because the content is fresh, relevant, and valuable).

How do you keep a board fresh with new content? One way is to schedule your pins in advance with ViralWoot. You can schedule up to 100 pins per month free of charge, but then ViralWoot has rates that apply if you wish to schedule over 100 pins per month. At this rate, you could schedule three pins per month free of charge. Three pins per day is sufficient for making one of your boards successful, but that same number is insufficient if you want to make multiple boards become successful.

Remember that you want multiple/all boards on your profile to become successful which also requires more work on your part. If you want to have 10 successful Pinterest boards, then you would have to schedule 30 pins per day for all of those boards (or send some of them directly from Pinterest, but if you publish too many pins at one time, you will annoy your followers). That adds up to 900 pins per month which takes a significant amount of time and requires a paid ViralWoot account.

When I came to this realization, I quickly got overwhelmed. I send over 100 tweets per day, write 5,000 words on a bad week, do videos for upcoming training courses, write books, and go to school. Scheduling hundreds of pins per month would be nearly impossible for me to do on my own. I couldn’t possibly do it all by myself.

Then came the contributors.

I knew I couldn’t do it all by myself and didn’t want to pay people to put pins on my boards. The logical solution was to invite people to contribute to my boards. I recently started to implement this strategy, and now some of my Pinterest boards have hundreds of contributors which completely systematizes my Pinterest strategy. New pins get added to some of my boards every day without my involvement. For some of my boards, I simply moderate everything that gets pinned to make sure none of the content is inappropriate or irrelevant (so far, that has never happened. My contributors are the best). At one point, I gained over 1,000 Pinterest followers without pinning anything new on my account. All of the contributors helped update my boards and keep the content fresh.

Why would contributors be so eager to pin on my boards without getting paid? The answer is the exposure. I have over 10,000 followers on all of my boards, and when someone accepts my invitation to become a contributor, that person gets over 10,000 followers to interact with overnight. I give people to power to share their thoughts and ideas on a larger platform. Many of the people I invite take me up on the offer and pin valuable content on my boards. I aspire to have several boards on my account with over 1,000 contributors, so if you want in, let me know.

#2: Optimize Your Pins

When you allow contributors to pin on your boards, you must recognize that not all of the pins that appear on the group boards will be created by you. While this is a great way to systematize Pinterest, you must occasionally publish your own pins. When you do publish your own pins, your pins must optimized to do well on the platform.

The first thing that comes to mind in a pin is the picture. It does not take much time to discover that not all pictures on the web are created equal. While some of the pictures look nice, others are duds, but just because a picture looks nice does not mean it is properly optimized for Pinterest.

The first thing to note is the height of the picture. If the picture you choose is a square, then it will show up on Pinterest as a square. If the picture is 800 pixels by 800 pixels, then it will get reduced to 600 pixels to 600 pixels when it goes on Pinterest. The problem is that although the picture may look nice, it isn’t tall enough. Pictures optimized to do well on Pinterest must be tall enough to take up the entire screen and have little to no background. This explains why pins of lengthy infographics perform much better than the average pin.

The pixel dimensions are just a nice, random fact if you get pictures from Google Images (you can’t change the pixel dimensions unless you use some type of photo editor), but if you create your own pictures, then you have the power to choose the dimensions of that image. Creating a picture may sound difficult at first glance, but creating your own pictures is surprisingly easy with Canva. Canva lets you choose from their pictures, text, and backgrounds to create a picture that you would be proud of. You can also upload pictures from the web that you have permission to use or your own pictures to Canva. The best part from a Pinterest standpoint is that you can customize the size of the image so it is optimized for Pinterest. An optimized picture has a width of 600 pixels and a height of thousands of pixels. Remember that the taller your image is, the more you must add to the image so the background does not take up too much space. You also have the power to specific the color of your background and the colors of various parts of the image. Make these colors bright colors because bright colors perform better on Pinterest than dull colors.

After the picture is another part of the pin that not as many pinners consider when optimizing their pins. The other part of a pin is the pin’s description. Here is how you would optimize a pin’s description:

200-300 characters is the sweet spot with 250 characters being the ultimate sweet spot. Don’t focus on the 250. If your pin is 233 characters or something along those lines, then your description is fine. Remember, people on Pinterest want details.
Include 1-2 hashtags. Hashtags help you get found on Pinterest because they generate traffic from Pinterest’s search engine. They also lead to more engagement, but if you overuse hashtags in your descriptions, your followers will have a tough time reading your pins’ descriptions. If a description is tough to read, your followers will get confused, and confused followers never stick around.

