Building A Winning Strategy

You now understand the basics of Pinterest and the different components that make up your account.  This module is about building a winning strategy beginning day 1 that focuses all of your efforts towards exposure , engagement, new business prospects and traffic.  

If you understand how the system works and what it looks for, hitting those requirements puts you ahead of the pack and quite possibly in a position to mushroom the amount of traffic that could come flowing in your direction.

Understand that Pinterest is not a mature algorithm.  It has been changing over the last few years and depends on you as content creators to help it classify your content so it can put it in front of the right people.  Stop, read that again so it sinks in.   It depends on you as content creators to help it classify your content so it can put it in front of the right people.  

What do you get out of it?

If you do it right and provide Pinterest with relevant, high-quality content, classified correctly, then you will have thousands, possibly millions of people exposed to your content that are already interested in it and have indicated that they are.  This is at a cost potential of ZERO or very little.

Strategy

Your strategy should have several components.  

• Structured maximizing the algorithm
• Research and target your audience with platform tools
• Create and pin quality, engaging content
• Grow your followers
• Landing page
• Ensure you are able to handle the traffic

The Algorithm & Where You Fit

The Pinterest algorithm is built like a giant tree with a trunk and branches, with smaller branches and leaves, those leaves are your pins. The smaller branches are your sections. The larger branches are your boards and they all tie into the trunk. Navigation through the algorithm is done with categories and topics.

When you first join Pinterest it asks you to choose five topics of interest. Those five topics and the most popular pins from those five topics are what make up your smart feet.  It is not shown by the newest pins first.  It's shown by the pins with the most engagement, saves, comments, & everything else.

So the dilemma here is how to get your pins in front of people that are interested in your product and its' use. You can go the popular Amazon route and do giveaways and promos on Pinterest.   PPC is called promoted pins, which we will cover later on.   Or you can just keep your money in your pocket and be smarter than the algorithm as you set everything up.

Utilize The Naming Structure To Increase Exposure

Optimizing for this naming structure will give you a serious advantage. It increases exposure of your content. Optimizing for this structure across all your properties will aid your SEO across all search engines.

Let me explain. Pinterest utilizes an algorithm that categorizes items according to topics. There are thousands of them. Studies show that using Pinterest category names as your top-level board names increases the engagement of your content. This is because each category has a feed. Using a category name increases the chances of appearing in the category feed which will catapult engagement and reach.

Sections named using long tail keywords related to the top level topics further categorizes the content. It refines Pinterest's understanding of the content. If you have 8 sections under the main board, each about a sub-topic. It further refines and defines the subject matter.

Mimicking Pinterest's naming structure benefits your content, images, descriptions, and sharing effectiveness. It will also make the non-performing content easier to identify and do something about.  The Pinterest Smart Feed is the algorithm at work right in front of you.

Optimize For The Pinterest Algorithm

On Pinterest, your actions and pins send signals to the algorithm. You want to send them the correct signals to get the most engagement and visibility for your pins and boards. The techniques presented in this workshop are laid out in such a way as to make the best use of the signals that you send.

Take this Tip seriously. Pinterest wants you to pin your pins to the most relevant board first. Multiple content creators have tested various methods and have broken down what that apparently means.

When posting a pin for the first time. Always post it to a recognized Pinterest topic/category. This ensures that your pin has the best chance of getting exposure. Tip, Make sure that all of your top-level boards have names that match exactly to Pinterest topics. This ensures the best chance of exposure, engagement and the traffic that both of those bring.

Pinterest counts on us, the content creators, to develop and send the correct signals to aid their algorithm in the proper cataloging of the content. Then the end user goes and pins it to a variety of boards some semantically correct some not.

Categories And Topics

Each category and topic on Pinterest has a feed that people can subscribe to.  Each Feed is filled with pins related to that topic. Pinterest only has 36 top level categories.    Placement in those feeds relies on relevance and engagement.

Pinterest:  Categories

Forget the terms categories and topics.  Instead think keywords, keyword phrases and long-tail keywords.   Keywords drive search results, provide relevance, and most important, keywords drive traffic.  When we refer to categories and topics, we are actually referring to Keywords, Keyword phrases and long-tail keywords.

Pinterest Category List

Power Tool  Pinterest Category List

Under kayaking we have subtopics If we chose kayaking gear, it is also filled with sub topics, and those include other sub-topics, breaking out all of the different sub categories

Example: 1 Work Smarter Not Harder

Referring to the image above, as a kayak seller, I would name a mainboard kayaking, I name another main board water sports.  Within the water sports board I name a section kayaking and pin the same kayaking pins to the board as I do the other kayaking main board.  

I have two main boards named the way I do because they are top level boards and it is an exposure strategy.  We have found main boards carry a little more influence.  Also your goal is to be in as many feeds as possible.

Within the kayaking main board, I name a section kayaking gear and I fill it with relevant pins related to kayaking gear.  I also name a section kayaking tips as well as a section called kayaking outfit. 

Using search, I enter kayaking gear and I see what topics to name the sections within kayaking gear.  Within each section I create High value pins and title them with the appropriate long tail keyword phrase that applies to the pin and section name.  

In a matter of less than 5 minutes we have established structure and high value phrases that are searched positioning ourselves for success.  The people conducting these searches are not led to it by an ad.  This is their initiative leading them to these searches.  This is not cold traffic.  These are the people that you want.

Example:2

If I were a mountain bike seller. I might have a board for mountain biking for beginners, mountain biking trails, mountain biking gear, mountain biking photography, mountain biking accessories and so on. This enables you to hone in on specific sets of long tail keywords per board.  Remember Im saying mountain biking.  There is a entire separate list under mountain bike.

Looking at the category headers, Outdoors has 8.2 million and Sports has 228k followers, with an additional 37k Tried it. Your goal is engagement and reach. By posting the initial pin to a top-level category, you might actually make one of these front pages. the traffic, free traffic could be unbelievable

Instead of having one Mountain bike board with its sole traffic stream, I've now created multiple different traffic streams to my boards, broadening reach and exposure. Then keep the boards fresh with newer content and share the boards on your different social media platforms.

Now you have compounded their reach and effectiveness by sharing them with other platforms potentially multiplying the engagement and reach possible.  Something to note.  Mountain Bike and Mountain Biking are separate topics each with their own sections, boards and influencers.

In addition to the top level category boards of Outdoors and Sports, we also have the topic board Mountain Bike with 12859 followers.  Im sure you can also set up an identical board structure under Mountain Biking.  

Based on the section listed is the first paragraph of this section, assume that I also set up 7 sections under the Mountain Bike Board.     Let's say each board gets 10 visits a day, with 5 of them clicking through to the site or products.  Of the 7 boards, that would be 70 visitors a day with 35 of them clicking through to the site.

If you built this out the right way, and have say 3 sections (sub-boards) under each of the 7 sections each also getting 10 visits and 5 clicks to your product, it adds up quick.  That would be an additional 105 site visits every day plus the 35 and not including what could be coming from the three top level category feeds with potentially thousands of visitors.  To have that much content is work, but not as much as it appears. We will cover that a bit more in depth in another lesson. 

Over 140 daily visits to your product just form several well placed boards.  Taffic is a numbers game. The key is and always has been the number and variety of sources that you develop.

Recap

If you do it right, you get in more than one feed, which will exponentially skyrocket your traffic.   Results will be based on your actions.  you might clobber yourself with traffic and bury yourself.   Have a backup plan.

Next Lesson: SEO For Pinterest