One of the best ways to drive traffic to your site is to post your content on as many social media platforms as possible. But if you limit yourself to just social media platforms, you’re missing on one of the greatest traffic opportunities in the world of digital marketing.
Pinterest isn’t strictly speaking a social media site, but it shares many of the same features. It allows users to post content that they find interesting and share it with their followers. But there are a few unique things about Pinterest that make it great for driving traffic to your site.
First, Pinterest works like a search engine, with its own algorithm for ranking search results. Optimizing your posts for this algorithm can boost the number of people who see your content on the platform for free.
Second, Pinterest posts often offer a better return on investment than other platforms. Pins have a longer lifespan and often drive traffic at higher rates than posts on Facebook or Twitter. Not only that, but pins are often easier to monetize than other forms of content. Pinterest users tend to purchase the things they pin or view at higher rates than items shared on other sites. Altogether, the average monetary value of a single pin can be as high as 78 cents.
With those kinds of potential returns, there’s really no reason to ignore Pinterest. So, what should you do if you want to try using Pinterest to drive traffic?
Using Pinterest to Drive Traffic to Your Site
Build Your Boards
Pinterest requires users to arrange posts, or pins, on boards attached to their profile. These boards are how you will showcase your content and your brand, so they need to be arranged carefully.
It’s best to arrange the boards by topic and keep the content focused on that topic. People find boards by searching for them. So when they come across your board, they have specific content in mind. Making sure that all the content on your board fits what they’re looking for means that they’re more likely to spend time on your board and to return.
Optimize Your Content
Pinterest uses its own search engine algorithm to organize results. So when you create content, you need to optimize it for Pinterest the same way you would for other search engines. And you can use many of the same techniques.
Make sure that you’re incorporating basic keyword best practices in your pins. You can find out which keywords work best by using the guided search function on Pinterest. If you’re creating content for a subject, do a quick search on that subject on the site and see which suggestions pop up. You can then use those extra keywords to capture those searches.
In general, you also want to make sure your pins drive visitors to your own site. Each pin should have an interesting piece of content that people will want to follow.
Engage With Other Users
If you want to drive traffic to your site through Pinterest, you first need to establish a base of followers on the site.
You can simply keep posting good content on your board and sharing it on other platforms. But you might get faster results by reaching out directly to other people on the site. Follow people who post similar content to your own. And ask them to follow you back. This will, in turn, make you more visible to their followers, who will likely be interested in your content as well.
You can also join group boards, where people who are interested in similar content share their posts on a single board. Because these boards have their own built-in audience, they can really boost the exposure of your pins and bring in new followers.
Invest in Professional Tools
If you’re serious about marketing on Pinterest, the first thing you should do is create a business profile. Business and personal accounts have many of the same features, but a business profile gives you access to the site’s analytics tools. These tools let you view a number of important data sets, including the traffic to your profile and trending search keywords.
And while Pinterest’s analytics tool can provide a lot of useful information, consider investing in some off-site tools. Boardbooster is a great program that lets you schedule posts ahead of time. There’s also Tailwind, which provides extra analytical tools to help boost your results.
Ultimately, you should look at Pinterest the same way you would any social media platform. Use many of the same techniques and let the site do the rest.
What do you think? How do you use Pinterest to drive traffic? Tell us in the comments.