#3: Make Your Profile More Attractive

If people really enjoy one of your boards, they will wonder who created the board, but they won’t be wondering for very long. It is easy to discover who created a group board.

With that said, the way you present yourself affects how people think of your board and brand. That’s why colleges are increasingly asking for students’ social media accounts in the college application process. That’s why there are job interviews. That’s why event organizers ask a potential public speaker some questions before hiring the public speaker to speak at the event. That’s why the first impression is so important.

On Pinterest, your first impression is your profile. You need to have a good picture of yourself that looks professional. In your bio, list your top credentials and hobbies with nothing but commas (no conjunctions, period at the end of the sentence, or anything like that. Your bio should be a sentence fragment with no subject or verb). The hobbies are just as important as the credentials because people get to know you on a more personal level (this connection helps strengthen the relationship between you and your followers). Making your profile attractive gives you a good first impression which will entice your followers to become returning visitors who frequently like and repin your pins.

In Conclusion

Pinterest continues to grow as the days go by which makes now the perfect time to take it seriously. The key to thriving on Pinterest is to know how to create a successful Pinterest board and then make one of your boards become successful. You would do this by having contributors, optimizing your pins to perform well, and bolstering your profile.

Do you think more people should take Pinterest seriously? Which tip about creating a successful Pinterest board did you like the most? Do you have any additional tips for creating a successful Pinterest board? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

10 Steps To Better Pinning

June 3, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Are you on Pinterest? The question gets asked more often than it did when Pinterest was just starting out, and more people respond to the question with a big YES. As of 2013, Pinterest has over 70 million users and rivals the other social networks. Pins have longer half-lives than other social media posts which means something you pinned a month ago can suddenly go viral as if you pinned it yesterday.

However, pinning the successful pins that go viral is not the most easy thing to do. Many people use Pinterest, but not as many stand out on the platform. Getting your pins to spread, and for you to ultimately become successful on Pinterest, you must know how to effectively pin. Here are 10 steps to better pinning:

#1: Schedule Pins

Scheduling your pins in advance allows you to account for all of the timezones of the world. At midnight where you live, people are waking up, eating breakfast, and checking their Pinterest accounts for new pins in some other part of the world.

Scheduling pins in advance also helps brand awareness. When you schedule pins throughout the day, and people see your pins often, they will remember you. As more people remember you and see you more often, they will look at your profile each time they go on Pinterest. These types of followers are the ones who will share your content, subscribe to your blog, and possibly buy your products.

#2: Pin Consistently

Scheduling a few pins here and there only does so good. In order to get the long-term growth associated with scheduling pins, you must schedule pins at a consistent rate. On ViralWoot, you can schedule 100 pins per month for free. By just scheduling three pins every day, you can schedule pins for free, and you get to maintain your consistency.

Pinning at consistent times throughout the day will let your followers know when to expect something new from you. If someone always pins at 2 pm every day, that person’s followers can expect a new pin at 2 pm. This expectation will lead to more people directly viewing your profile, going through your boards, locating the new pin, and then going through some of your older pins.

#3: Bright, Longer Pictures

On Pinterest, the pictures that spread are the tall, bright colored pictures. When you create a picture on Canva or KeyNote, increase the height of the picture. Increasing the height of a picture makes it more noticeable on someone’s home feed because the picture will take up an entire section. You want a picture to take up a lot of space because pictures that take up a lot of space get attention. If the picture is made to spread, all of the attention the picture gets will lead to numerous repins, and that picture may possibly go viral.

#4: Infographics

Infographics are very successful on the web, and on a social network that requires pictures for each post, infographics dominate. Not only do infographics typically perform very well, but many of them are the bright, long pictures that you would want to pin on Pinterest for more exposure. Infographics allow people to learn new things in the most effective manner possible. Why are infographics so effective? The human mind can register an image 60,000 times faster than plain text.

#5: Have A Variety Of Boards

On Pinterest, you must keep your professionalism, but also let people know about you outside of the business. You never want to only have a group of boards that only focus on one basic niche. I have plenty of social media boards, but I also have boards about 3D printing, Legos, and some of my other interests. Some people think I am a 3D printer now, but I just like to see the progress the new technology has made. I envision myself being a 3D printer someday, but not yet.

