8 Killer Strategies For Boosting Pinterest Traffic

Pinterest is a very popular social media platform that isn't just a place to share pictures for kicks, but is also a fantastic place to boost traffic for your business. It seems like most marketers and business owners aren't really aware of the power of Pinterest for business.

In fact, according to Digital Marketer, Pinterest is now the #3 source of all buyer traffic online. It is also the #30 ranked site in traffic for the entire world. Imagine if you could tap into that for your business.

Now the only question is: How do you do it?

1. Setting Up And Creating Boards

A few things you need to focus on when you are creating your Pinterest profile, boards, etc. are covered in my 15 Pinterest Marketing Tips article. I recommend reading that article with this one to get all of the best strategies.

2. Branding Your Pictures

When you are trying to get traffic from Pinterest, not all of your visitors from there may be from direct links in your pin descriptions. Just getting your quality pins in front of people brands you and your business, whether you get traffic right then or not.

Think of TV advertising on your favorite shows. There are a lot of commercials, but there is no place to click a link or directly track which customers came from seeing the businesses on TV, right?

That is kind of how Pinterest can impact your business. Sure, you will get some traffic directly from links in the descriptions, which is why you should always include them, but the real power of Pinterest is what is actually in your pictures.

If you have physical products, post cool pictures of them that make them look good or show people enjoying using them. Show what problems your products solve. If you have digital products, it may be a little more of a challenge, but you just have to get creative.

To make sure you always are getting branding and some boosted direct traffic from people seeing your site URL and typing it in, include your website link in the corner of all your pins.

When people see your URL everywhere and enjoy your pins, they will get more curious and eventually won't be able to resist the urge to check out your website. Notice how I have the URL of my site in the corner of the original image I created above.

Just because people can't click the link in the picture, doesn't mean they aren't useful. For instance, we all have those go-to websites that we have memorized where we type in the URL directly in the search bar to go visit all the time.

3. Use Videos

If you aren't taking advantage of Youtube for your business, I strongly recommend you start doing that. Not only are Youtube videos great for teaching people things or creating brand awareness, but they are much easier to rank online than blog posts.

On top of that, you can have annotations and links in the video descriptions for visitors to go to your website and you can even make a little extra money off of Adsense video ads.

When you are cranking out Youtube videos for your business, I encourage you to click the “share” tab below the videos and share them on Pinterest. Many people think Pinterest is all about pictures, but Youtube videos make great posts as well.

In fact, when you think about it, a lot of businesses will benefit more from video sharing on Pinterest instead of pictures because it is much harder to get a message across or teach something in a small picture than it is in a full video.

Remember those Adsense ads I told you about that get you a little extra money from your videos? Those ads still are shown even when people are watching the video on Pinterest instead of Youtube. This means more ad revenue for you.

When you combine quality videos with a mass media sharing site like Pinterest, the possibilities are endless for your brand.

4. Use Infographics

Have you ever wondered how to get your blog post's message condensed into a small picture that could go viral on a site like Pinterest or Instagram? It is pretty much impossible to do this with images unless you put the content into infographic format.

If you don't know what these types of pictures are, here is an example of a business infographic. As you can see, it is just another way to repurpose your content in a different form. In this case, it is the best way to put a blog post in image format.

Some people actually prefer these to classic blog posts because they are easy to process, look cool and don't require much reading.

I definitely recommend having your blog posts put into this format for Pinterest because there is no other great way to put a massive amount of content into one picture and still make it look good.

Here's a few sites for creating infographics:

• Fiverr
• Infographic Creator
• Only Infographic
• Piktochart
• Vizualize
• Easel.ly
• Visual.ly

5. Don't Be All About Business

If you have ever checked out my Pinterest profile or other business owners' profiles, you may notice how we post business pins as well as personal pins. A lot of branding (especially when you're mostly selling you personal business, not a corporate one) is about relating to your followers.

If you are branding yourself, show people that you really are human and you will get more followers that like you. For instance I pin motivational quotes, cars I like, houses I like, food, and other things besides just business all the time.

Here's some things that tend to get shared the most on Pinterest:

• Recipes
• Motivational Quotes
• Home Decor Ideas
• Places To Visit
• Wedding Inspiration
• Craft Projects
• Books
• Magazine Covers
• Movies
• Gifts
• Infographics
• Apps
• Video
• Style
• Clothes
• Shoes
• Accessories
• Humor
• Inspiration
• Testimonials / Social Proof
• Portfolios
• Links To Your Social Sites
• Causes

Know what gets shared the most and don't be all about business.

