How to Use Pinterest to Promote Your Blog
The latest social network to sweep cyberspace is the image bookmarking site Pinterest, where users are able to create their own archives of images that they find on the Internet. With a growth rate that has been phenomenal Pinterest has emerged as the hottest social platform of 2012 and has a higher share of social media visitors than Google+ or Linkedin1. The visual nature of the site makes it an obvious medium for marketing, and the statistics are showing that it is stealing a big slice of the market share of both Facebook and Twitter. Pinterest is slated to be the source of 40% of online sales that are driven by social media2. The popularity of Pinterest has also seen its links to other websites grow to rival Twitter, with the site accounting for 3.6% of all referral traffic online (including search engines). There are now over 10 million registered users of Pinterest3 and with its high referral rate it has become one of the most fertile sources of traffic for many bloggers.
Pinterest wants its users to post, or in the language of Pinterest, re-pin, quality content that others will want to share, and the valuable content that bloggers publish is just the sort of pins that they want their members to share. The blogosphere has taken to Pinterest and now that the ins and outs of the site have become more familiar to users the best strategies for using the site to promote your blog are beginning to evolve.
Make Your Blog Posts Pinnable
The first thing that bloggers will need to do is to make sure that they post pinnable content on their blogs. Making sure that you have interesting images that others will want to share with their followers is the foundation of using Pinterest to attract traffic to your website. Because you want your visitors to pin your images to their boards it is better not to post them on the site yourself. Instead, pin interesting snippets of your images that will attract them to your blog where they can hit the Pin It button for themselves.
Connect with Other Pinterest Users
Engage with other users on Pinterest by liking or re-pinning their images and leaving comments just as you would on any of the other social media sites. The interaction that you have with other Pinterest members will be your source of traffic, so it is vital to engage them on the site and not just post your marketing material like spam. Visit Pinterest for Bloggers and add your blog’s voice to the already growing number of bloggers on Pinterest.
Connect Pinterest with Facebook and Twitter
Integrate Pinterest with your other social media sites so that your Facebook friends can see the images that you are pinning or re-pinning. If your Facebook friends are also using Pinterest make sure that you follow their pins as well to generate a genuine spirit of online sharing and communal interest.
Make it Easy to Pin Your Content
Add a Pin It button to your blog posts to make it easy for your readers to share the fantastic images that they find on your website. The code for adding a Pin It button to your blog posts and to your sidebar widgets can be found on the Pinterest Goodies Page.
To find out how to use Pinterest to increase the traffic to your blog, contact InfintechDesigns.com and get started pinning right away. Pinterest can only get bigger and, as with all of the other social media sites out there, users are there to find the interesting stuff on the web. Being Pinterest friendly will make it easy for them to share the interesting images on your blog and drive more traffic to your site.
References:
1. http://www.cloudtactix.com/1-incredible-pinterest-stats/