Having a variety of boards will allow you to learn more about your hobbies, passions, and anything that you wish to know about. If you want to learn more about an animal, create a board based on that animals and pin one fact about that animal every day. If you want to learn how to get stronger abs, pin at least one informative article on that board every day, and only pin one of those articles after you read it from start to finish. Pinterest isn’t just a marketing tool. You can use it to learn new things that you never know about before.

#6: Add More Pins On Each Board

The best analogy of Pinterest that gets used often is referring to Pinterest as an online magazine. Now let’s think about a successful magazine. It has a bunch of interesting stories on several pages. Someone could spend anywhere from 15-30 minutes reading a good magazine. Do you provide that option on Pinterest? Do all of your boards have enough pins that lead to enough articles where someone can spend 15-30 minutes on your board without getting bored or running out of content to read (pun not intentional. I don’t like the way it sounds, but I needed to convey myself in the most clear manner possible)?

The difference between the two is that on a Pinterest board, you can pin thousands of pins on one board. Some people may spend hours on your boards, and if you get people to spend hours of their time on your boards, you can rest assured these people will come back for more. They will remember you and spread the word.

#7: Implement The Secret Board Strategy

It is natural for us to create boards and quickly lose interest in some of the boards that we create. It happens to the best of us. The final outcome is a dull board with under 10 pins that doesn’t keep a visitor’s attention for long. Sure, one solution is to delete the entire board. If you really wanted to, you could move the pins from that board to some of your other boards.

However, why does that problem have to happen in the first place? You can create all of your new boards as secret boards so no one sees them. If you decide you are no longer interested in something after 10 pins, then you can just delete the secret board (or keep it), and your Pinterest profile won’t look any less enchanting than it already looks. Once your secret board reaches 20 pins, make it public. Now when your followers look at your new board, there are options, and you are not pinning dozens of times in a few minutes (which annoys followers). Your followers stick around, engage with your content, repin your content, and come back for more.

#8: Implement The Group Board Strategy

Getting your pins to reach out to more people is as simple as joining a popular group board. There are several group boards with tens of thousands of followers eagerly looking for contributors. If you get an invite from one of these group boards, take the group board creator up on the offer. Now, regardless of whether you have 100 followers or 1,000 followers, you are now a part of a group board that allows you to reach tens of thousands of people.

While you join other people’s group boards, consider turning most your boards into group boards. When you turn one of your boards into a group board and get contributors, your group board will get pins added to it without your direct involvement. Better yet, each time someone visits one of your contributors’ profiles and clicks the “Follow All” button, your group board gets an extra followers too.

#9: Optimized Descriptions

The description of a pin is almost as important as the picture itself. In your pin’s description, you must include hashtags and keywords so it is easy for people to find you on Pinterest’s search engine. In your optimized description should also be a call-to-action where you encourage your followers to do something (i.e. click on the picture to learn how to become a better blogger).

#10: Pin Valuable Content

This may be the most common sense tip of the bunch, but common sense is not always common practice. A valuable pin is one that provides insights or great entertainment directly in the description, the picture itself, and/or the webpage your followers get to see when they click on the picture. Each time you share something on Pinterest, ask yourself how it empowers or entertains the people in your audience. Don’t pin something just for fun. The pin appears on your profile. Only pin something if you believe it is meaningful.

In Conclusion

Pinterest is a growing social network. It may not be as large as Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook quite yet, but Pinterest is getting closer. One thing about the users on Pinterest is that they can spend a massive amount of time on the site. If you create valuable boards and provide your followers with hundreds of pins on some of your boards, those followers will stick around for a long period of time. Many of the repins I get are from repeat repinners. Some people will go through some of my boards with hundreds of pins and pin 25% of my pins. That’s a lot of extra exposure for my account, my brand, my blog, and what I stand for.

So now I ask you whether you have a Pinterest account or not? Do you see potential for Pinterest in your strategy? Is Pinterest already a big part of your strategy? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

8 Pinterest Marketing Tips To Boost Your Visibility

May 11, 2015 by Marc Guberti 10 Comments

Pinterest is a growing social network that can no longer be overlooked, and more brands are recognizing that. Several brands such as Nordstrom and Buzz Feed use Pinterest to get more exposure. Buzz Feed said that compared to the other social networks, Pinterest was its second best traffic referrer. Although Buzz Feed has over 300,000 Pinterest followers, it also has over 600,000 Google+ followers, two million Twitter followers, 4.5 million Facebook likes, and five million YouTube subscribers. With all of those numbers, Pinterest ended up getting the second most traffic amongst all of those social networks.

