Pinterest Structure And Components

Lesson 4 Section 2

PINTEREST STRUCTURE

Dominating on Pinterest now is completely different than it was just last year. This is due to many new features that have advanced Pinterest to become a powerful tool. No longer just a simple image sharing site. Advances in site dynamics have led to Pinterest emerging as the top predictive visual search engine. Take advantage of this before your competition does.
The smart marketer MUST start to pay attention or risk being left in the dust by the competition. Why is that you ask? Pinterest is the largest driver of FREE traffic on the internet. Referral website traffic averages 5%, which is second only to Facebook.

The purpose of this module is to establish the different components of Pinterest and how they benefit you. Also different features of the site itself and how they interact with the components

Lesson 3 Video 1

PRO TIP: Pinterest is committed to educating Businesses in the best ways to utilize the platform. And makes multiple resources available.

Pinstitute – interactive workshops to connect with pinners, increase your return from Pinterest
Webinars and resources for small businesses and the Pinterest Blog

Fresh Content

On Pinterest, fresh content is brand new content in the world. It is content or a post that you just wrote. Pinterest prioritizes Pins that have been created by the owner of the website that the Pin links to.

Pinterest understands that you are the creator and will give it the most relevant Pin description and hashtags. Don’t forget to save it to your most relevant board.

Do not save your own content multiple times. You should either go back to the web page to save or upload the Pin image. Both count as “fresh” content. A save does not. Saves from your audience, both original Pins and saves are valuable. Both tell Pinterest that the content is valuable.

Pinterest Components

Smart Feed - Everything on Pinterest revolves around the Smart Feed as it drives the site. When you first sign up for Pinterest, it asks you to choose topics to follow. From that point forward, every time the smart feed comes up, it will contain the most popular pins from the topics that you follow. Not the most recent pins and not the pins of the people you follow, but the most popular pins of the Topics/Categories that you follow. Remember this as it affects everything that you do on Pinterest. The Smart Feed is the algorithm.

Following Tab – This is one of Pinterest's very important new features. It lets your followers see your latest Pins, in the order you save them. It also provides built-in ways for people to find new profiles to follow. This helps you build an even larger, more engaged audience on Pinterest. The recommendations are tailored to each user. They match interests and creators a user has historically interacted with.

For Pinterest to understand that you are a content creator, make sure you have a business account, have your website claimed, and are bringing in your content to Pinterest regularly. Pinterest showcases creators to follow in multiple areas of the app so more people can discover your profile and ideas.

Always share your content yourself first when it is new straight from your website, FB or wherever you are sharing from. Pin it yourself first to establish that it can from you and how it should be indexed. A Best SEO Practice on Pinterest is to make sure your content will resonate with your followers because they’ll see it first. Make sure it’s engaging.

PRO TIP: Your follower count means something a little different on Pinterest than on other sites. Your followers are your biggest fans on Pinterest, and they’re always the first to see your ideas. They’re also first to weigh in on which content they love most.

The more they engage with your Pins, the more your Pins will show in other places across Pinterest — search results, feeds and recommendations — for hundreds of millions of other Pinners to discover

Boards - You can think of Boards as bulletin boards you might put up around your house. This is where you post new content that you find interesting, helpful or inspiring (or all three!) Boards are based on categories. For example, you may have a Board called “Low-Carb Desserts.” Every low-carb dessert recipe, how-to, etc. would be posted to that board. Boards keep you organized and help people find your content.

Secret Boards - These are “bulletin boards” that are private—ideas you want to collect, but don’t want to share with your followers. No one can see these posts unless you make them public later.

PRO TIP: Create a testing board and make it secret. When you first create a pin and want to see how it will look live, pin it to your secret test board. This will allow you to see it live and judge how the colors, font, images go together.

Group Boards - Group boards are officially dead. Don't waste your time as they do not come up in the feeds any longer. The reason for the change is evident from a new feature I will mention in a minute.

Pin - A Pin is the “post” you add to your boards. Pins are the core feature on Pinterest around which everything else revolves. The focal point is an image that includes a link to an external webpage, such as a landing page, blog post, video, etc. The image in your pin does not also have to be on the landing page however, the description of the pin needs to match the landing page title and description as relevance is a ranking factor. The keywords should match or be obviously relevant to each other.

