How to Leverage Pinterest in Your Social Media Marketing (SMM) Strategy

Which social media networks do you use to promote your website? If your social media marketing (SMM) strategy revolves exclusively around Facebook, you can expect less website traffic.

Facebook may have the largest audience, but targeting other social media networks will expose your website to more users. In addition to Facebook, for instance, you can target Pinterest. Including Pinterest in your SMM strategy will allow you to build links to your website. You can share your website's visual content in the form of linked pins. As users come across these pins, they may visit your website.

Create a Business Account

Pinterest offers two types of accounts: personal and business. personal accounts are designed for personal and recreational purposes, whereas business accounts are designed for commercial purposes. Since you'll be using Pinterest to promote your website, you should create a business account. A business account will provide you with commercially focused features, such as engagement analytics and paid advertising, that aren't available in personal accounts.

You can create a business account at https://business.pinterest.com/.

Alternatively, if you already have a personal account, you can add a business account to it. Logging in to your personal account and selecting "Add account" from the main menu will reveal an option to add a business account.

Edit Your Profile

Before creating pins, you should take a few minutes to edit your profile. Default profiles have limited information. Assuming you created a business account, your profile should feature your website's address -- you'll have to claim your website when creating a business account -- as well as your Pinterest username. Editing your profile, however, will allow you to include other forms of information about your website.

Your profile will represent your website. Therefore, you should edit it to feature your website's name. Pinterest profiles support a display name as well as a username. The former is displayed on your profile, whereas the latter denotes the URL slug for your profile and the login for your account. For your profile's display name and username, enter your website's brand name.

When editing your profile, add a photo that depicts your website. All profiles, including those for business accounts, support a photo. On the profile editor page, click the camera icon to upload a photo to your profile. You can use choose any relevant photo that depicts your website, such as your site's logo or header.

Along with a standard profile photo, you can upload a cover photo to your profile. The cover photo will be displayed over the standard photo on your profile. It uses a 16:9 aspect ratio and is larger than the standard photo. You can upload a cover photo by visiting your profile and clicking the pencil icon above the standard photo.

Create Boards

You'll need to create one or more boards to use Pinterest for SMM. Pins aren't published directly on Pinterest. Rather, they are published on boards. A board is a place where you can publish pins that link to and promote your website.

Creating new boards is easy. When publishing a pin, you'll have to select a board on which to publish it. If you haven't created any boards yet, you can select the "Create board" option. Keep in mind that you aren't limited to creating a single board. You can create up to 2,000 boards, which is the limit for all Pinterest accounts.

Follow these tips for effective boards that drive SMM success.

• Create a unique board for each category of content that you want to share.
• Give your boards a descriptive name that reveals the type of pinned content.
• Consider creating sections for your boards. A section is a subcategory within a board.
• Avoid setting your boards to "secret." If you select this option, your pins will be private.

Publish Pins

Promoting your website on Pinterest requires publishing pins. Pins are rich bookmarks for visual website content. Using them, you can share your website's images and videos. Publishing a pin will allow you to share an image or video on one of your boards.

You can publish new pins in one of two ways: by manually creating them or by pulling them from a web page. Manually creating a pin means that you'll have to upload the image or video and enter the address where it's located. It's the default method for Pinterest's pin builder tool. You can select "Save from website" in the pin builder tool, though, to automatically pull the visual content.

The "Save from website" option is faster. After selecting this option in the pin builder tool, enter the web page where a piece of visual content is located. The tool will then reveal all images and videos on that page. Just select the image or video that you want to share and click the "Add Pin" button. There are fields for the title and description. In these fields, you can include text that describes the image or video.

Pinterest will automatically link back to the web page from the pin if you use the "Save from website" option. If you publish a new pin manually, you'll have to enter the web page's address in the pin builder tool, and you'll also have to upload the image or video.

Consider Pinterest Ads

While you can promote your website on Pinterest for free by publishing pins, you should consider using Pinterest's paid advertising service. Known as Pinterest Ads, it can maximize the exposure of your pins so that they are seen by more users.

Pinterest Ads is similar to Facebook's boosted posts service. When you publish a pin, you can choose to advertise it with Pinterest Ads. The pin may display in the search results of Pinterest, users' home feeds and users' category feeds. You can learn more about Pinterest Ads, including how to create them, at business.pinterest.com/en/advertise.

Pinterest is a popular SMM platform. According to Statista, over one-quarter of all marketers use it. You can include Pinterest in your SMM strategy by signing up for a business account, editing your profile and publishing pins to your boards. If you have the available funds, you can go one step further by using Pinterest Ads.

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