pinterest tips and tricks

Why Small Businesses Need To Start Pinning On Pinterest

May 14, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

In order for a small business to become successful, that small business must have a big audience. There are no questions about this one. Almost every successful business and individual has a big audience behind them. While there are many ways to build an audience, Pinterest provides a powerful way to build a larger audience that engages with your pins.

Pinterest users engage on the social network more often than on other social networks. While 1% of tweets are retweets, 80% of pins are repins. That means a small business is more likely to go viral on Pinterest than on other social networks. If you need your message to spread quickly, Pinterest is the way to go. Some of my pins have received thousands of likes and repins because users love to repin other people’s pins.

Another big reason why small businesses should start pinning on Pinterest is because Pinterest allows its users to categorize information based on boards. If you provide social media tips, you can create multiple boards that deal with specific social networks. You can have one board with Twitter tips, another board with Pinterest tips, and so on. Pinterest’s boards will allow you to expand your knowledge and give your followers specific content. Specific content will make it easier for your followers to find what they are looking for. Making it easy for your followers to find what they want to see will result in those followers coming back for more information.

On Pinterest, it is easy for small businesses to find targeted users who are on Pinterest for multiple hours every day. Pinterest is a very addictive social network, and that is something small businesses need to use to their advantage. What are your thoughts on the list? Is your small business on Pinterest? Please share your thoughts below.

Why You Need To Be On Pinterest

May 4, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

This blog post is not about whether you should consider Pinterest or why you might want to be on Pinterest. This blog post is about why you need to be on Pinterest. Pinterest is a social network that has grown faster than any other website on the web. What used to be an unknown website in 2010 is now getting over 60 million U.S. visitors every month. That’s less than 40 million U.S. visitors away from Twitter’s monthly totals.

Pinterest is a social network where you can categorize your interests and business. In fact, Pinterest is the best social network for growing a following even though you post about a variety of things. Pinterest gives its users options in a way that surpasses the other social networks on the web.

In addition, getting viral on Pinterest is much easier than getting viral on other social networks. Less than 2% of all tweets on Twitter are retweets. Mathematically speaking, that means for every 100 tweets you send out, you will only get 2 retweets. Other social network share similar statistics. However, none of them compare to Pinterest where 80% of the pins on Pinterest are repins. Mathematically speaking yet again, for every 5 pins you send out, 4 of those pins are going to get repinned. That is a big difference.

There are many entrepreneurs who want to use Pinterest to increase their sales. Pinterest is a powerful social network/e-commerce site where the average customer spends more money than on any other social network. The average cost per order for both Facebook and Twitter are under $100 while Pinterest dwarfs both of them at an average of $169 per order. People on Pinterest like to spend money on things that they like, and if your product is something your followers desire, you will be more likely to boost your sales.

Pinterest has the potential to completely change your business plan. A few months after I created my Pinterest account, more than 10% of my blog’s traffic came from Pinterest. Pinterest has boosted my sales and has allowed me to connect with more people. Now Pinterest is a serious part of my business plan. If you do not have a Pinterest account yet, then I highly recommend getting one in order to get ahead of the competition.

How To Get People To Repin Your Older Pins

March 25, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

An important way to get more followers on Pinterest is to be an active user on Pinterest. However, as your activity increases, new pins will push your older pins towards the bottom of your boards. This results in less people seeing your older pins, and also, less repins. There is a way to solve this problem, and I am going to show you exactly how to do that.

The first thing you need to do is create irresistible boards. Quality boards are not enough in a world that couldn’t stress quality more than it already has. In order to get more repins for your older pins, your boards need to be about something that people will not want to leave. My most repinned boards are 3D Printed Creations and Inspirational Quotes. Since 3D Printing is the big innovation and inspirational quotes make people feel good about themselves, those are the two boards where my followers view my older pins. Some of my followers pin more than 100 pins on those two boards because these boards are irresistible. These two boards have exactly what my followers wanted to see.

Another way to get people to repin your older pins is by embedding pins on your blog. Even if you start off by pinning your new pins, those new pins are going to get old. A pin I sent out in November 2013 was at one point a new pin. Now it is an old pin, and just like this pin, all new pins will eventually become old. By embedding these pins on your blog, more people will be able to see the pins. When more people see your older pins, that will also result in more repins.

Create boards that are irresistible so your followers are scrolling down until they get to the end of the board. Write compelling blog posts with embedded pins that grab attention and lead your visitors to your irresistible boards. Once you do these two things, your older pins will get repinned more often.

