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So you already know how to create a Pinterest profile and some basic tips and tricks from my previous article. In this new installment of my Pinterest tips we are going to explore a more advanced approach aimed mainly at business profiles but applicable of course to personal accounts as well.

Rich Pins

If you want to get more out of your Pinterest experience and stand out in the crowd of Pins, you should make your Pins rich. This is what really separates the good Pinners from the best.

Marking up your Pins as a recipe, product, article, movie, or place gives you more exposure, bolds the title, shows the favicon from your site, and lists other information like price, rating, description and even a map depending on the Pin.

To do that you need to put specific mark-up on your site which you can find on the Pinterest rich Pins documentation. The mark-up depends on the type of rich Pin you are going to use.

For articles the normal OpenGraph tags, which Facebook uses and come included with any modern SEO plugin, will suffice. For the other types you have to add a thing or two. Pinterest has some thorough tutorials on the matter and it shouldn’t be too hard.

After your website is optimized, you can validate your Pin using the Rich Pin Validator. Pinterest will check your mark-ups, give you feedback and if successful let you Apply. The verification time on this can vary from a single day up to several weeks, so be patient.

Pinterest Messages

Pinterest introduced their messaging system not so long ago and the Internet is buzzing with this new option on the picture sharing social medium.

What it let’s you do is send private messages and Pins to a person or a group of people. This enables you to share products, design ideas or simply beautiful pictures with your friends and family.

Want to share your trip schedule with your family directly? Use Pinterest messages.

Want to tell your spouse what you want them to buy you for Christmas? Use Pinterest messages.

Want to tell your friends what camping gear you found for that hiking expedition during the weekend? Use Pinterest messages.

If you are a business owner however, you are going to ask me what benefit do you get from these messages. Think of it as push notifications.

Ask the people subscribed to your website’s newsletter or Google+ notification circle if they want to be added to a Pinterest notification list and just send a message to everyone in that list with every new Pin. The possibilities are endless.

Connect and cross-promote with other social media

In the previous article I mentioned that it is imperative to link your other social media to your Pinterest account. But you should go a step further.

Sharing your Pins, boards or the whole profile to other social media is the perfect way to drive more visitors and engagement. Cross-promote an event you are throwing, a sale you are having, or just your grandma’s recipes, you will be amazed.

There is an auto-share function to Facebook, Twitter, etc. usually when uploading a pin but you can always do it manually for better results.

Google+ is the best partner to Pinterest in this cross-promoting. Pin sizes (735px width, 1100px length) are the perfect match for sharing in G+ and look stunningly on both platforms. Just share your Pin as a photo in Google+, add a suitable description and a Pin it for later with a link to Pinterest.

This works wonders both for SEO and for engagement. What are you waiting for? Try it now.

Using Map Boards

Enabling the Map option on a Board in Pinterest is an amazing idea especially if you are running an online shop which all has a physical location.

The map takes the location from Foursquare and is the perfect way to link your Foursquare listing with Pinterest. People looking through your products will be able to see your business in Foursquare and check tips, other pictures and more info.

This is also a perfect solution for reviews and travel blogs. Adding a place, business or landmark location to your review Pin will add extra engagement and will show your article on other sources.

You can as well use the board to showcase your vacation trip to France with the photos you took and the places you’ve been. Using the place rich Pins tags mentioned above is also a way of marking a Pin on the map.

Promote only specific Boards

Splitting your Pins into boards is great both for classifying your content and for targeting different groups of people.

There is no point in promoting your whole Pinterest profile everywhere, sharing only a relevant board with the right people will yield a lot more results with the wanted target of people.

People have the option to only follow some of your boards and this is perfectly fine, you can show them exactly what they want to see and get better conversions.

Use Analytics effectively

If you are using a business profile in Pinterest and have connected your website to it, which is a must-do, then you will be able to see lots of information in the Analytics section.

You can see what people are pinning from your website and which ones are the most popular products. Using this insight you will able to put similar products, pictures and other design on your website to mirror the success.

The Analytics section will also show you which boards are performing better so that you can promote them more. This will help you to understand what people actually like and want to see.

You will be able to find which times to share your Pins at to get the most engagement and reach. Just don’t Pin too many things at once, people don’t like others spamming them.

Host a contest

When promoting your website and business, or personal Pinterest profile, there are lots of things you can do.

A surefire way is to host a contest and to require people to follow you on Pinterest, repin a number of Pins, share the contest, or anything else you might think of. Just make the prize be worth it the effort you expect your visitors to put in.

In conclusion

There are no 3 easy steps to build a large following on Pinterest, just good practices and tricks you should implement. My 3 best tips however, will be:

• be consistent
• use your website and Pinterest to build relationships
• provide benefit, something unique which people can’t find anywhere else

So that is it from me. Please let me know what you think in the comments below and leave some other tips that I might have missed putting in. Don’t forget to share it to all of your Pinterest buddies. 😉