Ask most bloggers or online business owners and they’ll say there are two main areas they get traffic from. One is organic traffic from Google and other search engines. The other is Pinterest traffic.
But why would Pinterest send traffic to your website? And how does it end up being one of the two top traffic sources for so many digital businesses? Let’s dive into a beginner’s guide to using Pinterest for digital marketing and explain.
What is Pinterest?
The first thing to understand about Pinterest is that it isn’t a social media site. It is a visual search engine. While it does have some social features to it, it is a search and discovery platform. It is Google search but with pictures.
Now, this does mean there’s the very occasional business that doesn’t really work so well on Pinterest. The local garage trying to advertise their car servicing might not find Pinterest hugely useful. It isn’t visual and Pinterest isn’t the best for local traffic.
But for any business with an online presence and who can create some kind of graphics for their content, Pinterest is a must-have part of the marketing arsenal. Unlike social media, which doesn’t really like to send people off the platform, Pinterest is about providing users with information that they follow through to the website to explore.
How does Pinterest send traffic to your website?
Pinterest works like a digital version of those old pin board we had on our walls as kids. You know, where you pinned the magazine page of your favorite boy band? Or the latest sports star you wanted to meet?
The idea is that businesses pin images that relate to their content, products, and services. They use keywords in the descriptions they add to those pins and when someone searches the relevant term, that pin appears.
Let’s say I’m looking for a new cocktail recipe to use my tasty gin with. I might search for ‘gin cocktails’ or ‘drinks for gin’ or even a specific gin cocktail. If you have a recipe on your blog that is for a gin cocktail and you’ve pinned an image of it, then your recipe could appear in my search.
Getting the click
Appearing in search is one of the key ways you drive traffic to your website. But you need to compel me to click your recipe over the others that appear on the screen. That’s where a few factors come together:
- The pin image – in this case, a photo of the cocktail that looks tasty or maybe a shot of the finished drink with ingredients scattered around it
- The pin headline – the words on the pin that tell me what the cocktail is and pique my interest
- The pin description – the part that tells me more about the drink and prompts me to click the image with a call to action to visit the website
Strategy and tactics
Now there’s a bit more to driving traffic from Pinterest than just popping up a nice image with a headline, a good description, and expecting hundreds of people to click. But they might!
Strategy and tactics are the key things to understand. Strategy is the overall why you are using Pinterest and what you want to achieve with it. Tactics are the things you will do to drive that traffic and get in front of your audience.
Building for success
Pinterest is a great platform to market almost any type of online business. It can be amazing if you create content and also if you have products. Even service-based businesses can find they can drive traffic to their websites from it. But you do need to learn the basics so that you can make the most of it.