Pinterest’s most special and important element is the pin. Pins are individual images or videos that are uploaded or shared through your profile, newsfeed, or external websites, and posted (‘pinned’) under one of your boards.
People can like, repin, and share your pin with their Facebook friends or email contacts. They can also visit your website directly through one of your pins.
Pins are the first thing that shows up on someone’s Pinterest homepage, and it’s essential that you promote your pins so they get found by your target audience.
What can you pin?
You can upload a picture that’s stored on your own computer/laptop, a photo from a webpage (by entering the URL), or a video.
How often should you pin?
Well that really depends on your social media marketing strategy/plan. However often that is, it should be done consistently without going overboard. Trust me on that last point; Pinterest can lock down your profile if you go crazy with pinning in a short period of time.
How do you optimize a pin?
Through keywords, hashtags, URLs, and more. HavePresence has a few must-do’s for your pins.
Etsy does it right: a short and sweet, optimized pin.
PINNING PERFECTLY
The pin description is essential for your Pinterest marketing strategy. Ideally it should have all of the following:
1. Keywords – If you want your pins to show up in search results, include relevant keywords (related to your business) in the pin description. Try to use specific phrases that increase your chances of showing up.
2. Hashtags – These, as with any other social network, are one of the best tools for categorizing and getting found by customers/your audience. We recommend using a maximum of 3 hashtags (preferably at the end of the description).
Note that pins with hashtagged words and phrases may appear in the same search results as those that don’t have hashtags.
3. Links – Best practice is to always link back to your site. After all, that’s a primary aim of social media marketing. The image that you upload/pin should, when clicked on, direct to your company’s URL. Otherwise, you can include a specific web address in the pin description.
4. Other recommendations for your pins:
- Pin descriptions have a character limit of 500, but try to keep it much shorter, because Pinterest is first and foremost about images (not reading).
- ‘Rich pins’ is an interesting tool that enables Pinterest to automatically add extra details to your pin, such as: price, availability (of a product), location, and other information. Use it to make the most out of this platform.
- If you have a local business, or have a travel board, Pinterest has a lovely little tool for you to use, called ‘Place Pins’.
- If your pin has been uploaded from your own computer, add an ‘Alt’ tag to your image, which includes a keyword. You can do this by renaming the file, and when you upload it as a pin, it can be read by search engines.
- As a business, avoid any copyright infringements. Make sure that all the images you upload, pin, or repin are your own, or otherwise the picture should not have any distribution restrictions by its owner.
- Finally, only upload/pin/repin high-quality images! These are what attract users and encourage them to interact with the pin and your profile.