Pinterest: A New Way To Drive Website Traffic?
With 459 million monthly active users and 1 million videos being watched per day, Pinterest has continued to see significant growth over the years and is now the 14th most used social media platform, ahead of Twitter. Read our ‘whistle-stop tour’ below to find out more about this platform, and how it can be used to get more from your business and drive website traffic.
What is Pinterest?
When thinking about social networking channels, Pinterest may not be one that springs to mind. Pinterest is a visually-focused discovery tool or engine, that can be used for finding ideas such as home inspiration, recipes, fashion guides, and much more.
Each of these ‘ideas’ or ‘posts’ on Pinterest, is referred to as a ‘pin’. A pin is essentially an image, which can then be saved or ‘pinned’ by the platform’s users. Users and account owners can create ‘boards’ which are sub-categories for containing pinned ideas.
What sets Pinterest apart from Instagram, another well-known visual marketing platform, is the ability to add links or URLs to each of your pins. These links let the user click through to a specific page on your site, a product in your e-commerce store, or even a blog with more information, resulting in a handy tool for driving traffic to your website.
Who is Pinterest suitable for?
Pinterest drives 3.8 times more sales than any other platform. So, it’s clear to see that the users who are searching out ideas and information on here have a strong conversion rate and are actively looking to spend.
Having said this, like any social media platform, managing and updating your profile does take time.
You may need to do further research into the audience of Pinterest and decide if the market is right for you. At the time of writing, over 60% of the platform’s users were registered as female, although the gender gap has been closing quickly over the last few years. Gen Z users (those born between 1997 and early/mid 2010s) grew 40% in 2020. The most popular type of searches at the moment on Pinterest focus on travel, fashion, food, and interior design, but that’s not to say that other industries can’t utilise and drive website visitors too. Many popular and well-known brands have their own Pinterest account including Disney, Mcdonalds and Nike.
How to make the most of your Pinterest profile
Firstly, you need to sign-up. Pinterest offers both individual personal accounts, as well as business accounts. You can find the business sign-up here.
As with any form of marketing, or social media platform – Pinterest is yet another extension of your brand. With this in mind, it’s important that visitors get a real sense of who you are from your profile. You want to make sure you have uploaded the appropriate business logo and include a short, snappy introduction letting users know what activity they can expect to see from you.
For your creative marketing strategy, consider how best to use Pinterest for your business. Local restaurants or bakers can make the most of the site by sharing photos of meals or fresh bakes, whereas clothing or accessory-based entrepreneurs may want to be posting photos of the latest styles or ‘how to’ type content, with appropriate links so users can search and buy.
Pinterest also holds the opportunity of creating more of a ‘shop’ layout, see an example from Nike, below:
When used actively and working with content relatable to the platform, there’s no doubt in its potential – the ability to add links and drive engaged traffic to related pages of your website are in abundance.
Final thoughts
The possibilities for your Pinterest profile and boards are endless. Pinterest is a primarily visual platform so you’ll need to get creative and focus on visually pleasing content. Pinterest has some handy resources for this including insights and further details here.
If you’re considering asking advice about your Digital Marketing strategy, contact the Cherries today.