Pinterest for Increasing Business Traffic and Increasing the Bottom Line

by Lance King (Pin Guru)

Pinterest?

Did you know Pinterest can be used to generate leads for your business? It’s true, but before unlocking the power of how this hot social networking platform can stimulate your bottom-line, it’s important to understand the overall purpose of Pinterest.

Created by a small team in Palo Alto, California, Pinterest is a viral pinboard that allows a community of users to paste their favorite pictures from almost anywhere on the web onto an online interest board, called “Pinboards.”According to business intelligence firm RJ Metrics, 17.2% of all pinboards are categorized under Home, followed by Arts and Crafts (12.4%), Style/Fashion (11.7%), Food (10.5%) and Inspiration/Education (9.0%). Of those, food is the fastest-growing category. Pinterest is the fastest growing social networking platform to reach 10 million monthly unique visitors. People everywhere are congregating to this site because it is developed around specific interests, lifestyles, and societal concerns.

Howto Turn Traffic into Cash

Pinterest has the attention of millions of businesses. This may be because, according to a recent referral traffic report published by Shareaholic,  Pinterest drove more traffic than LinkedIn, Google Plus, Reddit, and Youtube…combined. Additionally, Pinterest was just .01% behind Twitter for the 4th Spot and .02% behind Google, who currently sits in 3rd place.

While this information may be appealing, the process of generating quality referrals through Pinterest is even more attractive due to its simplicity. Upon joining Pinterest, adding a “Pin it” button to your bookmarks bar will allow you to pin any picture from a blog to a Pinboard on Pinterest. This pin will then be posted on your profile for others to view, like, comment, and even re-pin to a board of their interest.  

7Stepsto Increased Referral Traffic

Step 1: Building Pinboards

First, while using Pinterest to advertise business offers, remember that you are entering a community of people who primarily use this networking platform to organize and share pictures they value. Keep in mind you will be branding your business name. Build boards around business offers as well as other popular boards. Trending boards will be discovered, most effectively, through a site called Pinreach Analytics (mentioned later). Pins should be high quality and should only give the viewer a taste the rest of the offer.

Step 2: Creating a profile page

Because there are currently no advertisements on Pinterest, you will need to brand your company name without branding your company name. When creating a profile page, rather that adding a company logo, add an image of a person who will best represent the firm. Your profile page should parallel other users within the social community.

Step 3: Creating content

Remember that Pinterest is a community of men and women who are passionate about building a profile of valuable images that will benefit both themselves and others following. Therefore it is important to post quality pictures that will more than draw others to a business offer, but will help them see that you are a person with similar interests. This profile picture is a great example of how generating followers on Pinterest will follow as genuine value is displayed in your pictures.

Step 4: Getting Pins to Go Viral

Much like other social network websites, timing of submitting a post will determine the size of the audience on the various category pages. As depicted below, in order to be most effective with your pins, without the competition, it will be most advantageous to pin between 5-7AM and 5-7PM EST. These times are best to pin because most users are waking up or leaving work. Therefore, in order to get a pin to go viral, it is important to pin just before the acme of the traffic peak. As this pin is repined by other users, it will be broadcasted to other users profile pages, and have the potential of then being repined by their followers. The results of having a pin become viral are indicated below in the number of visits received from one pin.

Step 5: Leveraging your Pins

According to a Social Media guru, Colby Almond, “with the site’s growth in unique users and ability to “repin” and share, viral content will continue to bring in thousands of daily visitors [to a website] for up to 3-4 weeks.” In addition to when to time your pins, the graph above also depicts the dramatic effect a pin had in one day for Almonds website. Now imagine the leverage of having multiple Pinterest accounts pinning for the same Pinboard. This becomes possible when shared with other users of Pinterest. Once a person has accepted an invitation to pin on a “community board”, they will have the ability to pin to that Pinboard using their Pinterest profile. This Pinboard is added to their profile page and considered their own. As this board gains targeted followers, it will significantly increase a segmented audience to a blog or website.

Step 6: Gaining a Following

The fastest way to gain a following will be syncing your Facebook Friends, Gmail contacts, etc. This is easily done by clicking the Find Friends tab as indicated. Followers will continue to be added most effectively to your profile as you consistently add value through your pins; and by following other users Pinboards and/or profiles, and then commenting, liking, and re-pinning their pins onto your Pinboards.

Step 7: Pinreach Analytics

Pinreach Analytics is a community of Pinterest users who are interested in both tracking their analytics as well as that of other like-minded individuals on Pinterest. Upon singing up with Pinreach, you will be awarded a Pinterest score based on how influencial you have been to date toward the Pinterest social network. The score is based on metrics such as number of pins, repins, likes, followers, etc. received with your Pinterest profile. 

Additionally, you will have access to information about specific details about pins, boards, influential followers, etc. that have helped you become successful.

Analytics should be checked on a regular basis in order to identify trends within your profile and trends of others. Lastly, each time you login to Pinreach, your profile avatar will be posted on their homepage, for other users to view; and eventually you may be identified as a Trending Member. Trending members are most likely to have interaction within the Pinreach community. This networking website will significantly benefit your Pinterest profile and ultimately increase traffic to your business.