As a social media marketer, you must have your hands full with Facebook and Twitter marketing. This does not mean that you can ignore the rising star in the social media landscape – Pinterest. Granted that it is a photo sharing website that had a lukewarm response when it was launched – but now this photo-sharing platform has more than 20 million users – most of whom are very active. Pinterest is now one of the biggest social networking platforms – at par with Facebook, Twitter and Google+ and is also one of the biggest photo sharing applications after Instagram. In fact, a recent Nielsen report indicates that more than 20% of Pinterest users purchased a product after seeing it on Pinterest.
So when you plan social media strategies for Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – make sure to include Pinterest as well! That means extra work 🙁 – but you do not have to panic just yet! You can automate some of the processes on Pinterest to make your task much simpler. Here’s how –
Use automatic pin schedulers
Just like Facebook and Twitter scheduling tools, there are many tools available online that will help you schedule the posting of your pins. Instead of pinning photos on boards manually, use these tools so that you can schedule posting of pins. Posting frequency depends on the industry you are in so the tool of your choice should let you have flexible posting schedules. Make sure that the tool you have settled on allows you to add descriptions for each pin before posting. You can include keywords in the descriptions to optimize your pins for search engines. The tool should also let you include the URL of the source of the image.
Expand using auto follow
Tools that allow you to schedule and post pins automatically on Pinterest also help you search and follow other users based on your criteria and they often offer auto-comment and auto-pin features too. It is highly suggested that you use only auto-follow and auto-search features and not auto-pin and auto-comments. This is because, following a user or board does not require you to engage with the user you are following but auto-pin and auto-comment features forces you to interact with other Pinterest users.
These Pinterest users can easily find out if you are using automated tools and this can negatively impact your Pinterest marketing campaign. Software-generated Pinterest comments can be considered as a black hat SEO technique. Instead, use auto-follow and auto-search to follow relevant users and expand your Pinterest base but take some time out to comment and engage with users personally.
Integrate WordPress with Pinterest
Include a Pinterest plug-in in your WordPress website or blog, which will encourage your readers to share the images you post on WordPress on Pinterest. Also every time you post an image on your WordPress blog or website, such tools will automatically transfer them onto a board on your Pinterest page. Similarly, there are tools that can post Pinterest images from your boards to WordPress immediately after they have been published on Pinterest.