5 Pinterest Limits

March 23, 2014 by Marc Guberti 48 Comments

Like all social networks, Pinterest does have its limits. There are some obvious ones such as following limits. However, there are some limits on Pinterest that may surprise you. These are 5 limits on Pinterest. While I completely understand some of them, I cannot understand some of the others.

You can only follow 300 people per hour. The people who get a big following by following a lot of people to get follow backs do not necessarily like this rule. However, this rule is designed to prevent spam. The problem occurred when some people decided to follow over 1 million users.
You have a 500 character limit per pin. I love this rule because it gives me the ability to write more than I could with 140 characters. If a picture I pin has a story behind it, I can tell the story in 500 characters.
You are limited to 200,000 pins. I do not like this rule. Although it is unlikely to affect me anytime soon, this rule limits the amount of posts someone could send out. Some of the pinners with over 1 million followers also have over 50,000 pins. One of the pinners had over 90,000 pins. When these people reach 200,000 pins, what are they going to tell their followers. Either pin #200,000 will say “Thank you for following this account. Please follow my new account,” or “That’s all folks.” On Pinterest’s official website, it says they cannot change this limit for any reason.
You can only have 500 boards. I do not like this rule either, but it makes more sense. 350 boards with 1 pin each are not quality boards. There is a quantity of boards, but the boards are not that good.
You can only like 100,000 pins. I do not see this as a concern. A substitute for liking can be repinning and unliking pins as you repin them. However, that also creates the issue of the 200,000 pin limit.

For the most part, these limits seem to serve a good purpose. However, I am not pleased with the fact that there is a 200,000 pin limit. What are your thoughts about these limitations?

5 Pinterest Mistakes To Avoid (Part 3)

March 1, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

A very long time ago, I wrote Part 1. A little further back, I wrote Part 2. This is Part 3 which contains 5 more mistakes that you need to avoid on Pinterest. Although Pinterest is not the largest social network out there, it has grown at a rate faster than all of the other social networks. If you want to optimize on Pinterest’s constantly growing platform, avoid these 5 mistakes:

Not taking advantage of a powerful social network. The biggest mistake you can make is ignoring Pinterest. Pinterest has the potential to dramatically increase your blog’s traffic, and the average pin have been proven to get more engagement than the average tweet.
Not paying attention to analytics. Although there are no free Pinterest analytics tools that offer as much information as TwitterCounter, there are plenty of free Pinterest analytics tools out there. I commonly use Tailwind to see my statistics based on my change in follower count and pin count. Other features become accessible through upgrades.
Only pinning the same thing once. When a board has hundreds of repins, your followers are less likely to scroll all the way down to the first pin. I pin my blog posts more than once, and that results in an increase in traffic.
Not liking a lot of pins. When someone sees that you have liked thousands of pins, they will realize that you are a very active user on Pinterest. In addition, you can like pins to organize all of the pins that you want to repin. By using this method, some people unlike the pins after they repin them. This prevents hundreds of repins clogging up your followers’ timelines.
Not having multiple boards with 100+ pins. When multiple boards have over 100 pins, your followers will have more pins to look at. It is better to have 10 boards with 100 pins each than it is to have 100 boards with 10 pins each. Quality beats quantity, but when you can combine them both together, you will get more engagement on Pinterest.

These are 5 mistakes that too many people make on Pinterest. However, there are other mistakes that people make on Pinterest as well. You can go back to Part 1 and Part 2 in order to see 10 additional mistakes that people make on Pinterest.

How To Create A Product Review Board On Pinterest

February 13, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

A popular board category is products where pinners show people the products that they like. Some of these boards generate plenty of likes, repins, and they lead to more followers as well. Having a board with a lot of products on it is a great strategy to tell your followers which products are effective and which products are not effectively.

While having the board with all of the products, you can also create boards to review individual products. Some of my boards review the books I have read such as Purple Cow. This board does a good job at reviewing an individual product versus having a giant list of products with brief summaries. Having both the giant list of products and reviews for those products will give your followers the information that they want.

In order to create a successful product review board on Pinterest, follow these steps:

Have a picture of the product. On Pinterest, people need as many pictures as they can get. Have a picture of the product, and if it has certain functions, have pictures of the product doing those functions as well.
Use Pinstamatic to add details about the product. For my board about Purple Cow, I used Pinstamatic to get giant blocks of text. The advantage of Pinstamatic is that you can use different colors based on the color of the product or a color that changes buying behaviors.
Have a picture of the person who made the product. After the picture, briefly explain who that person is, your opinion about that person, and that person’s credentials.

That’s all it takes to create a quality board reviewing an individual product. This process will usually result in a board with 5-10 pins although some individual product reviews will need more than 10 pins to show all of the product’s features.