Anna Bennett
So let me guess, you’ve been on Pinterest for several months now and you’re scratching your head thinking “Why am I not getting more followers? Why aren’t my pins getting repinned?”
Many Pinterest users have unrealistic expectations about how to create a successful Pinterest account. Somehow they think that if they just push a bunch of pretty images primarily focused on their products they are all set!
Getting high engagement on Pinterest is no different than getting high engagement on any other social network. On Pinterest engagement means getting more click throughs, repins, and impressions Success on Pinterest isn’t just one thing; there are multiple factors that contribute to operating a successful account. I have said this before; there is a lot of science to Pinterest success.
The challenge for many bloggers, marketers and business owners is they think that they can just wing it on Pinterest. Ask yourself? What important goals did you successfully achieve in life by winging it?
Make no mistake about it, you are competing for eye balls and attention on Pinterest… are you playing to win or mailing it in?
Are you making these nine costly Pinterest mistakes?
1. You don’t have a strategy
Pinterest marketing has to start with a cohesive plan. Starting on Pinterest without a plan is like wondering through a forest without a map. Would you seriously do that?
Pinterest Marketing Expert Actionable Tip: Brainstorm about your goals & think on paper. What are you hoping to achieve through Pinterest? If you don’t attach metrics to your goals how do you know if your strategies worked?
2. Your pin descriptions don’t offer value
At the end of the day you want your pinning activities to drive more traffic to your website right? Without traffic there’s no transaction.
One of the biggest mistakes I often see are hashtags, or one liners, or even just a single word or worse a pin descriptions that doesn’t offer any helpful info. Pinterest users are on Pinterest looking for ways to make their lives better. Their planning, saving, and discovering things to fulfill their creative juices or simply find ways to do things easier, faster, and so forth. Are you speaking to their needs?
Have a look at this image below. Why just use the same title as the rich pin? If you have the rich pin integrated you don’t need to add that to your pin description. Use this space wisely to entice pinners to click through this image. What’s so special about this sauce? What do you love about it? Do you offer simple steps to make the sauce or maybe it’s a quick and easy recipe that requires few ingredients.
Pinterest gives you 500 characters to work with but according to Dan Zarrella who researched 11,000 pins he found that the most repinned and commented on items were accompanied by descriptions of 200 to 300 words.
Pinterest Marketing Expert Actionable Tip: Include a call to action with a link to where you want the pinner to go! Entice Pinners so they click through the image. Descriptions that contain a call to action see an 80 percent increase in engagement. Isn’t that what you want?
3. You’re not keeping up with Pinterest rules
As a Pinterest consultant it’s my job to keep up with Pinterest’s news & features and how you can apply them in your marketing campaigns. More importantly pinners using Pinterest for their business must know Pinterest’s new rules to avoid being shut down. There’s a lot of information out there and I know how challenging it is to keep up with all of Pinterest’s new rules. Here are some current rules you need to know about running Pinterest contest:
4. You’re inviting Pinners at the wrong time
One of the most common Pinterest tactics that I’m sure you’ve come across is that you need to follow pinners so that they’ll hopefully follow you. While I totally agree with this tactic it’s not a black and white rule. Make sure your Pinterest page is properly set-up before you start following or inviting pinners to check you out.
Have a look at this Pinner below who followed me. Did they give me a good reason to follow them? Unfortunately as much as I would love to reciprocate in some way I was turned off immediately by this kind of effort. They have no boards!
Inviting your contacts to check out your Pinterest page is like inviting your friends to a party. Can you imagine going to a party and only to find no place to sit and only one kind of appetizer was served? Yikes! If you’re going to go to the trouble of opening up an account make a commitment to do it right.
5. You’re not merchandising your boards correctly
I often see many accounts that are nauseating because their boards are just all over the place. What I mean by that is I see multiple boards that are in the food and drink category but they are scattered everywhere.
I look at your Pinterest account like I’m walking into a store, a museum, an exhibit and hey even your closet. Your boards represent your products & your brand quality so select the images carefully and merchandise them in such a way that they flow nicely giving the customer a better shopping experience. Have a look at the photo below. Which one is more appealing to you?
