Sunday, March 3, 2013

Automating Your Pinterest Marketing Strategy


PinterestReaching out through every social media medium possible is a necessity for success in the online world. If your business or website is currently reaching users via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others, then you know how much of an impact a properly-coordinated marketing campaign can have. Many people do not have the time to juggle several different social media outlets, though, so the question is: how can I simplify this process? Fortunately, those using Pinterest have several options for automating their marketing strategies in order to maximize profitability and time, as covered further in this article.
Automatic Followers
With the number of Pinterest users more than doubling in the past year, it makes sense to begin networking with other users who have like-minded interests. There are many automated following software options available that can be used to find people who are interested in your content and then automatically begin following these people. The unspoken rule when it comes to following other users on social media is that the more people you follow, the more of those people who are going to return the favour. By using this approach, you can passively grow your audience without having to micromanage things.
Schedule Pins and Updates
We all know how frustrating it used to be to keep consistent updates on our Facebook pages – before scheduling options were implemented. With Pinterest, you have access to the same technology, although it has yet to be implemented directly into the Pinterest interface. One of the most popular ways to do this is by using Pingraphy, which gives you the ability to schedule pins down to the minute. There are also a variety of metrics included with Pingraphy that allow you to see who is pinging links on your Pinterest profile, as well as clicks, like and the overall reach your profile is achieving.
Revamp Your Site’s Images
The extent of automating your Pinterest approach should not stop at your Pinterest profile. One ingenious way you can grow your Pinterest following is to add plugins to your website that allow users to pin any given image on your website. One of the best suites available is Pinterest Image Pinner, which works with any WordPress site and creates a ‘Pin It’ button for each image displayed. While this may not necessarily grow the amount of traffic your site receives by a large amount, it will allow your traditional web users to have more opportunities to connect with your Pinterest profile and lead to more shares and pins that can ultimately result in more traffic over the long term.
Display Your Pinterest Elsewhere
While it is easy to add ‘Pin It’ buttons to all of your site’s images (as mentioned above), what about displaying the contents of your Pinterest profile directly on your website? There are several plugins available that can be pinging links from your Pinterest in real-time, including the Pinterest RSS WordPress plugin. Simply install this to your WordPress site and in a few minutes, you can have all of your updates streaming directly to any and all web pages on which you wish to display them.