The 7 Biggest Pinterest Marketing Mistakes and How You Can Avoid Them

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The secret is out… Pinterest generates more referral traffic than LinkedIn, YouTube and Google+ COMBINED! And as of March, 2012 it has even surpassed Twitter.What’s more, this referral traffic goldmine converts at a higher rate than any other social media platform.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is that most marketers don’t know how to leverage this traffic goldmine, and those that do aren’t sharing their secrets… until now.

Here are the 7 Biggest Pinterest Marketing Mistakes and How You Can Avoid Them!

MISTAKE #1: Failing to Properly Optimize a Profile

Adding the basic information is not enough if you truly want to create a Pinterest presence that drives traffic. It’s essential that you optimize your profile based on your specific business model, your keyword phras(es) and a proper description of your value add. As an example, an offline business will optimize their profile in a completely different manner than an online business. And an eCommerce business will optimize differently than an Affiliate Model. Be sure to optimize your profile specific to your business.

MISTAKE #2: Failing to Link to Facebook and Twitter

Part of the strength in Pinterest is its viral nature, but you have to understand how interwoven the web is in order to really take advantage of it. When you connect your Pinterest account to both Twitter and Facebook, you are opening yourself up to a much wider audience. At the time of this writing, the average Twitter user has 126 followers, the average Facebook user has 130 friends, and the average Pinterest user has 100 followers. However, there are only 12 million people on Pinterest, while there are 901 million and 500 million on Facebook and Twitter respectively. When you connect and leverage all three, you can fully capitalize of the viral nature of Pinterest.

MISTAKE #3: Failing to Optimize All Boards

Pinterest will set up a certain number of boards for you to start with, based on your selected preferences. However, none of these boards are optimized. They are not assigned to categories, nor do they have any sort of description. Adding keyword-specific descriptions and properly categorizing your boards are both essential steps for driving targeted-traffic.

MISTAKE #4: Failing to Strategically Place Boards

When someone visits your Pinterest page, the first thing they will see are the 5 boards that appear above the fold. First impressions are everything, and poorly placed boards may give someone the wrong impression about the content you share on Pinterest. In addition to editing the order and placement of the boards, also be sure to select board covers that best reflect the contents of the board. This will go a long way in creating an account that drives pinteraction.

MISTAKE #5: Failing to Properly Optimize Pins

When it comes to marketing on Pinterest, a pin must include three components:

1. A captivating and attention-grabbing image,
2. A well-written keyword-specific description, and
3. An embedded link that drives the traffic to your desired destination.

Just being on Pinterest is not enough. But when you apply POP (properly optimized pins) it takes your Pinterest marketing efforts to the next level.

MISTAKE #6: Pinning on the Wrong Days and Times

Understanding the flow and timing of Pinterest traffic can save you a lot of headaches. Unlike Facebook and their “Newsfeed”, Pinterest displays pins in the order received. Therefore, you want to make sure to pin when pinners are most active. The best day of the week to pin is Saturdays. On weekdays, the best time of day to pin is 2pm – 4pm EST or 8pm – 1am EST.

MISTAKE #7: Failing to Measure, Track and Tweak

The key to any successful marketing campaign is tracking and measuring your results, then tweaking for optimal impact. The combination of budurl, PinReach and Google analytics is everything you need to make your Pinterest marketing plan soar!

There you have it – the 7 Biggest Pinterest Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them! If you’d like to dive deeper into the solutions to these problems and learn how to master Pinterest, then check out Perfecting Pinterest: The Ultimate Pinterest Marketing Success System.

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