5 Pinterest Marketing Strategies to Excel in SEO

In all treasure hunt games, there are itsy-bitsy boxes with clues hidden in them. In the game of brand building, the boxes are social networking channels. Each social channel has something unique to contribute, just like each little box contains a unique clue. The clues can be easy to decipher or inexplicable riddles.

The same parallelism can be found when social media is used for branding – social hacks may yield great results or no result at all. This is especially true for Pinterest marketing.

Pinterest for branding

Pinterest is among the most sought-after social destinations for brands. The popularity of this channel has increased leaps and bounds over the last few years. Its user-base, clocking at 100 million+ is enviable. Looking at the user-base alone, brands know they have opportunities galore.

Digital strategists have grown aware of the play of visual marketing. Visual branding is the zeitgeist and brand promotion without visuals is a now bunk deal. That’s the reason why Pinterest is so popular among brand managers and ordinary users alike.

Here are the tips to follow, if you want to leverage Pinterest to boost your site’s SEO:

#1. Have a keyword strategy

True, Pinterest is more about graphics and less about texts, but keywords are important in all walks of SEO – whether or not visuals are involved. When Google indexes Pinterest, spiders crawl through:-

• Personal accounts
• User pinboard

The content of your personal account and user pinboard should contain keywords. Make sure the keywords reflect your brand and the theme it presents. If you have an auto repair shop in Miami, Florida, then “cheap auto repair Florida” is the keyword you’ll want to highlight. Your pinboard should be dense with photos of your shop and cars fixed by you. The heading and all other places where texts can go should have the keyphrase mentioned. Similar keyphrases should be used as ALT tags for images on the pinboard for a better semantic score.

#2. Sell directly from Pinterest

You’ll be amazed to know (unless you know it already) that Pinterest allows logged-in users to buy branded products. Pinterest has rolled out the Buyable Pin feature for iPhone, iPad and Android users. The Pins are from retailers and just like regular buying and selling, buying the Pins is guided by return policies.

If a buyer needs clarification about a seller’s policies, then he can contact the seller, After buying a product, the buyer receives an email confirmation. Buyable Pins are an example of in-app purchase, which makes the sales funnel completely redundant. This is SEO at it’s best. Remember, the purpose of SEO is not to bring visitors to the site, the real purpose is getting a product sold. That’s precisely what Buyable Pins do. Therefore, they’re a great SEO booster.

#3. Run a contest

Pinterest is an ideal place for hosting contests. Being a brand, you can entice your audiences, engage with them in meaningful ways and of course increase sales. As a matter of fact, contests are the sweet spot of your social media campaign strategy.

The secrets to be successful with a Pinterest contest are here:

• Creating custom logo
• Announcing an exciting prize for winner/s

You need a custom logo to personify the contest, different from your company logo. The logo will add a tinge of uniqueness to the contest. Anything unique in a positive way tends to go viral on social media, which means a unique logo can get the contest an impressive virality score. The prize is the catch; if it’s rewarding, then the contest will see huge participation. For Pinterest contest ideas, you can turn to other brands or be innovative and come up with your own ideas.

#4. Cross-promotion

Cross-promotion is useful for social expansion. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are among the channels that are well-suited to promote Pinterest content. Cross-promotion over social media is healthy for SEO.

Thanks to cross-promotion, content on Pinterest can score high in the virality index. Pinterest posts are easily shared on other networks. When Pinterest posts are promoted on Facebook and Twitter, they get better visibility. This is a great example of content curation as you are not creating unique content for these networks.

Cross-promotion tips include using catchy texts and actionable hashtags. An actionable hashtag, unlike a non-actionable hashtag, motivates users to undertake a particular action. The hashtag optimization guidebook advises marketers to include call-to-action so they get some value out of the campaign. The #CrashTheSuperBowl was an actionable hashtag. The fact that it was on Twitter doesn’t matter because similar hashtag campaigns can be run on Pinterest too.

#5. Limit promotion

Strategic promotion relies on quality rather than quantity. The right marketing strategy on Pinterest is to limit the number of self-promotional content. Follow the famous 90/10 rule. The rule says 90% Pinterest content should be repins and only 10% content should be original and aimed for promotional purpose.

Over-promotion can be a problem. If a brand doesn’t limit promotion, then audiences will become apathetic to its messages. In 2016, a brand’s biggest competitor is apathy. The earsplitting sound of loud brand promotion only annoys audiences, thereby making them apathetic.

To make audiences less-apathetic, provide them with content that gives them value. A great strategy is to kill the brand, to keep the customer. Identity as a brand is necessary for an enterprise, but there should be a coherence between the identity and the product quality.

Put simply, the right dose of promotion helps but an overdose can kill your campaign. Keep that in mind.

Pinterest marketing is a blessing

There’s no consensus over whether backlinks with visual content carries more value than backlinks with non-visual content. What the industry knows for sure is Google and other search engines value visual content and favor backlinks from social media.

Content curation is a relatively new trend and Pinterest is an excellent place to curate/repin content from other users. In short, Pinterest is a platform where the social meets visual and visual meets curation. It goes without saying that Pinterest marketing is a great way to boost SEO campaign.

Summing up

What’s great about social media is it allows its users to be creative. If you are a brand planning to gain visitors from Pinterest, then put your creativity to use. Otherwise, the implementation of the tips shared here won’t work.

Images: ” WIELICZKA – POLAND – 7 APRIL 2015. Pinterest website on computer screen /Shutterstock.com“

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