How does a business owner get the same results? How does an author use Pinterest to boost sales? How does Pinterest lead to more blog traffic? Success on Pinterest comes down to effective marketing, and if you want to effectively market yourself on Pinterest to boost your visibility, follow these eight tips:

#1: Longer, Optimized Descriptions

On Pinterest, you have a maximum of 500 characters. Although you shouldn’t use all 500 of those characters (using all of them would make a pin really long, and people don’t like reading long stuff on Pinterest), your pin descriptions should consist of more characters than a tweet. 200-250 characters is the sweet spot for getting more repins.

When you write a description, also make a point to optimize that description by fitting it with keywords, 1-2 hashtags, and a call-to-action (i.e. click on the picture to get led to the article). Including the keywords and hashtags makes it easier for Pinterest users to find your content through Pinterest’s search engine. Making your content easy to find on Pinterest’s search engine will lead to more exposure for yourself and your brand as a whole.

#2: Create Group Boards

One of the most underrated ways to market yourself on Pinterest is by creating group boards. Group boards get updated by you and the contributors that you choose. If you have enough contributors who are active on Pinterest, you could systematically grow your audience and get more pins on your board at the same time.

The group boards on Pinterest provide unparalleled capabilities that you won’t find on other social networks. Imagine thousands of people adding relevant content to your social networks for free, and when you promote a product or pin something from your blog, that pin reaches a larger audience.

#3: Be A Part Of Group Boards

Do you want to interact with tens of thousands of followers without putting in a massive amount of work to grow those numbers. What if you could be given a platform in which you could promote your content to tens of thousands of people? What if this platform was given to you overnight? What if you got the platform now?

Group boards thrive and get popular as more people contribute. The reason is that when people contribute to a group board, the group board appears in their profile. When a new follower clicks “Follow All,” that new follower follows every board on the profile—even the group boards. That’s why it is easy to get accepted to group boards with tens of thousands of followers. The people who created the group boards want more exposure, and more contributors means more exposure. They both go hand-in-hand.

When you become a part of group boards, you add a variety of boards to your profile that constantly get updated. This will make your profile look more appealing to a potential follower, and when you put a pin on the group board, you are putting that pin on a board with a new audience. Pinning on the group board often allows you to tap into that audience and get more people who follow all of your boards. If followers like the content you pin on someone else’s group board, they may follow you.

[tweetthis url=”http://bit.ly/1O88Sty”]Joining a popular group board on #Pinterest is the easiest way to grow a large audience overnight.[/tweetthis]

#4: Pin Your Blog Posts

On social media, it is necessary to have an end-goal. Where do you want your visitors to go and what actions do you want your visitors to perform? One thing you must do is build the relationship between you and your visitors, and relationships get built as visitors read more of your content. I know who my repeat customers are, and I remember the seeds that led to strong relationships months down the road.

When you pin your blog posts, schedule them in advance. I typically schedule three pins every day for optimal times throughout the day (2 pm, 4 pm, and 8 pm are the three most popular times to pin something on Pinterest. This is notably different from most of the other social networks. For most social networks, it is good to post something at around 6-10 am eastern time.

#5: Repin The Most Successful Stuff

If something succeeded once, then why can’t it succeed again? You have pins that are doing better than others. That is true for every individual. There are also pins that are hot on Pinterest and getting attention. If you got one of those pins on one of your boards, then it would get attention.

Repinning the most successful stuff will lead to more repins. These pins may not necessarily promote your blog posts or anything of that nature, but if your followers get into a pattern of repinning your pins and returning to your profile, they will eventually repin your pins about your blog posts. This may seem like a time consuming way to get a few repins, but if you stick with this method over the long-term, and hundreds of people get comfortable with repinning your pins, then imagine how much extra exposure your blog posts would get each time you pinned them.

#6: Lead People To Your Landing Pages

If you want to make a full-time income on the web, then you must have an email list. There is no way around it, and having hundreds of thousands of social media followers won’t do any good unless you get those followers to subscribe. One of the most effective ways to get your social media followers on your email list is to lead them to your landing pages.

