How to grow your Pinterest following

1. Introduction : Hello, welcome to how to Grow your Pinchest Following. My name is Donna and I'm going to be teaching you all kinds of things about growing your following. These are some of the key outcomes of this course. We're going to look at pin consistency, pin, good quality images, keywords, looking at confirming your website, rich pins. We're going to figure out what those are and what to do with those, and optimizing your website to be Pinterest friendly. We're going to cover all the aspects to help you boost your following basically. Let's get started. 2. Pin consistently: We're going to cover off pinning consistently, just like any other social platform. Consistent and frequent pinning is the way to grow your audience. Basically, it keeps them hooked on your content. It's the same with any other platform. If you leave it alone, nothing will happen. The more that you're pinning, the more likely people are going to start seeing your content. However, if you have a global audience, timing is going to be really important because of different time zones. For example, if your key audience and who you want to talk to is basically UK based, for example, then you're going to be having to look at the time, the right times for that time zone. For the UK, it's usually first thing in the morning, late at night, usually more late at night from say seven on to about half, ten usually. But if you work on like say the US, then you'll find that it shifts probably to the AM side of things. But if you want to hit like absolutely everybody in different time zones then spread your content throughout. Because then different time zones will see different things. You'll get maximum exposure and hopefully leads to lots of clicktures and comments, which will be great. We're just going to cover through why you need to pin consistently. First of all, frequent pinning keeps your content fresh, visible on users feed. Like I just mentioned about the key times to post this is why it matters. Because it will get seen on your users feed. Because it is fresh, it is new, it will be at the top of the feed. Also CO boost regularly adding new pins helps Pinterest algorithm recognize your content as relevant and rank it higher in search results. It's a bit like Google or when you're writing a blog or something because it's fresh, it's relevant. It gets ranked higher depending on what people are searching for. Exactly the same as Pinterest. Finally, it builds trust. If you're consistently doing stuff, it showcases that you're really dedicated to pins providing lots of interesting content, that type of thing. If you leave it, you will see a massive drop in impressions and things like that. You want to basically keep that impressions going up rather than down. Even if you pin a couple of times a day, it is actually keeping it rolling over. We've talked about why it matters. Now we're going to talk about the frequency. Start small. Begin with a manageable pace of say, three to five pins per week. It is entirely up to you how much time you have dedicated to this. If you can do the five pins per week, that is keeping things rolling, that is keeping your account relevant. Pinterest is going to say, oh, they're still active. Then you can gradually increase that once you've got a bit more time or you've got some template set up already, it is easier, the process start increasing that load. Everyone who starts out usually either goes absolutely mad and pins lows and low lows and then nothing. It's better to do a small amount that you can manage over a longer period of time. Also, quality over quantity. Focus on creating high quality and engaging pins. Don't just throw any old pin out there. I need to put three of them, five a day. And that'll Do you want to be creating pins? When people think, see it, they're like, whoa cool. What's that? All right. Click, right. I want to find out more. That's what you should be focusing on. Another thing I would say is analyzing the data, track your pin performance, and adjust your frequency based on what you discover. You might find that you are pinning at say, 10:00 every night. There's five pins per week and it's not really doing much. You might change your strategy and go, actually I'm going to try at 08:00 next week. See what happens. The great thing with pin chest is it analyzes your Pin performance. It can tell you what's working, what's not. It's matters to go back and check. You could try different things for a month and see what works. It is all about trial and error. Do not worry if you don't get the results, you think straight off the bat, don't worry. The last thing is, when it comes to Pinterest, you need to think about your goals. Are you aiming for brand awareness, website traffic, or product sales? Because you need to think about tailoring your pins to this. For example, if you want people to go to your website, basically what you would do is you might include on that pin at the bottom your website address. Or in the description you might include the website address. The link itself will obviously hopefully go to the website as well, but everything needs to be pointing to your website if that is your goal. If there's a product sale, it would be a different thing. You'd have a different call to action. You might say, hey by now. And then you might share your shop name or something like that. Or say, I'll visit my C store or however you want to do it. But there's different wording for different goals, you need to think about that when it comes to it. Remember consistency and frequency, they're not rigid rules. It's entirely up to you what your idea of consistency and frequency is. However, you do need to start small, I would say. If you're new to Pinterest, start really small and make sure you're consistently posting good quality posts all of the time. Experiment, see what works for me. Pinterest was about learning what worked, what didn't. I changed different styles of my post because they weren't doing what I wanted them to do. I tried video content, which worked really, really well. A bit of animation works fantastically as well. Or you can just do static posts. The design, you could play around with it, you could try different styles. But it's all about experimenting and