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Are you using Pinterest to grow your blog? Then chances are you may be making one of these Pinterest mistakes!
Pinterest is a fabulous way to increasing your traffic, subscribers, and income, but it needs to be implemented strategically. In this post we talked about things you should do, now I want to cover what you should not be doing on Pinterest. Let’s dive in!
Table of Contents
THE EIGHT MOST COMMON PINTEREST MISTAKES:
1. INCOMPLETE BRAND PAGE
Your brand page or your homepage on Pinterest should be complete and that includes verifying your website. All the links and details provided should be filled out properly and everything should link back to the right pages.
This is important because pinners need to be able to easily understand what your company is about. A complete profile says a lot about your professionalism. Provide all the correct information + use thoughtful keywords.
For your social accounts, I recommend connecting it to your Twitter profile, but NOT your Facebook account. Currently, Pinterest only connects to personal Facebook accounts. I recommend maintaining some separation between your business and personal life.
2. POSTING EVERYTHING AT ONCE
Some people would think that posting a lot at one go would make a bigger impact, but that is actually incorrect. Posting everything at once will overwhelm their followers and might make them lose interest.
Scheduling your posts to trickle out throughout the day does better in the Pinterest Smartfeed and allows you to reach more followers at different times throughout the day. There may be key times when your followers are online. However, none of them will ever all be on at once, so some will be missing your pins if you do them all in one sitting.
Getting your followers to see your pins and repin them is crucial to your growth. Over 80% of pins are repins compared to 1.4% of tweets that are retweeted and the lifespan of a pin is actually the longest in any social media platform. Pins on Pinterest have viral potential. A pin can last 3.5 months as opposed to 90 minutes for a Facebook post. That is approximately 1,680 times!
3. HAVING DISORGANIZED BOARDS
Boards are places where you can compile many pins of the same topic. Think of them as folders where you can separately file each category. Just like filing things in real life, you don’t want anything unrelated to your board topic to be randomly included.
These boards should be organized and Pinterest users should find exactly what is described inside each of these boards. Adding random pins can result to people unfollowing simply because they see something they are not interested in.
4. INCOMPLETE TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS
Providing the correct information is important. Your followers need to know what exactly is being pinned. This is also a way that users can find you when they hit the search button.
Your titles and descriptions should be straight to the point and use keywords related to your post, brand page, or niche. Hashtag use on Pinterest does not work the same as other social platforms. Instead, focus on identifying and maximizing keyword use for your boards and pins.
5. NOT SHARING THE RIGHT CONTENT
Sharing the right pins is crucial because this builds your target market. Have posts that are related to your business so you can easily attract the right audience for your product. Also be sure to share others content, not just your own.
It may be tempting to post only your own content, that is the whole point, right? Wrong! Pinterest isn’t just marketing your product; it’s about engagement and interactions. You need to put some effort in sharing other people’s content, repin, like and comment, as long as they are related to your business.
6. NOT CONNECTING TO OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA SITES
Pinterest makes it easy to connect and share on Facebook or Twitter. This is convenient because you widen your scope of audiences. This also works vice-versa.
Make sure to include a Pin It (or Save It) button on your website. You also can implement tools like SumoMe that make sharing your content incredibly easy. Also, be sure to have your social media icons in an easily visible place on your website.
7. NOT USING PINTEREST ANALYTICS
If you are using Pinterest for business, you have access to their analytics feature. Analytics is crucial to have when you are doing online marketing and if you run an online business. The data you can find in this feature will greatly help you monitor the progress of your company online.
In the analytics section of your Pinterest account, you can track how many pinners are viewing your pins, your most popular content, follower demographics and interests and much more. As you study these statistics you will identify what is working with your pinning and what can be improved.
8. USING POOR QUALITY IMAGES
This could be one of the most important things not to do when you use Pinterest. Pinterest is heavily driven by visuals. You need to post strong images. They don’t have to be professionally done. They just need to be composed well and sized well. It was studied that colored visuals increase people’s willingness to read a piece of content by 80%.
I put together this post about my 20 Favorite Free Feminine Stock Photo Resources. This is a great place to start if your budget is small but you still want professionally done photos. For a quick Pinterest image use one of these gorgeous photos, add an overlay in Canva or PicMonkey, and text about your content and you are set.
Have you made any of these Pinterest mistakes? Which are you going to work on first?