Every other day, you should pin a picture of the free incentive you offer on your landing page and then urge people to click and enter their email in the pin’s description. That way, you have your call-to-action which will boost the amount of conversions you get from Pinterest. Remember, you have up to 500 characters to describe the free incentive, why your followers would want it, and how they would get it.

[tweetthis url=”http://bit.ly/1O88Sty”]Using #Pinterest to lead people to your landing pages allows you to build strong relationships with your followers.[/tweetthis]

#7: Go Beyond Your Niche

Pinterest is a different social network because you can go beyond your niche. Pinterest provides its users with capabilities that allow profession and hobbies to seamlessly coexist on the same profile page. Going beyond your niche and into your hobbies allows your followers to paint a better picture of who you are as a person.

Many individuals are only known for their professional background, but one of the best ways for relationships to build is by creating some boards that are based on your hobbies. I also mention some of my hobbies and personality traits in my bio. I mention that I am a dog lover, and I can’t tell you how many conversations I have had with other social media users about dogs. Dogs have nothing to do with my niche, but being a dog lover allows me to interact with people who I would have never interacted with if I didn’t mention “dog lover” in my bio.

#8: Pictures Are Key

The picture is the most important part of the entire pin. If your picture is unappealing, then people won’t take the time to read the description or click on the picture and be led to another webpage (i.e. one of your blog posts). Even if you wrote the best description on the web, and the blog post you promote is of top value, Pinterest users will skip over it if the picture is unappealing.

When I create my pictures for my blog posts, I always use Canva. Canva is a great tool that allows you to customize pictures and add text to them. In all of my blog posts from this year and a bunch of them from last year, I used Canva, and that allowed me to add the title of my blog posts within each picture. Now, when people view the picture on Pinterest, they already know what the article will be about before they even click on it or read the description.

In Conclusion

With 70 million users as of late 2013 (more than a year ago), Pinterest is continuing to grow, and it shows no signs of stopping. If you have not taken Pinterest seriously, it is time for you to start. If you have been on Pinterest for a while, now you know how to get more visibility. In the end, these methods will only have as big of an impact as you make them have on your Pinterest audience.

Which of these methods was your favorite? Do you have any other methods for growing a Pinterest audience? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

6 Reasons To Get On Pinterest If You Haven’t Done So Already

January 9, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

We have a natural tendency to go to the things that are the most popular and follow the established leaders. Of all of the social networks, Facebook is by far the most popular one. With over 1 billion users, it dwarfs other social networks in sheer size. Twitter and Instagram are two of the numerous social networks with over 200 million active users.

The social network that does not get as much attention is Pinterest. Although it may not be as big as Facebook, Pinterest still has millions of users that are sharing and engaging with content. Pinterest is constructed in a unique style that makes it different from all of the other social networks. Never before has a social media user been able to categorize and present information in the way that pins and boards make possible.

If you are not on the Pinterest bandwagon, then it is time to get on. Many businesses are using Pinterest to interact with millions of people and build strong connections along the way. Pinterest is not another fad. Here are six reasons why you need to get on Pinterest if you are not on it already.

#1: Pinterest is growing

Pinterest is not just the fastest growing social network, but it is also the fastest growing site in history. It reached 10 million monthly unique U.S. visitors faster than any other site on the web and, according to Alexa, quickly emerged as one of the Top 100 websites on the web.

The great thing about Pinterest is that it will continue to grow. There will be a day when Pinterest exceeds 200 million users, then 500 million users, and although this may take a while, 1 billion users. My belief is that if a social network has over 100 million users and continues to grow, it is bound to exceed 1 billion within a decade just like Facebook. Since Pinterest is continuing to grow, it is easier to become an established player on that platform. Some people who have under 1,000 followers on other social networks have over 1 million Pinterest followers. It is a completely different playing field, and since it is still emerging as a top social network, you can make the splash now to boost your chances of becoming popular on it.

#2: Pinterest allows content to be organized better than any other social network

On a majority of social networks on the web, content is presented on a user’s feed in chronological order. My most recent tweet will be directly under my pinned tweet, and if you have a few hours to scroll though my profile, you will find my first tweet that over promoted a product link that no longer works (thank goodness it’s at the bottom).

