Everyone knows the basics of Pinterest, but not many talk about what you should not do.
Below are some tips and tricks to avoid while using Pinterest for business:
Profile Picture
ALWAYS have a relevant profile picture. There are 2 camps when it comes to this topic for Pinterest. You can have a profile picture that is your logo or have one that is the "face" or principal of your company to humanize the account. This topic of discussion goes along with all other social media platforms, but for Pinterest in particular, I feel it is best to have your logo. In the other platforms you can create background images to help brand your page, but with Pinterest, you just get the profile picture, so you want to make sure that people recognize your brand. If you have multiple social media accounts, I suggest having your profile picture be the same one you use on the other accounts. This way when people visit your page, they know they are interacting with a familiar brand.
Descriptions
Unlike other social media platforms, Pinterest allows you to have an exceptionally long character length for your posts aka "pins." Each pin or repin can have up to 500 characters, but that does not always mean you must use all 500. According to Dan Zarrella of Hubspot, the pins that get repinned the most have a description length between 200 and 300 characters.In my opinion, I feel that you need to make your descriptions count, but you do not need to have a mini book in your descriptions either. You want people to repin and then visit your site, if you give them all the information they need within the pin description, they have no purpose to go to your site.
Each description you all to your pin is searchable, almost like a mini google so optimize your pins so people can easily find your content. Pinterest did at one time support hashtags aka the pound symbol (#), which is heavily used on Twitter in their descriptions for people to search, but it has recently gotten rid of supporting hashtag searches with their new update. Because of this update it is not necessary to have tons of hashtags, nor was it before in my opinion, so for future reference do not go hashtag crazy.
Accidentally Follow Spammers
Now spammers on Pinterest are tricky little devils so you need to be careful. Most people see someone is following them and then automatically follow them back. A lot of the times there are spammers on Pinterest following you, so be sure to not follow them back. Here are some things to look for:
- Large numbers of followers and people they are following but:
- They only have a handful of boards--most of which do not correlate together.
- They have no description of themselves or website connected to their description.
- Low number of actual pins.
- Most of the spammers that have followed me fill this description, here is an example below. This particular spammer has 4,751 followers and is following 14,689.
Avoid these pitfalls and you will be well on your way to a well run business Pinterest page and a strong following, granted you take the advice from the previous Pinterest articles ;)
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