Pinterest has managed to gain huge momentum since establishing in 2010. In August 2012, it had 23 million unique visitors per month and more referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube combined. Personally, I love Pinterest, but perhaps that’s because I’m female and in the 25-34 age bracket – the most popular age group! That been said it would be stupid for any company, especially those in the consumer retail industry to not include Pinterest in their Digital Marketing Strategy. According to BizRight Insights, Pinterest motivates more online purchases than Facebook. People are also more engaged on Pinterest, with 66% saying they regularly follow and repin retailers.

A shopping Mall in the states is thought to be the first to have introduced a real life Pinterest board. They introduced the board at the mall to celebrate a recent renovation of the store and also have an online Pinterest board with Pins from the mall’s shops show casing their

There are a number of factors to keep in mind when using Pinterest. If used correctly it can help generate increased traffic to your website.

Keep Pins Original
Whilst Pinterest is all about repinning, if you can create and Pin original content, it will be picked up, repinned and liked more often. The key is to be influential and Pin content before anyone else – you need to be the trend setter. You have a far greater chance of increasing followers if you are seen to be pinning original and creative content. Like any social media the key is engagement and you need to figure out what your customers are liking and interested in. What do they want to see? Don’t forget, you can also Pin videos – great for that extra user experience!

Optimise your Descriptions
As with everything digital related, you need to remember to optimise the description of your Pins. What keywords are you aiming to rank for – try to include these within the description if they appear naturally but remember not to keyword spam. You are allocated a 500 word limit in the description box, but the shorter the better. There’s no need to use the full word limit.  Pinterest follows a smilar concept as Twitter whereby hashtags can be used to help categorise your content and allow users to find your content more easily. Include links to your website or blog but remember not to just do the ‘sales pitch’ and include links and pins to other related sites or categories.

Analyse Results
If you are using Google Analytics or another tracking system, track how much traffic Pinterest is driving to your site. What boards are proving more popular and how people are interacting with your Pinterest page. Play around with different concepts, the introduction of Secret boards allows you to set up a board and change Pins, descriptions and so on before you release it to the public.

Happy Pinning!