How Pinterest Can Increase Your Firm’s Website Traffic

When most business owners and marketers think of social media marketing, they typically jump to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as the premier platforms to promote their content. Pinterest, a largely visual social media platform, is often overlooked as a social media marketing tool, but if used correctly, it can have surprisingly great results and increase traffic to your website. In fact, posting articles and images to your Pinterest can be helpful to gaining new followers who might find you on Pinterest and can find your website from there.

As Pinterest functions differently from other social media platforms and is not typically used for legal marketing, it's important to realize what steps you can take to insure that you get attention on Pinterest. Doing so will help redirect that traffic to your website. With that in mind, here are some tips and tricks you can use to optimize the Pinterest experience and get noticed.

Create Pinterest Boards with Keywords

While some social media platforms are lacking in search capabilities, Pinterest has great search features and is primarily used as a content discovery platform. Take advantage of this by using keywords in the titles of all of the Pinterest boards that you create. You also need to make sure that you select a category for each Pinterest board, as this will further boost your search result. If you are unsure, Pinterest's algorithm can recommend categories for you.

You should also use the description box before you pin any new pictures to your Pinterest board to write a short and succulent description that is both shareable and actionable to your products and services. Keep in mind that people can use Twitter to share your pins, so you will ideally want to keep these descriptions under the 140-character limit.

Share Your Pins On Your Other Marketing and Social Media Platforms

Now that you have Pinterest boards set up, it's time to start driving traffic to it so that people will discover it. Build relevant links to your website content into each pin in the source, and this will drive traffic back to your website. You can also embed pins on to your blog posts using a source code provided by Pinterest. If you aren't familiar with how to do this, your webmaster or website administrator can easily do this for you.

Make sure that every image that you post on social media is one from Pinterest, as this will link back to your Pinterest and allow your content on there to get more traffic. If you're feeling bold, you can also join collaborative boards to share your pins there. This will help reach a new group of Pinterest readers and will allow your pins to be seen by a new audience. However, keep in mind that every public collaborative board that you join will show up on your profile, so be sure to steer clear of anything that would appear to be a determinant or controversial for your business or brand.

The best way to use Pinterest is to experiment and track your analytics on a Pinterest business account to see what is working and what isn't. Make sure that what you post is relevant to your business, actionable but also shareable, and you will be able to reach an audience and drive traffic to your website that you never thought possible.