finding out what works for you and your audience, basically. Hopefully, this is giving you some insight into thinking about how many posting to do. Set yourself a plan, you could do it on like a Sunday evening. I'm going to do five posts. I'm going to schedule for that week. Every week on that Sunday, do a couple of posts, pin them, and make sure you stick to that every Sunday. Or you could do the entire month, once a month, and just get them over and done with. It's entirely up to you. But if you do want to grow your pincher scan, the more posts you do, the better. But it is all about, in the beginning, getting your frequency down, making sure you consistently post. Figuring out what works for you, what people are interested in, and the best times to post. 3. Pin good quality images only: In this Essm, we're going to cover off about using good quality images in our pins. I'm not going to cover about using text or anything, I'm just going to focus on images. There's a reason why, because when it comes to creating pins with a text, it's pretty straightforward when it comes to using images. There's a little bit more thought needed. I'm going to cover a few tips here. High quality images are essential. You can use human faces in them. Sometimes you'll find that people say no, don't use human faces. Definitely don't ever use like a blurry face or pixelated image. It just comes across as not being good quality image. But don't be afraid to use human faces. For example, if you are promoting a course or something like that that's relevant to you, use images of yourself as long as they're good quality images. Don't be afraid not to use them because they do come across as good quality. They evoke motion, they create connection. That's what you're trying to do on Pinterest is to create connections with other people. Tip number two, backgrounds are really important. You can use backgrounds to basically highlight other things. For example, you could use a very quite neutral background and then have some text to stand out because that's basically what you want to focus on. It's entirely up to you. It can actually tell a story, for example, or be relevant to what you're talking about. For example, you might be talking about a place in Switzerland. Then you'd find an image, like a background image about Switzerland because it's relevant. So think about your backgrounds as well. There are plenty of stock images sites out there, so you can find key images to actually use. But think about your background and all your other elements and how they fit together. But always try and choose photos that are good quality or you can zoom in potentially on certain things. It'd be great to highlight things. For example, especially if you're cooking or something and your pin is about a recipe and you want to highlight about like a specific thing, you can zoom in and actually make that the focus of your pin. That's why a background could really matter. Color palette is really important. What I would say is when you have a color palette that you like, you've been playing around with, try and stick to it if you can. Most people, when they're designing pins, will have key palette, say 34 colors that they can work through. Otherwise, your palette is going to basically change with basically every single post. But what I will say, when you're choosing images, try and do it so it doesn't clash with the other colors that you tend to use. You will find like if you're using something with a really green, dark green, you're going to try and stick to maybe lots of whites and stuff so that they don't like blur. Basically, it's a post that no one can really see or read properly. You need to be thinking about your color palette. I can't tend to stick to four main colors, my palette. And I go through them differently. But I choose images that relate more to those colors. Or I move my pins around so nothing clashes. Tip number four. Lighting in contrast really matters. When you're choosing the right images, you want a nice light color. You need a really well balanced lighting. Like, for example, the image on the right hand side, this beautiful flower. The lighting is perfect, Everything is clear. My eye is drawn to certain parts of that, but it is a nice image and it's got really nice lighting. Once images are like darkened or there's certain filters as it and it starts to distort. It is when it becomes not a great photo to choose, you're looking for those eye popping basically images. The final tip I would say explore diverse formats. What I mean by this is try portery images, square landscape. Experiment with the images that you choose. It's really important to play around and see what kind of works for your audience. As you can see on the right hand side, there's a bit of a mixture of different sizes and things like that, but they still convey the same thing. The quality of the image is still there, It still stands out as well. Have a look at finding these high quality images. Well, I would say if you are using things like Canva, start creating folders on the things that you're finding from different sites, stock image sites. Cava does have a massive library, but there are plenty of other sites out there that might have your content that you'd love to include on your pins. But look for the images that either you can think about the human side of things, Some that will go really well with your color palette. Sometimes that hard to do, that's why sometimes it's best to have four colors in your palette so you can basically mingle them quite well. Think about the lighting, it, if the image is a bit too dark or the lighting is a bit awful, something is a bit blurred and tend to stay away from those images unless you can cover that blur part. For example, on this one of those images has a bit of a sun glaring through, but that could be very distorting at the top of the page. You could put text across it if you want. You can start positioning other elements. I don't mean to just throw the image away because I know it's not great because it's got this tiny bit of blur. But I love the rest. Keep it. But think about what you can do positioning your other elements that you're going to add to your pin. Hopefully, this gives some insight into thinking about images. Have a look at some