Failing to give purposeful thought to how you arrange your boards can be a nauseating experience for pinners and undermine your brand value at the same time.
Pinterest Marketing Expert Actionable Tip: My rule is when you have over 100 boards arrange them alphabetically.
6. You’re still using hashtags
I came across an article on how Southern Swim used a marketing tactic that was to use several hashtags instead of writing pin descriptions. If you go to their account you will see how several of their pins are not getting repins.
This looks ridiculously spammy and will not produce any good results.
Pinterest Marketing Expert Actionable Tip: While hashtags are key tactics for Instagram they offer no SEO value on Pinterest. If you do make it unique to your business make sure no one else is using it. Because hashtags are live links on Pinterest using generic hashtags takes the focus away from you. We don’t want that right?
7. You are buying followers to look good
Did you know that Pinterest does not allow companies to sell you followers? Go on Google and type in “buy Pinterest followers” and you’ll see dozens sites that offers this service. I also see several Pinners, bloggers and marketers brag about how many followers they’ve received because they bought a plan of some type to get more followers.
Buying followers to look good is a serious no no in social media. Buying people to follow you is the most artificial way to build relationships online. You know that saying you can’t buy love? This holds true on Pinterest. Building your followers takes time especially in the first few months. Remember the time when you moved to a new neighborhood or landed a new job? Do you actually think you’re going to have masses of friends in your first week?
What makes you think that these followers have any intention of doing business with you? What makes you think these followers are even real? Do you know how many Pinterest accounts I come across that are obviously fake?
Pinterest Marketing Expert Actionable Tip: Follow you target audience and engage with them by repinning their content.
8. Your username has no SEO value
One of the common mistakes I see businesses make is choosing their username. Most don’t even realize that it’s one of the key areas that you need to optimize so you rank high on Pinterest’s search engine. Most use their business name as their username because they think that’s what they’re supposed to do. Unless you are a big brand name like Sephora, Target, BuzzFeed no one will search for you based on your business name.
Your username is the name that will be used in the URL of your Pinterest page. Unfortunately you only have 15 characters to work with so it may be challenging to find the perfect one for you especially if someone has already taken that username. Yes, don’t be surprised if the username you want is already taken.
Pinterest Marketing Expert Actionable Tip: The username that you choose has to include keywords because most people will not search for you on Pinterest by your business or company name. They will more often search for you in a product or service category.
9. You’re not taking advantage of Pinterest’s free tools: Get your Article Rich Pins now!
Did you know that more than 14 million articles are pinned each day and those articles drive more traffic to publishers than Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit and Google+ combined?
In addition, according to CoSchedule who dug through data from over one million blog posts they found that Pinterest accounts for 90% of social media shares on the web!
Why should you care? Because every blogger wants more eyeballs on their blogs.
Without traffic what’s the point of it all?
There’s a lot of competition on Pinterest so that means you have to stand out in the sea of 50 billion jaw dropping images. The Article Rich Pins help you to become more visible on a Pinner’s home feed and therefore get a higher click through rate.
Friendly Reminder
If you’re not sure you’re doing it right on Pinterest then get help from an expert who knows what they’re doing. I see too many businesses do a little bit of this and a little bit of that and their account under performs forever.
If you want to get a serious ROI then you need to make an investment. Without learning the right skills and focused strategies you’re just wasting time and letting your competition get ahead of you. Successful businesses know that if they want to take their business to the next level they have to learn more.
I highly recommend you take a course that is up to date because Pinterest makes changes all the time. What might work (May 20, 2015) may not work today. There are rules you need to keep up with and features you want to make sure you are using to give you the best results your account deserves. Avoid the frustration of wasting any more time without using a proven plan.
The Pinterest Marketing for Business course will be the catalyst to help you realize what’s actually possible for you when you educate yourself, build the skills you need and use a proven blueprint for Pinterest success that your business needs.
If this is overwhelming for you and you feel like you are going around and around with Pinterest and not getting anywhere contact me, a Pinterest account management expert about my Pinterest account management services or to learn more about how you can be more effective on Pinterest check out my Pinterest Marketing Course for Business. Chapter one is FREE.
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