I was recently asked by a colleague how I was able to gain 18k+ followers on Pinterest. After our conversation I started thinking more about how exactly I increased my Pinterest following and all the steps I took without ever realizing it at the time. These strategies are mainly geared towards business accounts, however, I still think many of these strategies would help gain followers on a personal account as well. Today I’m going to share my Pinterest strategies or hacks with you! This will get you and your business on the right path to gain the Pinterest following you want. Due to the volume of information, I’ve broken this up into a series of posts that I’ll share over the coming weeks. Make sure to click “Sign me up!” (top right corner) so you don’t miss a post! Now let’s get started:
The #1 rule with boards is to never delete a board! When you delete boards, you delete followers that are following that one specific board. If you find a board is off-brand then simply go ahead and change the board. You can change the title and start pinning content that relates to your new title. By change, what I really mean is alter slightly. You don’t want to completely do a 360′ but just alter it to be more in alignment with your brand and its culture.
Now that we have our #1 rule out of the way, let’s move on to board basics. You’ll notice that Pinterest has a variety of categories. Currently there are 32 of them, i.e. food, health, design. You’ll want to create a variety of boards to hit as many categories that are related in some way to your business. Also if your business is in the food industry, you may want to have multiple boards that are listed under the “Food” category but maybe only one that’s listed under “Sports”. To give you a better idea, I currently have 54 boards that hit 14 categories and I plan to add more boards to increase my visibility under additional categories.
Many of my boards have keywords that are associated with my brand’s identity. You don’t have to do this with all your boards but close to half is a good target.
Another important thing to keep in mind when creating boards is the title of the board itself. You want this to be a keyword that is related to your industry. When I say keyword, what I mean is a word one of your customers would google to find an answer that will be in your board. So if you’re in the fashion industry, you might want to have a board titled, “DIY Fashion”. Even if DIY isn’t your main category, you’ll want your DIY to still be related to the fashion industry and you’ll want the title of that particular board to reflect that. You’ll also want to make sure you pin accordingly.
Now that we have the basics out of the way, you’ll want to add boards that correspond directly to your business. These are the boards that you’ll pin your products or services to. I have 54 boards and 3 of them relate directly to my business. It is important not to overload your Pinterest with your “business” boards. A good ratio is 1 business board for every 7 – 8 other boards that you have OR less! With that being said, I still pin some of my products or original content to other boards BUT only if it truly relates to those boards. For example I took a picture of the ocean and shared it on Instagram, I then pinned that picture to my Ocean Pinterest board.
You can find the number of followers a board has by clicking on the board and looking in the top left under the board’s title.
So we have all our boards created but we’re not done. The next step is to map out the location of all your boards. The first step of this process is to go through and list your boards by the following count. (Don’t include your business boards just yet) You’ll want to place your boards with the highest number of followers at the top of your Pinterest page. Why? Because these are your most popular boards and when someone clicks on your Pinterest page to find out more about you, you’ll want to grab their attention with additional things they like. The more you can grab their attention and show them that your Pinterest page is filled with content that they like, the greater the chance that they’ll follow you.
Doesn’t it make sense that if we are placing our most popular boards at the top of our Pinterest page that we should also place one of our most popular pins as the cover to each and every board? I think so! If you’re running an apparel shop, you wouldn’t put a drape last season outfit in your store front would you? Of course not! You’d put the brand-new most popular outfit that everyone wants! You’ll want to do this with your business boards as well.
The main color in my logo is turquoise. You’ll notice a turquoise/blue theme throughout my Pinterest page. It’s not always the main color in every cover photo but it is always there.
Another thing to keep in mind is having your overall Pinterest page look cohesive. If you have a color in your logo or on your website, have this color be in line with your Pinterest page as well. The cover photo of each board is the most noticeable, since it’s the largest picture showing for that board, make sure it’s in agreement with your color scheme. Sometimes this means picking your second or third popular pin in a particular board instead of your first and that’s okay since you’re still putting a popular pin up front.
You’ll notice that this board is titled “Coral” but even the cover photo for my Coral Pinterest Board has a hint of turquoise sky in the background.
The next step is to strategically place our business-related boards throughout your Pinterest page. You should have one main board for your business. This board goes in the top line of your Pinterest page. Then you’ll add a second business board to your second line of boards, a third business board to your third line of Pinterest boards, etc.
Your head may be spinning from all this information and that’s okay! Just go through each strategy one by one and remember you can ask questions in the comment section below. I’ll try to get back to you asap. Also keep in mind that this is only Part 1 of a series of blog posts. So you’ll want to follow along by clicking the “Sign me up!” button in the top right corner of my blog. Next time I’ll be covering strategies for pins and more! Stay tuned.