Pinterest is different. While the option to view pins in a chronological order exists, you can also view pins based on categories that a user provides. On my account, I have categories dedicated to Twitter, Facebook, blogging, inspiration, and other topics as well. Those are my boards, and they allow my followers to find specific information.

Some of my followers don’t care about Facebook. Now they no longer have to scroll though information related to Facebook. These followers may only care about Pinterest tips and nothing else. I have an entire board that only contains Pinterest tips. This kind of organization makes it easier for you to present your expertise and for your audience to find exactly what they want.

#3: Pinterest allows the real you to come out.

One of the most common mistakes people make is being way too professional. It seems as if some people are only posting links to articles and sharing their expertise. While it is important to humanize your social networks, Pinterest presents a wonderful way to do that. While it is possible to categorize different aspects of your niche, it is also possible to categorize your interests and hobbies outside of your niche.

I have boards about 3D printing, Legos, bookshelves, and other things that have absolutely nothing to do with my niche. Yet, I continue to pin on these boards because I enjoy those topics. You can be professional and give expert advice, but in order for people to remember you, they need to know you beyond your expertise.

There are many people who say that one great way to get more followers on Pinterest is by following other people. However, we only remember a few of the people who said that. Typically, these are the people who share their hobbies and interests outside of their niche. Pinning on boards that allow people to get a deeper understanding of you outside of your niche will allow people to remember you.

#4: Pinterest can drive a big amount of traffic to your blog

Just like any social network, Pinterest can drive a big amount of traffic to your blog. The only difference is that Pinterest can drive a ton of people to your blog quicker than the average social network. A statistic that I often reference in my blog posts about Pinterest is that 80% of pins are repins. This statistic indicates that people are constantly sharing other people’s content.

If you are constantly pinning your blog posts, some of your followers may constantly repin those pins. Getting enough repins starts a snowball effect in which numerous people from different audiences start to repin your pins. Then, their audiences see those repins and share them. The snowball effect continues.

On Twitter, only 1% of tweets are retweets which is why the average tweet is not shared as often as the average pin.

#5: Pinterest is constantly getting easier to use

When Pinterest was new, you could not pin anything without being on Pinterest’s website. Scheduling pins and getting statistics were also practically impossible to do at a fair price. The tools that are available for Twitter were not available for Pinterest.

However, Pinterest is now getting easier to use. More blog posts have the “Pin It” button at the bottom of every blog post. Others have incorporated a “Pin It” button that shows up when a visitors drags his mouse onto a picture in your blog post or any picture on the blog.

Not only have plugins and blogging services caught up, but Pinterest caught up as well. You can now send a pin without being on Pinterest. You just need to have the “Pin It” bookmark installed on your web browser. If you are not using this bookmark, you can get it here. You can also see how your blog is doing with Pinterest analytics. Track how many repins, clicks, and other engagement statistics your blog gets on Pinterest. You can also track other cool statistics such as how many daily views your Pinterest account gets.

Scheduling pins has been made easier by ViralWoot which allows you to schedule up to 100 pins every month at no cost. There are monthly payments that allow you to exceed 100 pins, but having this option available is a game changer. If you only send out three pins every day, you won’t have to worry about exceeding the monthly limit.

It is easy to imagine better Pinterest tools at lower prices (or with no price tags attached) making their way on the web very soon.

#6: Pinterest is addictive

Not only is it true that Pinterest holds the title for fastest growing website on the web, but it is also one of the most addictive websites on the entire web. There are many Pinterest users who are on the social network for hours of time, which is more than enough time for people to find your account, follow you, and repin your pins.

Since many people stay on Pinterest for a long period of time, more people will see your pins. Some of the people who see your pins may decide to repin them or click on the pictures to get redirected to another webpage (such as one of your blog posts). Pinterest is where people stay for a long period of time, and that is the exact place where you need to bring your business, blog, and ideas.

In Conclusion

Pinterest is a rapidly growing social network. Since it is not as big as Facebook yet, it is easier to grow a big presence on Pinterest and become one of the leaders of your niche. Some of the people who have millions of Pinterest followers only have a few hundred followers on their other social networks.

Moreover, Pinterest is gradually getting easier to use. The “Pin It” bookmark makes it possible to pin without being on Pinterest. It is easy to imagine changes similar to this one being implemented so it is not necessary to be on Pinterest to interact, comment, and pin.

Are you on Pinterest, and if not, do you plan on joining?