other stock websites. Honestly, there are so many out there that are free and start downloading them and popping them in folders because they will help you remain consistent and save you a lot of time. When, for example, talking about something specific, you can go, right, I've got a folder on that, right? I'm going to use this image, or I'm going to use this image. It will save you time in the long run. 4. Write keyword rich descriptions: So let's look at writing keyword rich descriptions in your Pin description. Here are some helpful tips to help you incorporate keywords into what you're writing and basically help you stand out. First of all, you need to start strong with relevant keywords. Use the first couple sentences to include primary keywords. Include those long tail phrases. You will have to do a bit of homework before this before you start creating all your Pinterest pins. Keywords are the things that basically summarize basically what you're pinning about. You need to make sure that these keywords are relevant for people to find them and things like that. The best way to do this, I find is go on to Pinterest and type in a keyword and see what it brings up If it's bringing up the same content that you're going to be posting about, that's a great keyword. And keep doing that, think of some keywords that are relevant to what you're pining about. You might want to have an Excel sheet, that's what I do. And pop them together just so that you know where they all are. Then you want to be clear and concise. When you create an description, stay within the 500 character limit. It will warn you if you go over it, so you will have to cut it down. But try and limit your character on that. When you're writing description, try and do it in a natural engaging way. Don't just be like this pin is about, people aren't interested, People are going to click on your pin and go, oh, what was that actually about? And then you're going, well, this is Dad. I'm an expert in this visit, my website to find out more about really cool tips about this or to read this blog if it is, you're following on from someone clicking on it to finding out more. Also trying to highlight the benefits or solution. Briefly mention that you don't need to go into depth. You don't want to give everything away sometimes depending on what it is that your goal of on your Pinterest is, or if you want people to go to your website, you don't want to be giving everything away. You just want to basically entice people to want to go to your website. Another tip is to always include a call to action. Tell users what they need to do. Next, visit my blog, read my recipe. Find out the full recipes. Here, shop. Now, that type of thing, you need to be including that as well. The final thing, when it comes to Pinterest, they're not overly big on hash tags because what they do is they look for keywords in your descriptions. When it comes to it, I would say you would do a bit of a description text and then you can include a couple or three to five basically hashtags if you want to or you don't have to use them or you can use lows. It's entirely to you have a little bit of research, have a look at what other people are doing. But at the minute, when it comes to hashtags, it is basically another way of writing down a keyword, basically out of your text. If you look on the left, this is basically a brief description of side hustles. There's a bit like looking for side hustles, engaging line look no further tells you a little bit. And then there's a few hashtags relevant to that as well. But you don't always have to include them, because as long as your description has enough keywords are relevant, then that's it, you're good. But if you do find that you're struggling with fitting them into what your description is, then you can put them at the bottom. But play around, by the way, there is no set rule for hash tags when it comes to pints. See what works, just have a think about that. I'm going to just show you an example, by the way. So in this example, the pin is image of delicious looking chocolate cake. I really love any of those in the description. This is a bit of a nice and quick, easy description. You're talking about the chocolate cake you're talking about, It's a recipe. It's step by step instructions. And they've included some key words. These key three key words are relevant because you look at cake baking, you look at dessert recipes, you look at chocolate lovers. Because most people look that term up because they want to find chocolate related recipes. That's a really good example when you're looking at your board description, this is where you basically pop all your pins and stuff. You need to be thinking about descriptions on these as well. It's not just your pins issue. Your board descriptions really matter as well because they'll get found as well. When it comes to it, you need to explain briefly what topics your board is covering. Those are kinds seen as keywords. Also include keywords throughout descriptions, but avoid keyword stuffing. What that means is don't just sharp load keywords on it, and then that's it, There's no description, just load keywords. It will be seen as a bad thing. You need to be sticking with the keywords relevant to this board. For St ⁇ Patrick's Day, you would look up St. Patrick's Day, Google or on Pinterest. See what terms come up and you can try and incorporate them into it. You can use hashtags into it as well, a bit like pinscription. If you are struggling, you can add them in for each of the boards. I would say explain what's on it, but what the benefits of this board is. For example, side dishes. You can always say the benefits of this board are, basically, I'll be updating this weekly with some great new side dishes. And then stick to that goal if you can. Because it just gives people an insight into how active you are, how engaged you are, and the point of your board as well. Do read those board descriptions. By the way, trying keep it to like 12 sentence, very clear, very informative. Your descriptions. You do not need to spend absolute ages doing this. By the way, trying to limit it to like 12 sentences, you're just basically telling people what the board is going to basically do for them. I'm just going to show you a bit of a quick