Using Pinterest To Improve Your Content Marketing

I have to admit when I first started my blog in Sep 2017, I wasn’t that into content marketing. To me, that was a costly mistake, though not a fatal one.

I spent much of my time creating new content for my blog and it took me 3 months to publish 100 blog posts. To a newbie blogger, it was quite an achievement and I remember celebrating about it.

While that is a very respectable goal, I would learn that it is not just content alone that will lead to success. Given time, there is no doubt traffic will continue to grow as I have observed over the past few months.

However…if you can attract more traffic quickly to your site, wouldn’t that be even greater?

As a matter of fact, it is important to do that and the only reason why I didn’t do it any earlier is because I was fixated on building organic traffic from well ranked content. There is no doubt content is always the most important element of any site.

Imagine visiting Amazon and if what you see is empty pages or pages sparsely filled with products, would you hang around? Probably not.

The same works for your site. The key reason visitors stay around and come back is because of your content.

Great content has to be complemented by effective marketing and today, I am going to show you how you can use Pinterest to market your content.

Why Pinterest?

Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social networks and it pays to invest some time to learn how to harness Pinterest to your advantage.

Creating an account is free and once it’s up and running, you can start to pin (‘post’) images to your Pinterest account. If you already have a Pinterest account, you know what I am talking about. It is not difficult to use Pinterest as it is very intuitive and the average user will have no problem with its user interface.

See an online image that captures your attention? Pin it to your Board, share it with the world and build a following. Sounds like Twitter?

Well, the two are very similar except that Pinterest is really more geared towards image sharing compared to Twitter. A picture (pin) tells a thousand words!

Steps For Using Pinterest Effectively

Step 1: Register a personal account with Pinterest. Yes, there is a business account as well but you don’t really need to start with that if your website is new. A business account is FREE and it comes with analytics for your accounts such as number of viewers per month, which pin attracts the most views, engagements etc. We think this is a nice feature to have when your site starts becoming more mature.

Step 2: Creating Boards within your Pinterest account.

What are Boards? In the most layman terms, Boards are like Folders on your computer. You give each Board a name such as Furniture, Hobbies, Quotes, Amazing Homes, Make Money Online etc. and then you populate each Board with pins (images) that kind of fit that category.

For example, if you see an amazing quote image on Pinterest or anywhere on the internet, you can just pin that image inside your “Quotes” Board. You get the idea.

Step 3: Posting Your Original Content

What most people do on Pinterest is to pin images that capture their interest. For example, you may be a fanatic for marine fish. Thus, you can create a Board for Marine Fish and start pinning relevant images on the internet into that Board.

Alternatively, you can also create your own pins (images) and upload them into your Pinterest account. This is a great way to promote your blog posts. Every time you pin an image, you can also include the URL of the website you want that pin to link to. You can also add a description to attract visitors to view it, leave a comment or even re-pin your pin!

Step 4: Getting The Perfect Image Dimensions For Your Pins

This is a lesser known fact of Pinterest but image dimensions do affect the viewership of your pins. When designing your pins, go for image dimensions that are of width-to-height ratio of 2:3 or 4:5

For example, if the width of my image is 540 px, I would go for 810 px for its height.

Why?

Global statistics reveal that more and more people are using Pinterest on their mobile devices. In fact, 80% of Pinterest users are checking in on their accounts through mobile devices such as tablets or phones.

Therefore, pins that are longer are working out better as they take up more of the screen estate and are less easy to pass over.

Prior to understanding this important fact, I was pinning all kinds of images on my Pinterest account. There was nothing wrong but most of them were horizontal images because those images were the exact same ones I use for my blogs’ featured images!

However, ever since I learnt about the significance of the image size ratio, I have added one extra step. At the end of every blog post, I would have a separately created tall image (in 2:3 or 4:5 ratio) that reflects the message of the blog post.

By preparing a tall image in the correct ratio, you ensure whenever someone pins it, it will fill up the screen nicely and it comes as no surprise that a well designed image gets significantly more repins than others.

Here’s what I do…for example, at the end of this blog post, I prepare this image for easy pinning.

It seems easy and what’s what it is.

To create a pin-able image, you can use free online editors such as Pixlr Editor or Canva.com. I use both but Canva.com is becoming my favourite as I can access its huge repository of free images. It is definitely an online resource I would recommend to anyone working on their blogs.

After you create an account (FREE) with Canva, you have the option to create an image with custom dimensions. As mentioned, you want the image to have a 2:3 ratio. So if your width is 600 px, your height would be 900 px. My advice is to design your initial image on a bigger canvas so 600 x 900 is a good working size. Once your design is finalised, you can scale down your image to reduce its filesize for easier uploading. A smaller file size means your website won’t be slowed down.

The image above is only 50 kb in size and thus it does not consume much bandwidth and provides for a fast loading mobile experience (SEO – friendly).

Pinterest is a fast growing network and is a good way to market your content. In summary, there are a few things to take note.

• Go for Tall images as they tend to do better in terms of viewership, clicks and repins
• Bootstrap and use a popular tool like Canva to design your Pinterest images
• Position the image close to the end of your blog post so that your fans and visitors can pin it immediately after reading your fabulous article!
• Don’t forget to include your Website URL within your images (For example, I always include bytetodc.com at the bottom of my pin-able images. Over time, your URL will become more recognisable!)
• Last tip and this is something I picked up from observing other industry experts such as The Social Ms. If you visit their blog, you notice there is a consistent colour tone for their images. Over time, this will breed familiarity among your visitors and becomes somewhat of a trademark. It is okay to experiment with different colours, but at the same time, you don’t want to overdo it.

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