PRO TIP: Include your site’s URL on all Pinterest images. The goal is to get your pins saved many times to reach more people with your brand. If you don’t include a URL watermark on your images, people may forget where the idea even originated. This is also a good way to increase brand recognition.

Comments and Likes - These are the same as on other social media channels, such as Facebook. You can leave a comment on pins you find interesting, or you can click “like” to show you find the pin helpful or interesting. Comments are universal across all instances of a given Pin image. Pinterest is working to unify Pins to ensure that all comments show up on all instances of that Pin.

Pin It Button - This is a widget or plugin you add to your website to make it easy for visitors to pin your articles to one of their Boards. They just click the Pin It Button, and the article is pinned for them to view later. Always share your content yourself when you first create

RePin - Repinning is what someone does when they save one of your Pins to one of their boards. This is the way Pinners share other people’s pins with their friends and followers. It’s like “Sharing” on Facebook or “Retweeting” on Twitter. It is no longer called repining, everything now is pinned and saved. Although, while Pinterest doesn't want it called repinning, it is difficult not too. Look at the viral power that can be created by one engaging pin!

PRO TIP: Pinterest believes that comments and “Tried it”s do increase engagement. The “tried it" signal now require a photo, which gives the response credibility. I’m hoping this ends the plethora of automated comments!

Pin Codes – Pin codes are another new feature. They are Pinterest’s equivalent of the qr code. Pincodes are special codes you can create to share your profile in the real world. When someone sees your Pincode, they'll use Pinterest Lens to scan it. With a business account, you can set up a Pincode to redirect people to your profile or any board.

Pincodes can be created on your desktop browser or in the Pinterest app. Save the Pincode and share it so people can find you and your ideas on Pinterest.

Create a Pincode for your profile or board

Go to your profile or the board
Click on your profile picture or the PinCode button (for boards)
For Profiles: Click Download Pincode
For Boards: Click Change Image to change the Pincode image or click Download Pincode

NEW
PINTEREST COMMUNITIES

The latest big thing in Pinterest marketing are the communities. Pinterest stated in summer that they will no longer show group boards in search and I'm sure this is why. Communities will be replacing the actual group boards and strive to be an improved version.

Pinterest Communities add more social flavor and prove that Pinterest is a social network also. Communities are the new way that pinners can use for communication, for promoting their business to new audiences, for posting links and comments.

Communities are just starting and are in the early stages, so you are fee to create your own with the name of your choice if it is not yet taken.

Lens - Lens gives users a way to open their camera, look at any image and Pinterest’s Lens feature will automatically pick apart the objects in an image.

It can drill down into foods, animals, or even patterns like hexagons. That gives users the ability to start searching for related elements through that.

The main reason why this is so critical is that it means Pinterest may be able to capture that brief moment that a customer might have to just make an impulse purchase.

That moment can be incredibly fleeting, and lowering the friction toward seeing something in the real world and making that purchase can capture that in a way that other companies may not be able.

Video - Now you can upload video to Pinterest organically. You will need a Pinterest business account. In addition, “only advertisers with a valid billing profile can upload a video on ads.pinterest.com or pinterest.com”. You don’t have to promote it, but having an account set up is the requirement for you get access to the option.

First, make sure the following specs are in place:

File type: MP4 or MOV
Max size: 2GB, or less; 30 min, or less
Aspect ratio: Square (1:1); Vertical (9:16)
Resolution: Min 240p
Frame rate: Minimum 25fps

Video should take your Pins to the next level if you take advantage of the medium to tell an engaging story. After evaluating the results of videos from the site so far, Pinterest identified the following items as Best Practices that all of the top engaging videos had in common.

Use these tips as a checklist for your next Promoted Video campaign.

1. Tell a good story
People watch longer when there’s a clear storyline to follow. It doesn’t have to be sequential—just make sure there’s enough going on to keep people engaged. Try to use real video assets, rather than stitching photos together as a video file. Pinterest found that people watched Promoted Videos 32% longer when there was a storyline that built over time, compared to GIFs or stitched-together stills.

2. Hook people in
Make the first few seconds of your story extra compelling so people want to see more. For example, title cards can help you pique viewers’ curiosity.