example for this one. Healthy and delicious meals for busy families is what the board is called in the description. They've just put quick and easy recipes perfect for busy week nights. Fine, nutritious, and kid approved meals for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. Healthy recipes, family meals, quick and easy. That is it that is summing up that you've got recipes in there. It's nutritious, it's kid approved the various meals of the day. And they've included some hash tags which are relevant. That covers pretty much everything that this board is about. You can use AI tools if you choose to to help, but try and tweak them to be a bit more flurry, a bit more like you're talking. Sometimes they can be all over the place. I would find depending on which AI tool you're using. But yeah, just keep it nice and flurry, nice and natural descriptions and that type of thing. If you do have a Pinterest account in a minute, spend some time sorting your boards out, I would say when you create a board, you often forget about it. You forget that they have a description on it. You'll just have to click on the board, click into it, go into the setting side of things and update that description. And spend some time updating all of them. If you're very new to Pinterest, when you are creating your boards, get the description sorted because then you won't forget about it. 5. Confirm your website: Let's look at confirming your website. Confirming your website and pin chess is our great first step in building trust with your new audience. It will help you later on in life. The reason for this is it's to do with rich pins, which we will come to in the next lesson. But for now we're just going to look at how to get started with it. Linking your website to Pinterest is really straightforward. There are lots of guides out there, but Pinterest tells you basically how to do it. What you'll do is you'll head over to Pinterest settings. Look the website field on the left hand side. Click Confirm Website and you will see this screenshot on the right hand side. It'll just say claim to account. You have an option for websites. If you do have a shore fantastic, just follow through the steps on that. But for now we're just going to cover websites basically. Step two is to choose your verification method. Basically you opt in for adding an HTML file to your website code or you add a meta tag to your website's header. It does tell you how to do it. Don't panic if you cannot find where you need to do do but for Google on your website platform, for example. If using Wicks, you can always contact someone or you can have a little search on how to add it in. It's relatively, really easy just to add that tiny bit of code onto your website. What it does is it's basically saying, yeah, this is my site and it links to two, then you just need to follow on the screen instructions. Pin chest will help you guide through, There's a little icons on the process when you're trying to claim it and it gives you a bit more information about what needs to do. It is just about adding that code onto your website. Once you've done it, you've done it. Don't panic. As you can see on the right hand side, I've actually claimed my website. Basically that's linked now and you can see that it's there. Then once you confirmed, you will also see this as well. You'll see that web address exactly where mine is and then you can basically start to see different things happening. Having that link basically means that when you go on your profile, that link will be shown, it will show that link. If you didn't claim your website, you wouldn't see it. It's really important to add it in because when people go onto your profile, they might love your profile, what you're doing, your pins, and they might want to go straight to your website. This is basically how they would do it. I would get on board doing that. If you've started your pin chest account, do this. If you've got a website, if you've already got a pin chest account and you haven't done this. I was just doing this now because it will help with your traffic. Because if your main goal is basically to get people to go to your website, then you need to be doing this really because it's another way for people to find out your website. It's quick and easy and it takes less than 3 minutes to do. 6. Using rich pins: Another way to grow your account is to use rich pins. We're just going to cover off what they are. Pinterest defines rich pins as pins that include extra information right on the pin itself, non inscription, not in the URL that you have to provide the pin itself. There are different types of pins. You've got an app, which means you can download your app instantly. Movie pins, that gives you ratings cast in file reviews, that type of thing will take you to something with movie reviews, recipes, take you to a recipe. Direct Arts, same thing. Product pins stand out because it can offer real time pricing, availability. All of that place pins, guide pins with maps, addresses, and all of that. There's different types of pins that you can do. Why are they so great? We've talked about the type they are extra. This is four reasons why you should be thinking about them. First of all, they stand out from a crowd. They're visually distinct, They grab attention, making your content really shine. If you look on the left, the one in the orange is actually a rich pin that actually takes you directly to an landing page, which is really useful what it's doing, it's basically cutting out the step where you click on a pin and there's a description, and here's a website, click here, it's missing that step out. It's basically click done. It's taking away that step, which is nice. Another thing that makes them so great, they boost your engagement a lot more. They encourage more interaction. That type of thing, people find they're a bit easier than normal pins. The click or his website click, sometimes this is a bit easy, the journey for a customer they can drive sales. Product pins are really good, gives you purchase options. The whole experience is just easier. When buying a product, someone sees something, I want that click onto it. They can also keep pinners informed. Price drop alerts, updating information, just keeping basically pinners really