While many businesses may dismiss Pinterest as a marketing tool, when used correctly, it can serve as a great way to generate a ton of traffic to your website. No matter what business you’re in, if you use Pinterest as a marketing tool, it can pay off in a big way.
Here are several ways Pinterest can generate traffic to your website.
1. Pin Images from Your Blog
If you have a blog (and most businesses should) every time you post, pin an image from the post to your Pinterest account. The picture will be linked to your blog, which will serve as a way to generate more interest in your content, and more traffic.
You can also post images of your staff, your office building, company events and the like to generate interest in what your business does. These types of photos also help give your company a human face, making potential customers feel more connected to you and your company.
Customers love getting an inside look at a business and its employees, and this can help drive traffic to your website and score some new customers in the process.
2. Follow Influential Pinners in Your Niche
Chances are, there are similar businesses to yours using Pinterest right now as a marketing tool. Follow influential niche users or track down the companies that operate in a similar field and follow them.
An example of this would be following the Nester on Pinterest if you’re into home decor. If you do this, the people who follow those users or businesses will find their way to you, thereby increasing traffic to your website.
Not only is this one of the most basic things you can do to generate traffic, but it also helps you gain access to other influential companies and their audience.
3. Interact with Your Followers
Once you start building followers on Pinterest, it’s important to actively engage them in order to keep them as customers. If you notice a new follower, or someone “likes” or re-pins a pin you posted, make sure to respond in kind. If you choose to ignore them, it’s likely they’ll lose interest in you and your business.
Pinterest allows companies and consumers a unique way to interact with one another, and it only takes minutes of your time. Even a simple, “Thank you for checking out my company, we appreciate your time,” can mean the difference between retaining a customer and losing a potential one.
4. Hold a Contest
A lot of companies are starting to offer contests on Pinterest, specifically for their followers. If you are in a niche that thrives on Pinterest, this can be an amazing way to generate a ton of traffic to your website. Especially if you have the contest on your actual site and merely use Pinterest to promote it.
You can also offer special discounts on products or services you offer via Pinterest, which will also increase traffic to your website and possibly gain new customers.
Pinterest users are likely to re-pin contests or discount offers if they think their followers will enjoy them, so your promotions are likely to go over very well.
5. Pin Videos
Images aren’t the only thing you can pin; you can pin videos to your pinboards, too. Consider creating an introduction video, explaining what your company does and the kinds of products or services you offer. Make sure the video links back to your main website, though, because this will be what generates traffic.
You can also ask your staff to post personal introductions as well, talking about their role in the company. Just like pinning personal images, personal videos are also an effective way to add a human face to your company and generate interest and traffic.
Leveraging Pinterest
There are several ways you can use Pinterest to generate a ton of traffic to your website, but these are five methods that are arguably some of the most effective. Pinterest is a rapidly expanding social media platform, and by employing these tactics, your business can definitely see an increase in traffic.
So how are you using Pinterest? Are you using it to establish your brand, build up your business or to generate traffic?
I just discovered some of these methods a few days ago. I read an article about a guy who was making money by affiliate-spamming Pinterest. I didn’t even realize it was possible until I learned more about what he was doing.
I just took his techniques and applied them to my account, without spamming of course. Traffic to my blog that I pinned from jumped by about 500% on that day. Amazing. The methods you’ve listed here actually work.
Also, what plugin are you using to covert this site to mobile? It looks great on my iPhone. Thanks!
Hey Len, definitely an interesting experience you had and congrats on the traffic spike!
As for my site, I’m not using a plugin – rather coded my theme with CSS and media queries to serve a “mobilized” version of the theme.
Well your code is superior to any mobile conversion app I’ve seen. Looks awesome. Thanks again.
Thanks, while I used to recommend folks using WP Touch at one point, I decided a seamless and branded version of serving websites was a much better user experience.
Len, any chance you can give away the link to the article? Cheers.
Here ya go Tom: http://www.dailydot.com/news/pinterest-steve-amazon-spammer-tells-all/
I totally agree, Len. It looks better than any plugin out there.
Now…if Brian will just hurry up and get it done on the News Theme…I’ll be a happy camper.
There will be another news style theme that is responsive which will be released before the current News theme is updated for responsiveness.
I’m still figuring out Pinterest myself. At the moment, I pin many of my blog article pics, but that’s about it.
My struggle is that there’s just too many social media networks out there. By far and away, the one I have had the best results from is StumbleUpon. Just last week I had my largest number of new visitors come from StumbleUpon, from just one article which, incidentally, I wrote months ago. That day I had over 1,000 clicks on that article alone. I’d like to figure out how to do that with Pinterest.
Being an internet person is all about feeling like a ping pong. Happens to us all, as we spread our focus around and in various amounts depending on a variety of things. Trust me, I’m all over the place all the time – so you’re in good company.
Brain Hi!
Great tips, I’m just getting started with Pinterest.
I really like #1 & #5, love the “inside look” idea. I’m going to be doing some site reno-ing (to the Agency Theme, woohoo) and I want to use Pinterest in my relaunch. Thanks for the ideas.
Have a super day – Theresa
Glad to her it Theresa, do let me know how things go with the reno on the site!