3. Show your products in action
People spend more time watching videos that spotlight a product in action, giving a glimpse of how to use or wear it.Find a way to work your product into your video's storyline.

4. Add beautiful branding
Content from brands performs well on Pinterest because it’s actionable and comes from a trusted source. It’s best to show your brand name or logo within the first few seconds of your video—or just leave it up for the whole thing, keeping it in proportion and not overbearing.

5. Show, don’t tell
On Pinterest, videos autoplay with sound off. Some people will turn on the sound, but you shouldn’t rely on dialogue or audio to do the heavy lifting. Instead, use captions or text overlay to help tell your story.

6. Keep it short and simple
We’ve found that shorter videos perform best on Pinterest, and recommend that you keep your videos under twenty seconds.

Buyable Pins - Buyable Pins let users buy your products right from Pinterest with just a few clicks. The native integration makes it fast and simple to turn your products into Buyable Pins.

250 million active monthly users
93% of pinners use Pinterest to plan purchases
87% of users have purchased because of Pinterest

Frictionless purchasing

Customers can discover and buy your products right from Pinterest, reducing friction and improving conversion for a seamless Ecommerce experience.

No additional work

Any product pinned from your store will automatically become a Buyable Pin, with no need to create additional listings. The distinguishing feature is the blue Buy it button.

Built to convert

Pinterest’s optimized checkout saves shipping and payment info so purchases can be completed with just two clicks.

Buyable Pins have an added bonus, Pinterest has no fees. Your only cost to sell is the cost pf your credit card processing.

PRO TIP: Always double check the link to a pin before you repin/save it. When you send people to broken links, it not only decreases your marketing effectiveness, it also loses you favor with followers.

Pinterest is laid out from the top down starting with the feeds, not the opposite, starting with the pin as the focus. By doing so, you are left with a very structure environment. .

If done correctly, Pinterest can be an enormous amount of traffic. Guess what? It is Free. Our goal is to teach you how to leverage the unique processes to open up a new market. Including, driving what could be a lot of traffic to destination link.

You will learn how to categorize content and maximize the advantages of the Algorithm requirements. Benefit from the alignment of your strategy to drive relevance from the top down to the Pin. Your Pins become strong traffic sources for many keyword phrases to the same target.

Stolen Pins

Pinterest is verifying that landing pages live up to the Pin content. On your own Pins, file a DMCA. You can also report through the Pinterest help channel. Include the Pin URL.

On others’ Pins, report that This Pin isn’t useful, the Pin doesn’t appear on the page. You can alert the content owner so they can file a DMCA. Don’t flag it as spam because that could hurt the Pin creator. Report specific domains that are stealing content through the help channel.

Re-using Content

Many times on FB or other platforms you will see someone with a new blog post repost the same post over and over again. That is all wrong. When you write an article, generally, your goal is to make certain points. When you post an item, not everyone sees it. But multiple postings of the same post creates duplicate content and alienates followers.

However, if each post focuses on a different point being made, that makes the multiple posts unique in their own way This has the added benefit of helping your SEO because it creates back-links for multiple terms and keywords.

Follow this exact strategy on Pinterest. If you have poor performing pins, trying pinning it again from your site, this time using a different title and description.

When To Pin

The best time to Pin is when your followers are online and active.

Pinners are more active on certain days and times than others. When Co-Schedule analyzed 10 studies to find the best times to post on social media, the data told us:

Saturdays are definitely the best for Pinning, and specifically from 8–11 p.m.
Next up is any day between 2–4 a.m. or 2–4 p.m.
Try Pinning on Fridays at 3 p.m.

It will be different for every account. Use your analytics data to determine when the best times are for your account.

Recap:

Before moving on to the next Lesson, take some time to familiarize yourself with the different features listed in this module. The best way to make the most out of this exercise is to look at competitors and/or top Pinterest boards in your categories. Get an idea of what works in each of different structural points mentioned in this module.

Human nature is to pick apart the competition identifying and laughing at their faults. We do so because it makes us feel good yet this does nothing for your business.

I challenge you as I do every client, find the things that they do exceptionally well. You need to be able to do these same things better than they do if you want to be at the top.

Identify why they are at the top of the pack, incorporate those features into your own business and make them better. You cannot beat the best if you are not the best.