engaged. The way to do this, there are three ways to enable which pins. You need to add specific meta tags to your website code. If you're very techy, this is going to be a breeze. If you don't panic. There are guides. There are loads of information sources out there that can help talk you through. You can even speak to people on Pinterest. Or if you're really, really not sure how to do something, you can always ask a friend to help you. But once you do it, you'll get into the rhythm of doing these types of things. It is easier once someone shows you is pretty straightforward. It is all about website code. So if you can figure out where on your website put the code, then you'll find this easy. You can use a plug in. Many content management systems offer plug ins that automatically add rich Pin meta tags to your pages. You can also add the code manually if you're comfortable with coding. So if you've got experience or you can use a validator. Once you've added the meta tags, use the validator to sure everything is set up correctly because there's nothing worse than you spending all this time and it didn't work. You don't want that, but these are the three ways that you'll find on the Pinterest site to add them. But have a think about this, because when it comes to creating rich pins, there are some pros cons with them. If you're starting out, don't panic. Focus on creating your account. Focus on creating good quality pins. Getting used to doing it, and this could be a future thing, because this is just like, this is the next step into growing your Pinterest account. But spend some time looking up rich pins and why you should do it. How straightforward it is. You can play around to see if this is pretty straightforward to you. And then you might be, actually, yeah, I'm going to do that. It is a bit of extra time. It all depends on if you have time, but there's something to consider, It's just another way to the engagement on Pinterest. 7. Optimise your website to be Pinterest friendly: We are going to just talk about optimizing your website to be Pinterest friendly. This is a must strategy. It drives traffic, it's really good for engagement. It just creates a firmer link between your Pinterest and your website. There's one way of doing it which is integrate in pin buttons. It just lets you, visitors, save your content with a simple click by adding the pinches official Pin button on the right I've just shown you, somebody will click on that comes up with pin, then basically they pin it to whatever board they want. What I will say is make sure when you're adding the Pint to a specific image that the image clearly shows what it's about. For example, the example I've given you, it's got an image with some text. When they pin it to their own board, they know exactly what this is. Don't just add the Pint to every single image on your website, because if people did pin it, they won't know what it's about. Another thing as well, it's a good idea to look at the dimensions of post sump interest just because if you've got a long rectangle banner and you've used pin on it, it can be quite small to read on someone's board. You can always do like a square, basically sized image with that pin on it clearly defining what it is that people are looking at basically. It's just easier for people to reference back to when they click on the. I know exactly, that was a blog. I really liked Boba. It's worth having a think about that. But once you've done it and you got into the habit of doing it, it could be a really good traffic source. Also blog about it is really important idea. Dedicate a blog post to showcasing your pins boards, your pins, highlighting the value of it. You'll be surprised when people go on websites and people do this, how much traffic is driven onto this? Because there are a lot of people on Pinterest. Sometimes people forget about it, but there are a lot on that will be like I prefer Pinterest to say using Ingram or things like that because it's a bit more engaging for them. They can search for what they want, that type of thing. But you can encourage, basically, your readers to follow you on Pinterest, especially if you've got a really high engagement on your website. This is a great thing to talk about. You can refer back to the blog as well. It's really good idea to do cross promoting across platforms. This is coming away from your website a bit, but mention your interest present on all of your social media accounts that you have. What you'll find is people who are interested in Pinterest are normally on another site. If you are going oh there too now thing they're like, oh yeah, and they might be more willing to go onto your account and start following. Same as adding it to your e mail signatures. It's just a reminder to say, I'm on Pinterest. You're just letting people know that you are running that, also collaborating with influences as well. It depends on how active you're on social media or other people that have got really good websites. If you're a guest speaker or anything like that, if you've got another online presence, utilize cross promote the fact that you're on Pinterest. And talk about that you're on there and you're very engaged and things like that. But it's really important just to think of different ways that you can utilize all the other things that you do and push it to the one place which is Pinterest. Hopefully this course has given you some great insights into how to grow your following. Like I said, if there's anything specific that you're like, oh, I want to try that but I'm not really fully sure. Google go on to Pinterest itself. They have so many helpful guides on how to do some things. It's a great resource, honestly. They will answer anything you can always reach out to them. They're very engaging with their support. Hopefully have a little crack at the project that I've given all of you. And then pop it in the projects tab. And then we can give each other feedback. Because it's really important to get a good understanding of the ways that you can actually grow your Pinterest account. Once you've knuckle down and you've figured out what works for you, amazing, you can keep doing it. And before you know it, you've grown an amazing Pinterest following and you're reaching the goals that you want to.