If I don’t like the pic on the webpage, I don’t pin it…period. It has to be visually appealing. The time of the day you pin has to be calculated as well. If I pin something from my blog, I pin between 8pm and 10pm. This is the best time to get something “Repinned”. I experimented last week and Pinned a post at 8am without any repin, then noon. The next day I deleted both and repinned at 8pm, within 5 minutes it was repinned 43 times. When I view my traffic source stats, the top 8 are Pinterest, the last 2 Google.
Good information Kindra, thanks for sharing. I think it really matters what type of niche you’re in, in terms of when the best time to pin things are. For you, it makes total sense that 8-10 PM is the best time, as most moms are online after their kids are in bed.
Kudos to you for nosing into the analytics!
P.S. You might want to sign up for a Gravatar account, so that you can have a real picture (as opposed to the default one) when you make comments on a WordPress site.
Great information, Kindra. I have noticed the same with other social sites as well. Timing is everything. It’s not just a matter of doing it, but doing it at the right time.
I would love to get involved with Pinterest, but like Charles said, the social media craze is a bit too much to handle it all. However, I like the thought of getting in early on when something is set to explode as this one very well could do.
Excellent article, and
Happy Pinning.
Martin
I’ve used pinterest to optimize my site and the result was amazing my site was jumped from #234 to #9 in few weeks time.
The trick is we must got our website pinned and repinned by many people this is the hardest part. Most of pinterest users won’t doing repin when they aren’t like what we pinned.
I do simple thing to outsource it on fiverr and got my site pinned by 75 people, I don’t know how can he did it just search by typing pinterest on fiverr and you will find it on the TOP. Many other seller offer pinterest service on fiverr but in my experience they can’t make my website increase in SEO. I don’t know why.
As I know currently pinterest is best for SEO for these reason:
1. Once our website pinned it has 3 backlinks counts
2. Google interest in social media signal so it will not tagged as links farm
3. Currently pinterest links are dofollow even the image
4. Even not support anchor text (except the url link), it’s still perfect for placing our keywords in description. Google will READ it!!
5. You need to ping the links of your pins to the to get your website increase in SEO
6. Obama The President and Mark Zuckerberg now pinning on Pinterest lol.
I’ve just joined Pinterest and looking for new ways to increase traffic, thanks for your tutorials
Brain Hi!
Great tips, I’m just getting started with Pinterest.
I really like #1 & #5, love the “inside look” idea. I’m going to be doing some site reno-ing (to the Agency Theme, woohoo) and I want to use Pinterest in my relaunch. Thanks for the ideas.
Have a super day
My thought abt Pinterest is that it is very much the same with other social media sites, ie it is only good if u great with networking or u hv good reputation or u already a famous person. That way many people will follow u & check out whatever that u post on social medias. I’m not in that category yet. So I think I’ll skip Pinterest for the time being. Nonetheless, I like what you wrote above. I pretty sure it will be very useful for me in the future.
Brian,
Do you use a plugin for instagram photos in the footer of the theme demos? If so, which one? Thanks.
Josh
I’ve noticed lately, that if I write a great post with a very appealing Tittle, it will get repinned and/liked by many people on pinterest just because of the feed.
That won’t happen on FB or TT where only people who have added you or liked your page can view it. The image, of course, is very important too. But for me this is a “new” paradignm on social networks and I don’t know how much time will it work like that; so, let’s take advantage of it.
Traffic from Pinterest is interesting, but I think it is more interesting to know when I will be able to build a site like Pinterest in WordPress. It is possible in Joomla:
http://joomla25-templates.joomlart.com/ja_wall/
You must be reading my mind, as I’m currently in the preliminary creative stages of developing a Pinterest-style theme for WordPress. It’ll be functional like my Nomad Theory site.
Thanks for that. Still building my following, its a bit of a process and as one of your commentators said, its a ping pong match trying to balance all the social media options out there. Come visit me over here http://pinterest.com/tdceonline/
I’ve been using Pinterest as a big new route in social marketing for my business. Its very easy for us to create info graphics and blog posts with pictures that peak interest among fitness minded folks, repins galore. With all the repins our site is seeing a ton of traffic and some rebound in the search engines. Very awesome new tool for all of us, we’ll see how long it lasts.
Brian, thanks for the article. I just read something that concerns me about Pinterest and the way it handles links. The net-net of the article is that pinterest codes links to the users’ sites as a no-follow as well as coding that makes users’ sites appear (to crawlers, search engines) that their site is actually hosted on pinterest. Article link below, what’s your thought?
http://pinterest-out.blogspot.com/2012/05/nasty-linking-practices.html
Hm, will have to read that article later today – haven’t hear that, but thanks for sharing it!
Good day, mr. Gardner!
Nice article and nice work!
I just wonder why you have no pinterest button on your site. Is it not a good marketing tool for your site?
Thank you.
My posts really aren’t focused in a way that people would “pin” them. If I was in another niche, I’d consider adding it though.
I enjoyed reading your article. I have tried using the Pinterest but have not used it as you describe. I wish I could take advantage of your article.
Great food for thought. When Picaso, Flickr and Pinterest appeared, I couldn’t see the business case to use these tools in marketing.
Since this past year, the social media elements really play a big role in traffic. Hence, I’m searching for inspiration.
Thanks for the good read.
Great article Brian, I know for mom bloggers which I am, Pinterest has been great for the brands we work with, not only sharing for them but gaining more exposure for us. Since using PInterest my ranking on Google went up by 1. I’m now PR 3 which makes me happy and gaining new followers is always great!