Guest Blogger, Pauline Quigley:  “Pauline Quigley is the founder of Cake Cetera, an online marketplace for bakers who send treats instead of flowers anywhere in the UK.  Pauline’s self-taught digital skills were vital for growing her own company online and hopes to inspire others from her own experiences”

Despite having 200 million active users and 200 billion searches each month, Pinterest is the least talked about Social Platform and so, is still under-utilised by businesses and brands in 2018. Gaining some digital skills training on the platform, therefore, could be extremely beneficial to you and your business.

Pinners create boards around specific goals, interests and aspirations. They seek out content that helps them discover, plan, shop for and share products that reflect their personality. This offers a massive opportunity for businesses to bridge the gap between consumer interests and their brand.

Take weddings, for example, Pinners save 900 million wedding-related Pins annually and conduct 378 million wedding-related searches, and a massive 81 per cent of engaged Pinners said they began planning on Pinterest before the question was even popped.

Most businesses upload a few boards and photos of all their own products and give up after it doesn’t work for them. So here are our top 10 tips on how to grow your traffic with Pinterest in 2018

Optimise your Boards

The first thing to understand is Pinterest is not like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. It’s not about connecting with people. Pinterest is a ‘virtual search and discovery tool’ and in fact is actually more like Google, sending huge volumes of traffic to your website, so optimisation is the key.
Be specific with your Board name and make it easy for people looking for your content. The Pinterest Search Bar gives you suggestions on what others are searching for, so use this as part of your strategy.
For your board description, you can use lots of your targeted keywords separated by commas.

Optimise Your Pins

Ensure all of your Pins have a keyword rich description enticing people to click and learn more. Think of ways that people would search for your product. Pins with prices get 36% more likes so, if appropriate, add your price to your description too.
The best bit about pinning is your content is evergreen, which means your pins gain weight over time. Unlike Facebook, Pinterest will keep showing your Pins, so it works in the background for you even years down the line.
The half-life of a pin is 3.5 months, i.e. it takes 3.5 months to get 50% of its engagement. This half-life is 1,680 times longer than a Facebook post so create evergreen images that will still be pinnable over time.

Make Sure it’s Easy to Pin From Your Website

When people are on your own site make it easy for them to pin your products. Ensure you have a Pin it button beside each product or blog and don’t be afraid to ask people to Pin at the base of your blogs.

How many Boards should I have and when should I Pin?

The number of Boards actually doesn’t really matter…it’s more about the volume and quality of your Pins. It’s better to have one fantastic board that’s active every day rather than 20 fairly inactive boards.

Pins from different categories will be popular on different days so use your analytics to pin more when your customers are active and interested. Saturday has been proven to be the most popular day; 2 pm to 4 pm on Saturday and 8 pm to 1 am on Sunday being the most popular times.

How Often Should I Pin?

This has been researched by various pinners, and the magic number of pins is actually between 15 – 30 times a day spread throughout the day. We always recommend using your analytics to track this over time and lower or increase based on your results. Boards with the most pins will show up first so the more Pins, the better.

Do I Pin Other People’s Content If I’m a Business?

Definitely; this is where most brands wrong. The more popular your Board is, the more reach your Pins will get. You get the benefit of boards that are really, really busy, and the magic starts to work when Pinterest can see that your Boards are hugely active, so Pin, Pin, Pin.
Over 80% of the content you see on Pinterest are repins. Only 20% of pins are either directly uploaded onto Pinterest or have been pinned from a website, and the rest are repins of these Pins.

Scheduling Content With Boardbooster

Pinning 30 times a day is daunting for most businesses.
Boardbooster is a scheduling tool that’s amazing for automatically pinning from other people’s boards of your choice onto your own.
Other tools include shuffling pins so that older pins rise to the top as fresh content. This is an essential tool for your Pinterest growth.
Price range per month from $5 for 500 Pins to $50.00 for 5000 Pins.

Schedule Your Pins with Tailwind

Tailwind is an automated scheduler that puts your Pinterest (and Instagram) on auto-pilot. It lets you schedule all your own products in minutes with a bulk upload tool and enables you to pin in ‘Tribes’
Tailwind Tribes are great for building a community and increasing your reach and engagement on Pinterest by Pinning each other’s pins. You can create your own tribes or join one in your niche.
Tailwind can work alongside Boardbooster to skyrocket your Pinterest.
The price of Tailwind Price is $14.99 per month for each Pinterest Account. They also have an Instagram scheduling tool which can be purchased separately.

Use Your Analytics

Consistently measuring your activity on Pinterest can also help your business identify what types of content work best with your specific audience

Pinterest Analytics lets you see:

• The number of pins pinned from your website
• Re-pins from your website
• Your reach
• Number of visitors to your website
• Most pinned content
• Most clicked content

Both Tailwind and Boardbooster also have excellent analytical tools to help you understand your best times and dates to post.

Think Ahead

People get inspired on Pinterest 3 – 4 months before they make a decision.  As a business it means you get a longer lead-time to get your product in front of them and influence them, so think about seasonality and pin based on 3 – 4 months ahead. Pinterest has a 94% click through on trending products so track your analytics and observe the latest trends.

Hopefully, these digital skills tips will really help to grow your traffic with Pinterest.  93% of active pinners say they use Pinterest to plan for purchases and 87% purchased a product because of Pinterest so don’t let your Business miss out on this potential – Pin, Pin, Pin!