Pinterest is driving a ton of traffic and we want to make it easy for people to pin our stuff. It might be obvious that you should add pinnable images to your individual blog posts but what about the home page of your web site? This is prime marketing real estate for selling what you do.
Below we will show you how to help people know that your site and posts are pin friendly.
Put a Pin friendly image or graphic text on your home page
Is your web page pinnable? Go to it now and test it using the Pin It button from Pinterest on your browser. What options are shown to choose from?You should make it easy for people to “bookmark” your page on Pinterest. To do that you need pinnable images on your home page. Ideally you will give them several images to choose from. If you have a blog you can put pinnable images in your sidebar. For web sites your header could have a pinnable image. But we suggest having at least 2 options for people to pin.
Just so you know we practice what we preach, we included a very clear image in our sidebar that we have noticed is getting pinned with descriptions such as “great resource for businesses on Pinterest.” We’d love it if you helped us out by pinning it yourself!
Provide Standalone Images of your Product or Service
Example: This page has 3 pinnable images – the book cover image and 2 quotes. Each should have your web site URL somewhere in case it gets separated from your pin. I prefer to have words with the image – like this image from another page on their site:
Put a Call to Action on your Image
Here’s another example. This website is lucky because their image has a call to action. While they never intended to make an ideal pin, it is because it clearly tells what they are and what they do. It has a clear “Listen Now” call to action. This image has been pinned many times and is like free advertising for the online radio station.Notice that the image needs to be better optimized for Pinterest so that it doesn’t cut off the top.
Include What your Product or Service Is in the Image
Today I tried saving something from this email marketing service, but there was nothing worth pinning. I planned to save it in my “Products I Want to Try” board. I saved the header image, erased the navigation at the top and could upload this image and add a description that says what it is. That’s a lot of work. Your customers won’t do that unless they are huge fans.Ideally your image says what your product or service is. In this example, people might think it’s a house cleaning service rather than an email program.
Add Pin It Buttons to your Site
The next step is to make it even easier for people to pin content from your web site or blog by adding a Pin It button. We are testing a new plugin for WordPress that we paid for and really like it (this will be covered in a future post).The nice thing is with some of your home page images, you can enlarge them and rework them to use them as cover photos on Facebook.
Remember: the easier you make it for people to share content from your home page, the more traffic you can drive to your site.
