Pinterest: Don’t Give Up Yet
While Pinterest looks like a collection of dream boards, it’s actually a very powerful search engine. Google something and click images and you’ll almost always have pins in the top results.
The best part is that you don’t need to create separate content for Pinterest. All you need to do is optimize your website with images that are Pin-worthy, and your site’s pre-existing content can be shared to Pinterest.
Even when it’s been a while since we’ve posted (hey, we all get busy and it happens) with about 4K followers we consistently reach an average of over 235K monthly viewers. I’m going to share some tips I use to manage our University of New Hampshire (link https://www.pinterest.com/unh/) account, I’d love to hear what works for you!
Pro tips:
Image and text optimization: Here are Pinterest’s ideal image size and text limits https://business.pinterest.com/en/Pinterest-product-specs. The images on your webpages you plan to pin should also have alt text that describes the image and webpage as others may also pin your content but not edit the text the same way you would.
Keywords and search terms: You’ll want to use keywords that are commonly searched in combination with those that are specific to your audience, for example “New Hampshire” and “NH” will help people searching for topics related to our state, whereas “Slow cooker bread recipe” will cast a broader net.
See — and use — all your data: Make sure you’ve set up a business account to access analytics, and look at them regularly to help you determine where to put your energy. This will also alert you to the content people are seeing most and whether it needs to be updated, as is the case with here:
For UNH, we’ve had the same residence hall room picture as the most viewed pin since I started keeping tabs on Pinterest about four years ago and it has received 5.6K impressions in 90 days vs. 612 on our consistent second most popular post, and coming in third, grad caps pop up next to them seasonally.
Create co-managers: Another great Pinterest feature is co-managing boards. We recently added UNH Extension as a manager of our board sharing extension articles (https://www.pinterest.com/unh/unh-extension) which amplifies their account while making it easier to add more relevant content in our audience’s feed.
Start secretly: When I set up new boards, I start with a secret board and make sure it has at least five pins before making it public.
Scheduling content: Now, it is also possible to schedule pins which may be useful as you build your following as Pinterest prefers posts to be spread out rather than posted in batches and will feed these posts to more people, more consistently.
Extending your reach: Overall, if you have time to set up an account so that it doesn’t look sparse when people visit for the first time and a strategy including ways to spread the word to your audience, then I would highly recommend Pinterest as a platform. It’s also possible to create ads in Pinterest and they have experts available to chat if that is a route you wish to go.
Once you get past the initial setup phase and consistently include imagery and text on your webpages that are Pin-worthy, and perhaps find some collaborators, then the management of Pinterest itself becomes easier. By posting content that is ‘evergreen’ you may continue to see benefits from these efforts for many years.
Written by Kris Bowden, UNH Social Media Team 🐾
