As the social media landscape changes quickly and the method in which we as business owners use social as a channel to communicate our content adapts, it is becoming increasingly important to ensure you are positioning yourself for growth by optimizing your content on and for each platform. This tutorial is going to help you to learn how to optimize your Pinterest account for search.
2019 marks a HUGE year for Pinterest – they recently applied for their initial public offering (IPO). With this, we are seeing rapid updates and changes to their marketing abilities, native features (improved metrics, video and more!) but isn’t isn’t all pleasant. Many content creators and businesses who are established and avid users of Pinterest have observed declines in traffic, a drop in engagement and are shocked by the sudden downturn. With the cases that I have reviewed, there is a commonality between many of the now suffering accounts: they are not optimized for the current platform.
I write (+ generally talk) a lot about how to optimize your Pinterest for Business account as I think this is a crucial step so many users are skipping or don’t want to do. BUT when done correctly, it lays the foundation of a strong account. Gone are the days that you can just pump out tons of pins and have a strong account. The free ride is long gone and those that don’t adapt, are going to keep seeing their traffic from Pinterest decline. My optimization methods follow all the best practices laid out by Pinterest but also share my personal experience in my work as a Pinterest account manager.
How to Optimize Your
Pinterest Account For Search
As Pinterest began to make changes, I was being approached more and more with questions from users about why their were experiencing a decline in traffic when Pinterest was also such a good source of traffic for them. Over and over again, I repeated the same advice after taking time to peek at their accounts. Optimizing your Pinterest account to appeal to Pinterest search is a crucial part of any successful Pinterest strategy.
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Let’s back up one minute though – for those thinking this is a “quick” solution to your Pinterest traffic problem, I have news for you. NOTHING on Pinterest is quick or immediate. Pinterest is a visual search engine and it takes time for machine learning to find, categorize and test your content. If you aren’t convinced, let me walk you through WHY optimizing your account is important.
Why Should I Optimize My Pinterest Account?
Pinterest is (obviously) my favourite platform, because it develops a personal relationship with each of it’s (millions of) users. That’s no small feat. But it is true that you are literally one in a million. Optimizing your Pinterest account will help you rise to the top of those users, bringing you and your valuable, hard-earned content in favorable contact with the Pinterest gods (really when I say ‘gods’ I just mean Pinterest technology but gods sounds so much more fun).
Optimizing Your Pinterest Account Just Makes Sense
You may find yourself asking the very valid question, “Why should I bother optimizing my Pinterest account?” Great question! Pinterest doesn’t work the same way as other platforms. On Pinterest, you have the ability to position yourself for greatness, by demonstrating to them that you are serious about your account and want to curate useful and relevant content.
Pinterest is a PLANNING tool – this social platform is FILLED with users researching and planning things – so guess what someone does when they are planning, search for solutions. Optimizing your account for search is crucial so that you can help hungry users find those solutions.
Using my strategies and teachings, optimizing your Pinterest account will:
Position you for Pinterest search and keyword ranking. We all know that the average attention span in 2019 is zero seconds. The more optimized for keyword search your account is, the higher up you’ll appear in those searches. This is critical to get your content in front of the people who are looking for it. You are helping to SHOW and categorize your account and boards so Pinterest can identify the relevant topics for users who are LOOKING for that content. Makes sense right?
Give people a reason to follow you. Whether they like your style, need to know more about your niche, or just plain want to copy your Pinterest magic: More followers = more eyes on your content = more clicks. Curate useful and relevant content that is of high value to your audience and the followers will.. well follow.
Position yourself as the authority in your niche. Why learn about anything, from other novices when you can go straight to the leader of the pack? You are creating a value resource for your perfect people/audience and helping the right people find the right content quickly and reliably. They know you are going to use your brains to help sift through all the spam and poor quality content for them. You know your stuff now demonstrate it via your saved pins.
Help Pinterest find you. An optimized account sends the message to Pinterest data crawlers/technology/gods that you are categorizing your content and keeping it organized, so they know they can send traffic your way as your keywords match your content. How can Pinterest send you traffic if it doesn’t know how to classify or rank your content? Pinterest is striving to provide relevant, high value content to users.
Create visual appeal. Like it or not, everyone is used to catered to. When a user stops by your account, you want to show them you care by giving them a snapshot of your brand, and how far you’re willing to go to be useful to them. A well-tended account will do just that. Just like a beautiful Instagram feed, a visually beautiful Pinterest feed makes for an easy follow. Help those users who are on the fence by making things clean and easy to understand visually. Don’t forget, Pinterest is a visual platform. Users are making decisions MOSTLY on what they see with their eyes. This is not a ‘necessary’ thing but I know it helps SEAL the deal.
How To Start Seeing More Traffic from Pinterest
Pinterest’s 259 million users could be missing out on your content right now! Regardless of where you’re at in your Pinterest journey, the projected growth of the audience, the thoughtfulness of it’s search function and its long term payoffs make it obvious that if Pinterest isn’t part of your social media marketing plan, you’re going to fall behind.
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