Pinterest: 5 Tactics for This Visual Social Media Mecca
Set marketing objectives for your Pinterest activity, know your audience, show your 360-degree brand, create a content marketing strategy, and measure results.
Set marketing objectives for your Pinterest activity, know your audience, show your 360-degree brand, create a content marketing strategy, and measure results.
Pinterest‘s dramatic rise as the visual social media mecca for content makes it a critical component of your 2013 social media and content marketing plans.
Pinterest has gathered force in terms of numbers. From a top-line perspective, it attracts over 20 million unique visitors a month who spend almost 16 minutes on the site per visit yielding 1.5 billion page views per month, based on Fast Company’s infographic. If that doesn’t convince you, Pinterest is the fourth largest source of traffic, according to Shareaholic.
Here’s a five-step strategy to get your Pinterest presence on track to yield measurable results. When you implement these actionable tactics, make sure you follow Pinterest etiquette.
Set Marketing Objectives for Your Pinterest Activity
Your Pinterest goals must be specific and measurable. Here are five options.
Know your Pinterest Audience
Define your target market on Pinterest through the use of a marketing persona and a social media persona. Further, don’t assume that it’s a female-only online scrapbook site. The male-female mix is changing as men are increasingly joining the site, although the ratio is still predominately female.
Show Your 360-Degree Brand on Pinterest
Like any social media site, you must extend your brand to take advantage of the social media platform’s strengths. In addition to the use of your 360-degree brand, here are three brand elements to include.
Create a Pinterest Content Marketing Strategy
Pinterest content is visual in nature and draws on the exponential growth of shared images on social media. On Pinterest, there are two major forms of content: original content and curated content, including repins. Regardless of which approach you use, ensure that each image maximizes results.
Measure Pinterest Results
Track your Pinterest results back to your key objectives for the platform. Start by counting the number of pins from your website, the number of repins your content receives, and the number of followers you get on your overall Pinterest account and on individual pinboards. This’ll provide insight into how Pinterest supports your marketing objectives.
Since Pinterest is becoming a top social media venue, at least stake out your organization’s position and build the foundation for future growth, especially given how strong images are in today’s marketing mix. These five tactics provide the basis for a Pinterest strategy.
Do you have a Pinterest strategy in place? If so, what have your key learnings been? What have the major stumbling blocks been?
Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen
Pinterest image via http://www.softicons.com/free-icons/system-icons/windows-8-metro-invert-icons-by-dakirby309/pinterest-alt-icon.
This column was originally published on Oct. 1, 2012.