Social media marketing managers are still buzzing about the phenomenon that is Pinterest. It was during that month of January that Pinterest exploded from a casual social network into a powerful new way to distribute information, with more than 10 million registered users. Retailers quickly saw Pinterest as a way to inspire shoppers and drive traffic, but many brands have found it difficult to track, monitor, or understand how Pinterest activity affects their bottom lines.
The ‘Visual’ Community
When our team first started to research the inner workings of Pinterest’s users and community of followers, we immediately thought the group was saturated with women. Conversely, as soon as we started measuring Pinterest’s reach, our hypothesis had quickly dissolved. The secret behind this community is not what is popular within the context of a few followers; it’s actually about the collective as a whole.
Much like Facebook, Twitter and the many other social networks we are currently a part of, images of puppies, kittens and cute kids quickly take on viral capabilities. Yes it’s true that throwing up a picture of the latest male celebrity asking for a ‘Strawberry Banana Smoothie’ (we won’t name names here) will get thousands of repins. The most important piece of advice we give to our clients is that the users of Pinterest are looking to share and repin creative ideas and advice.
When it comes to going viral, making the popular page is an absolute necessity in the effectiveness of your content. Asking how to do this? We’ve given 5 steps below on how to get get your engaging content out to the Pinterest community.
- For this step it’s pretty simple, just find an idea of a cool concept or creation that you think would go over well in the Pinterest community. The possibilities are endless; however, make sure the idea is something that you’ve never seen before.
- Now that you’ve come up with a viral idea, figure out exactly what you want to share. This means what links, description, messaging back to your site, other social media page, blog, etc. Keep in mind if this idea goes viral, every other piece of information that’s included will go with it, so choose wisely and cautiously.
- Now it’s time to create! It is important to remember to keep the main message of your Pinterest piece as visible as possible as it will be the first thing viewed by the users of Pinterest.
- Measure twice and cut once. Size matters in the Pinterest world. As long as your content is longer than 2,500 pixels it will be unreadable by the Pinterest users. Anything smaller and Pinterest will magnify the image so that it’s readable on the site (meaning there’s no reason to click through to your page). This forces them to click on your submission, through to your page to view the content. If it’s something that’s worth reading and creative, this is a necessity. If it’s longer than 5,000 pixels, then create a simple 300 x 300 pixel button outlining your graphic. The reason for this is because the “like” and “repin” buttons are at the top of the submission. If they have to scroll too far town to view the entire piece, chances are they aren’t going to scroll up to click on those buttons. For me the ideal image is 600×3000 pixels.
- Next, send the piece out to Pinerest. Be aware that Pinterest gives very little attention to their URL associated with your content. As long as your piece is remotely similar to the site and looks like it fits it will be just find with Pinterest.
Popular 'Pinning' Categories
Being Popular Among Pinners
Like every other social network out there in cyberspace, there is a certain art on how to become popular on Pinterest.
To gain momentum, we recommend to our clients looking into certain category pages to help get on the ‘popular’ page. Unlike websites within Google, you do not need an established or aged account to get the most attention, but there are some elements that will block your attempts. It is important to remember that every piece of content is placed onto the top of the category pages with the exception of the following guidelines:
- You’ve submitted within the past hour
- You’ve hosted your content on Imgur
Timing Is A lot (but not everything)
As with every social networking strategy, what time of day and which day you send out information is a very integral part of how well a piece of information gets distributed. Pinterest is no different as their users tend to be more active during different points of the day. The goal as a content creator is to get your content onto the site when it is least competitive yet most effective. With Pinterest this time tends to be between 6 – 8 a.m. – 5 – 7 p.m. EST. The reason for this is because the majority of users are either waking up or getting off work to check their Pinterest boards. Since this is the case, you want to submit your content at least one hour beforehand to ensure that it will be visible to the most people at the right time.
Watch What Happens…
After your content has been submitted to Pinterest and gone viral, it is important that you check the popular boards routinely to see if your content has been rehosted on any different sites or blogs. As the creators of the content you are entitled to every visitor that it receives. While it might seem tedious and time consuming, this is essentially thousands of visitors that your brand may be missing out on if you do not follow through.
Pinterest is another dubious social network that seems like it’s here for the ‘long haul’ and if it’s not in your marketing plans yet, it very well should be. Many social media analysts are predicting that Pinterest will double in size and traffic potential through the summer and into the fall. Don’t be one of those companies kicking themselves in a few months because you didn’t get in on the trend. Contact Triangle Direct Media today and discuss with our social media team how we can incorporate Pinterest into your social media marketing strategy.
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