By: Kelly Smith; Photo by Brooke Dennis for Alt Summit
If your target audience is female, and you are looking to grow your audience, you need to be on Pinterest. At last count, Pinterest has 70 million users of whom 80% are women, according to Digital Marketing Ramblings.
10 tips and tricks to maximize Pinterest:
- Set up a rich pin account. This marks pins from your site with your brand that cannot be deleted so that people can always see where the original content came from.
- Set aside an amount of time each day to pin. This could be ten minutes here and there or an hour all at once.
- Look at your analytics. Figure out who your audience is, what they want, and when they like to pin.
- Follow the rule of 10. For every 10 repins – pin something new. For every 10 pins of other people’s content – pin something from your blog/business. And, do not be afraid to delete old pins just as fast as you pin new ones.
- Join the community. Do not just stick with the same 100 brands you always follow on all platforms. Meet new people, comment on pins, follow them back, and get lost for a bit.
- Know your brand and stick with it.
- Make good use of your secret boards. You might really dig a holiday pin in the middle of March – just go ahead and save it in a secret board until the time is right.
- Collaborations always breed inspiration. So gather your tribe, pick a topic, share a board, and pin away.
- Be practical. Whether you are naming a new board or adding a description to the pin, make sure that you are using commonly known and used words.
- Choose beautiful, vertical photos with pink, red, and orange. These types of images seem to do well.
Above all else, if Pinterest is something that you want to work towards mastering, make sure that you invest the time to learn as much as you can about it. Read all the emails they send, check out their blog, and connect with successful pinners to gain insight on a personal level.
Want to learn more about using Pinterest effectively to grow your blog? Join us October 24th for our next Alt on Topic: Making Money in a Changing Media Landscape. Alexandra Evjen of AVE Styles, a fashion stylist who was nominated by InStyleMagazine as one of the top pinners to follow, walks us through everything from getting started on Pinterest, to what images do best, to how best to curate your boards and how frequently to pin.
