Harness the Hidden Power of Pinterest
We began as your typical “pinners” on Pinterest. We were just interested in things that would interest ourselves. For us it started off as our craft idea dumping ground, morphed into a wedding planning tool and then later helped with a house remodel. Then, it sat vacant waiting for a new purpose to take shape. We weren't big believers in using Pinterest to drive business, but our whole perspective changed once we got a sneak peak at the potential benefits of making such a small shift. (Spoiler Alert: By making this small change we increased our Pin impressions by 53,285.71% in two weeks… not joking!)
Meet Your New Best Friend – Pinterest Group Boards
So we knew group boards existed, but we previously had only utilized them to show our moms what we wanted for our Birthdays. We never thought of them as a way to create a traffic-sourcing tool. Let me break it down for you.
What is a Group Pinterest Board anyway?
In its simplest form it is a “board” that is shared with another Pinner. You both have equal posting pin power. You can either invite others to join yours or request to be added to a pre-existing group board.
Why does it matter?
You have a following, it may be 400 or 4,000, but every time you pin, your pin can only make “impressions” on pinners who follow your content. In the case of Group Pin Boards, pins are exposed to everyone following the group board. If someone follows “everything” you pin than they are automatically included. If they chose to pick and chose which boards they follow then they may not be included in this lump sum. Now imagine you are connected with another pinner, now your content (on your shared board) is exposed to both of your audiences as well as people who follow only your group board. The more awesome pinners with awesome content the bigger this following can become. The more your content is exposed to new people, the more likely your audience will continue to grow.
I don’t think anyone would have the right kind of board for me…
Stop thinking this way. We have said it before and we will say it again, there is always a community surrounding you with like minded thinkers. You just have to go out and find them. So whether you are a hardcore crafter or wedding planner or a photographer there is a board for you.
Where do I find these magical group boards?
Well ladies and gents you have come to the right place! Meet PinGroupie. This is a wonderfully simple tool to find group boards. Sift through them by category, number of followers and pins. Search the title or description to find boards perfectly suited for your audience.
I’m interested, but how do I actually do this?
Personal vs. Business Account
If you haven’t already you need to set up your Pinterest board as a business board. This doesn’t make your board look any different, but allows you to link your website and utilize all the analytics functionality. Join as a business or convert your account now.
Verify Your Website
After you have started or converted your account to a business you will want to verify your website. This allows your website to listed and connected on your main page. By verifying you are also allowed to track analytics between your website and Pinterest content. Here are all the super easy steps!
Get Organized
Now you are ready to start driving traffic to your website! If you are anything like us, you probably have a cluster of boards that are no longer relevant or don’t relate to your business. Spend an afternoon (or 3) and comb through your content. Delete pins, regroup pins and curate them into pin-tabulous boards!
Make sure to add board descriptions to each board (we still need to do this) and name your boards accordingly. Consider this like the SEO for your Pinterest page. Utilize specific keywords that are specific to your niche or business.
Pin Your Content
Instead of pinning everyone else’s content refocus on how you can create your own. Perhaps you blog and you want people to come visit your blog. Create amazing images that complement your blog topics. Name your images so that if someone tries to Pin themselves the content is pre-filled for them. Pin your own images to your own special boards. Perhaps you have one for every blog category. Or maybe you are in retail and you want to Pin all your styled outfits together.
Target Group Boards
Utilize PinGroupie, mentioned above, to search and find group boards with the most followers and best (or most similar) content. Spend some time analyzing the other content on the boards. Do you think your content would fit in? Take note of your top ten group boards you would like to join and their URLs.
Ask to Join
Every board is a bit different, so you have to read the description for specific details. Some boards include rules or give directions for how to join, but if details aren’t included here is what you need to do:
Follow the board
Verify who owns the board (see URL)
Visit their board & follow them as well
Find a way to contact them (perhaps on their verified web page)
Send them an email, a social media message or a message directly in Pinterest. Send them a link to the board you would like to be added to, a link to your Pinterest and a copy of your email address that is linked to your Pinterest account.
See the Results
It might take awhile to get on board. We originally applied to six boards and it took several days before we got accepted to one of them. It was well worth the delay, because overnight we saw instant changes.
As soon as we got accepted, we started repining our blog pins to the group board (this as opposed to pinning directly from our website). When we first started utilizing this Group Board we only had 400 personal followers, and this board had a whopping 380,000+ followers.
In the first two weeks, we grew our website daily pin impressions by 53,285.71% - exposing our content to more than 4,400+ people every day. This also created a dramatic increase in repins, likes and traffic to our website.
Ten months later we are still seeing impeccable results. We are averaging 31,337 daily impressions and that number continues to escalate. Our personal following on Pinterest has nearly 6x times since we began this strategy. And now Pinterest drives more than 38% of our total traffic!
You too can have the same success by finding the right people to collaborate with, putting yourself out there and creating amazing content! How have you utilized Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog or business website?