6. Always Be Checking Analytics

Let me tell you something my friend… Numbers never lie. Always keep track of your Pinterest analytics, so you know what works and what doesn't.

Otherwise, you won't be able to recreate your best results when you get them. If certain types of pins get more shares, create more similar to them. If certain pins rank better, figure out why.

The best businesses always know the numbers and use them to their advantage.

7. Pinterest Promotion

We all know about those social share buttons that are on all our favorite blogs, but a lot of times there isn't a Pinterest button. Why is that?

There are a couple of reasons why Pinterest share buttons aren't as common as Facebook like buttons or Twitter retweet buttons:

You don't want too many share buttons on your content or it will overwhelm your readers and if they share you blog post via Pinterest, it probably won't get much engagement.

The reason Pinterest blog post shares may not get as much engagement as business owners would like is because the picture or video is the center of attention, not the writing on a pin.

Most blogs just use stock photos or Google images as their featured image of their article and focus more on the writing itself. But, if you want to get the most of the article, it would be smart to create a unique image for the article for when people share it on sites like Pinterest.

If your blog images are set up the right way, you can get a ton of traffic and branding from each Pinterest share. You can feel better about promoting for Pinterest as well, instead of just Facebook or Twitter.

We'll talk more about optimizing the image in just a minute, but when you have a good pin that you think could go viral, you need to know how to promote it.

Promote With “Pin it” Hover Button

First, I recommend you have a Pinterest share button that pops up when readers scroll over each image in your blog posts.

Instead of having a general Pinterest share button, it is much more effective to have one actually pop up on each image itself, so your visitors can share multiple images on the same pages.

If you use a WordPress blog, you can get a free plugin here that will do this for you. It will add a “pin it” button to all your blog images for easy promotion on Pinterest for each picture.

Here's what it will look like (notice the “pin it” button in the top left corner):

That button shows up only when the visitors of your site hover over the image. It will definitely help with your photo shares and Pinterest branding.

Promote Using Empire Avenue

Empire Avenue is a great social branding resource that is home to a community of some of the most influential social marketers on the web.

Here you can accumulate points for sharing other peoples' content the way they ask and then use the points to create your own missions for having people share your own stuff.

You can ask people in these missions to share your stuff on specific sites like Pinterest to help you grow those followings faster. This is a great way to help your pins and other content go viral on Pinterest.

Promote Using Facebook And Twitter

If you want to keep boosting your Pinterest presence I also recommend you turn on the option to automatically share your pins on Twitter and Facebook, especially if you have a bigger following on those sites.

All you have to do is go to “account settings” on Pinterest and connect your other social profiles to share your pins on them.

Promote Using Viral Content Buzz

Viral Content Buzz is a great site for getting more social shares and traffic for your high quality content. What I love about this site is how simple it is, how effective it is and how it incorporates two rapidly growing social sites that tend to get forgotten for business: Pinterest and Stumbleupon.

When you talk about social shares, many people just think of Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Linkedin, but Pinterest and Stumbleupon can easily top the “core 4” social platforms if you use them correctly.

Viral Content Buzz is somewhat similar to Empire Avenue because you earn points by sharing other peoples' content and then use those points to fund projects that get your stuff more shares.

It works with Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon and Pinterest. When you are trying to build up a good presence on Pinterest, this site is a must. I recommend you check it out and start getting your content shared on there.

8. Structuring Your Pinterest Images Correctly

It's great to know how to promote your content on Pinterest and get it ranked in search, but you still have to have quality pins to get much out of it. It is easier to make a quality video for Pinterest than it is for a picture.

If you are doing a picture, I recommend you post quotes related to your business, infographics, graphs/statistics, testimonials, or even pictures of people having fun with or enjoying what your business provided them.

Always include your branding in your pictures by containing your home site URL in one of the corners. Of course the URL should be in the description as well.

It would probably be better to use original images that you or a designer creates specifically for your brand, so you don't put your URL on someone else's work. Don't mess with copyright.

When you have a good picture that has potential to go viral on Pinterest, make it your featured image of your blog post that is related to it. This way people will be more inclined to share it from your blog and get you more traffic or branding.

This also helps when you are promoting on sites like Viral Content Buzz because it will get more engagement and be more attractive to share for members and their followings.

Also make sure that the image URL has the keywords you want it to rank for in the file name. This will help with ranking it at the top of Pinterest pages in search results, so more people will see it.

Conclusion

Pinterest is becoming a must-use social media platform for any business or brand. You would be leaving a lot of money on the table if you don't take advantage of the amount of traffic that you could get from just a few minutes a day on Pinterest. Are you using Pinterest for your business?