It’s ‘M’ in the #AtoZChallenge and I’m concentrating on 3 Mistakes that you really don’t want to make on Pinterest.
1. Not Linking Your Pin To Your Website
Believe it or not, this is one of the most common mistakes I see businesses making on Pinterest, hence, I mention it quite a bit on this blog. As a business, you are using your social media channels to engage with followers and drive traffic to your website. If the pin doesn’t contain a link, the repinner has no way of finding your blog or website.
Many people believe that Pinterest is just for beautiful or striking images – for businesses that concentrate on fashion, crafts, food or interiors. This isn’t the case at all. My business is about teaching social media and I’m finding that by using clear images that show what the blog post contains (ie useful information), Pinterest is far surpassing facebook and twitter in driving traffic to my site and it is second to google organic search at 13% of my total traffic.
See our post How To Ensure Your Pins Link To Your Website to check you are doing it correctly.
2. Not Naming Your Images
Your images in your blog posts and on your website must be named appropriately, ideally with a keyword phrase. Google can’t read pictures but it can read the title which is why the naming of images will help the optimisation of your website.
It’s also important as if visitors to your website pin your image, if the description is there, they are more inclined to leave it as it is therefore the pin will travel and still contain your chosen keyword. If the pin is named as 7579347.jpg or .medium76.jpg, the pinner then has to go and write their own description which may not be what you would like.
Pin this post and you will see how the title of the post comes up as the image description so it saves you having to write it.
3. Not Having Pinnable Images In Every Post
Ensure there is a pinnable image in every single blog post. If your business is a visual one, you will have no problem finding and using beautiful images. But if your business demands a mostly text based article, it still needs an image to break up the text and to use on Pinterest.
There is one particular social media blog (which is very popular and has excellent content) but every time I go to pin their blog post, I get a choice of three images which are pulled from the sidebar – their logo and two images of the blog founders, neither of which demonstrate what the post is about and neither have the appropriate description. I end up abandoning it.
I usually use Picmonkey to create a text image just like the one I have used in this blog post. There’s nothing fancy about it but it does what it says on the tin and works well with plenty of shares happening on Pinterest.
See our post ‘How To Add Text To Your Images‘ for a tutorial.
I hope this helps to prevent you making these Pinterest mistakes and improve the pinnability of your website and images.