Why Pinterest Remains A Powerful Content Marketing Tool

Why should all companies and content marketers have the social media platform Pinterest securely pinned within their content marketing strategy? Well, firstly, Pinterest has steadily climbed up the ranks of the social media elite, with a 2012 study pegging it as the third most visited social media site in the US.

Secondly, Pinterest now boasts more than 12 million users and, most importantly for content marketers, 43% of those users say they engage with brands and retailers via the social media platform.

In short, Pinterest users are an audience companies and content marketers cannot afford to ignore. Pinterest pinboards are a vital virtual space on which to conduct a crucial part of your content marketing campaigns.

How Can You Realise Pinterest’s Full Content Marketing Potential?

We’ve established that Pinterest is a powerful content marketing tool, but how can you harness that power to its full potential?

The answer is by formulating a Pinterest content marketing strategy with an emphasis on quality pins, using keywords for pinboards and a carefully planned pinning schedule that includes posts across your other social media profiles. After all, it has been shown that images comprise 89% of brands’ most engaged with Facebook posts.

Pin Engaging Images and Quality Content

Consider why Pinterest is so popular and what drew users to its pinboards in the first place. The answer is engaging visual content. The old saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words”, is true, provided it’s a good one, of course.

We love to see, share and comment on arresting images. Whether they make us laugh, think, feel inspired or beautifully showcase a product we desire, your images (and of course videos) must be high quality, not just relevant but integral to linked content and sufficiently striking to achieve those all-important click-throughs and re-pins.

Tightly regulate the standard of ad pins on your pinboards. Pinterest gave brands a helping hand to do this when they launched Rich Pins on 20 May 2013 in partnership with household names like Sony, Netflix and Wal-Mart.

Rich Pins enables brands to include useful consumer information alongside their stimulating product images, effectively turning pinboards into interactive catalogues.

If you haven’t yet started using Rich Pins, now is the time to start. Importantly for content marketers, Pinterest has announced an update to its Rich Pins functionality relating to pinned articles.

Previously only images from the article appeared on pinboards with a link. Now, key information such as the article’s author, title, a brief synopsis and a larger link will appear. This will encourage the reading and curating of textual content by Pinterest users.

Work SEO into Your Pinboards

It’s worth carrying out a little keyword research before creating your pinboards. Aim for terms with low competition. When weaving your keywords into your pinboard titles and descriptions, remember not to be too vague.

It helps to consider your pinboards as catalogue sections. If you’re a fashion retailer don’t just have a “Coats” pinboard. Be more specific, for example: “[Brand Name] Ladies Winter Coats”.

Share Across Your Social Media Profiles but Don’t Spam

Always be careful to avoid making users think you’ve pulled the pin on a Pinterest grenade, showering them with an overload of images.

Set a structured pinning schedule using an analytics tool like Curalate or Viraltag (formerly Pingraphy) to work out the optimum pinning periods during which you achieve the highest levels of engagement.

It’s also a great idea to share your pins across your other social media profiles. There are great tools like Pinvolve to help you do this seamlessly.

Creating a strong network of multi-platform pins and posts gives you the best chance of catching a user’s eye and enticing them to interact with your content either through a share or, ideally, a purchase of the showcased product.

Remember to set some time aside to respond to comments on your pins and posts, interacting with your social media connections, answering questions and letting consumers become familiar with the person/people behind the brand.

Promoted Pins: Think About the Future

While you’re working on your Pinterest content marketing strategy, bear in mind the recently announced news that Pinterest is finally looking to evolve into a competitive marketplace with the introduction of Promoted Pins.

Currently only available to select brands for a trial, Promoted Pins could be a key component of your brand’s marketing strategy in the not too distant future, so keep a watchful eye on developments. View the video below for more details:

Post contributed by Nathan Francis on behalf of Ninja Creative.