Pinterest is taking the world by storm! It’s no longer just a girly place to hang out and plan your wedding day or share your fav chocolate bar, now some of the most prolific pinners are savvy men and women who use this social media network to attract people’s attention to their websites and there wares!
Pinterest invite you to join the pinning party! It’s not an immediate response time either but be patient and you will be signed up.
There is as always a little debate amongst Internet Marketers as to whether they should add this tool to your arsenal of link building tools. It is also an excellent and primarily useful for social sharing & networking, just take a look at the evidence to decide that its worth considering.
Listed in Time Magazine’s “50 Best Websites of 2011” Pinterest is the new social photo sharing website on everyone’s lips. But how can this new social platform help to increase your business?
Although it might look like just a pin board-styled site it is said to have more referral traffic than both Google+ and Linked in combined. Plus with over 10 million regist
ered users already, you can see why many businesses including larger brands such as Gap and Blockbusters are using Pinterest to drive traffic to both their online and physical stores….
More at Pinterest: The New Social Network on Everybody’s Lips
The numbers are racking up and the evidence is increasing but there is a strategy to using this social media strategy appropriately.
Here are a few of the steps to take, you can also watch the video to see some of these examples in action.
- As soon as you sign up for Pinterest you want to start pinning other people’s pin to your boards.
- You can choose any name for your boards but they have a number that are offered. So far I’ve got a couple of boards and have added a number of images to my Internet Marketing board.
- A short while after you pin an image, it appears on the main boards so that everyone can see it. Repins and pins with comments tend to stay on the main boards for longer than those without.
- You want to ensure that you have added your own url to the image to ensure that anyone clicking on that image will follow along to your website pages.
- Make sure the pages you link to are interesting and relate to the image you have pinned or the visitor will leave your site quickly.
- Add the ‘Pin It’ button to your browser so you can add images (check the image license!) whilst you browse.
Pinterest is a great traffic source and this has been tracked by a number of statistics since its inception.
Here’s a statistic that may make you do a double take: Pinterest (which is still in beta) sends more referral traffic than Twitter despite having a user base only seven percent as large as the microblogging service’s numbers…
More at Pinterest Will Boost Your Referral Traffic, But Can It Boost Sales?
Wondering What To Pin On Your Pinterest Boards?
You might also be wondering what you are going to pin on your boards. I have skitch which is a mac application that captures images and allows you to alter or write on them. You can also just draw – I also have a Wacom Bamboo Create Pen and Touch Tablet and with that I can create all sorts of graphics (not great graphics, yet) but they usually make a point and are more for entertainment than anything.
Another great free tool online is Wordle. The image below here is created at Wordle.net and you can see how I did that in the video on this page. This is another slightly addictive tool!
Here’s a Wordle of my website – beautiful isn’t it! You might like to Pin it 
Other ways to create images are with the tools you have on your own desktop such as Mind Maps, Graphs, Timelines, WordArt and so on. Your own images from your family media library can be used with related text commentary.
Using Pinning To Market Your Business
You pin, your site visitors pin, your fellow pinners repin … There are many ways that Pinterest’s sharing model can benefit you and your business. You add images to Pinterest boards for others to see and share. You are also adding links to your site pages.
When visitors come to your site, you want to encourage them visually to pin your images on their pin boards. Generally those who’ve visited will be interested in your topic so invite them to share your pics with a reminder.
Making IM Easier With A Pinterest Plugin
As always I look for ways to make this a little easier for my site visitors to remember to ‘pin’ my images
There are a few nifty plugins that are there to help you give your site visitors a gentle nudge to remind them they can share your stuff. Pintermark Simple Pinterest Button & Watermark Plugin
I really like the simplicity of the plugin by Justin Wheeler. It takes seconds to set up and once its done you just pick your
favorite Pin image and add your watermark. The watermark is very important as no matter where your images are shared, the url of your site remains attached.
You can take a look at Justin’s WSO thread here but the price is rising so I recommend you get over there quickly to check it out.
Pintermark Simple Pinterest Button & Watermark Plugin
There are other plugins that I might also recommend so I’ll add those as I have the time to review them properly. Remember what’s been discussed about the recent Pengiun updates and how to ensure you take advantage of the free link building strategies, well this is one of those.
For now, I recommend you go to Pinterest and get signed up so you can start pinning and sharing your links in happy healthy ‘safe linking‘ ways!
About Leah
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