Selecting the winner can be a difficult one – you need to prove that the winner had been chosen fairly. It is no longer permitted to have a simple ‘pin from my website’ competition as it is hard to prove the winner is drawn at random.  It is best to have judges judging the best board or pin or else have other pinners voting via likes, repins or comments to secure the winner.

How Do You Run An Effective Competition On Pinterest?

#1. Repin / Like Pinterest Contest

This type of contest ask participants to

• repin an image to a specifically created board
• Write a caption which includes a particular hashtag
• submit their board web address
• the board that gets the most interaction wins (likes/repins/comments)

Another way of running a Repin/Like competition is to ask participants to:

• Pin their own images to a contributor board on the business’s page
• Write a description using a hashtag
• The winner is the pin that receives the most repins.

#2 ‘Pin It To Win It’ Contests

Pin It To Win It contests ask participants to create a dedicated board and either pin images of the company’s products to it or pin images related to a particular theme.   Participants have to email the company with the link to their board and the entries are judged. The winner is usually the most visually appealing and most creative board that best matches the brief and the theme set.

The Wedding Outlet’s Pin It To  Win It contest required those entering to pin any image from The Wedding Outlet website to their own wedding board with a specific hashtag  and to follow the company on pinterest.

Home Decorators asked people to enter by following them on pinterest, creating a specific board, submitting at least 10 pins from their company’s website in order to create a board showing their dream bedroom or bathroom. All entries to be judged.

Personally speaking, I think this would have been more fun for participants by letting them create boards with a minimum of 5 Home Decorators pins and letting them source other pins elsewhere if they wished – this way it wouldn’t stifle engagement and I’m sure some entries would be really magnificent.

Modcloth, a retail clothing company, required those entering to follow them on pinterest and create a specific board which had to include 20 pins, each one reflecting each of the themes listed. The pins had to have specific hashtags #modcloth and #wedding  in the descriptor and the board had to be shared with them when completed.  The winner would be the one judged to be the most original, creative, adhering to guidelines and encompassed the Modcloth spirit.

While it created a challenge for those entering, it would be a labour of love for pinner enthusiasts. The prize wasn’t huge but the winner would also have the kudos of inspiring the newest Modcloth wedding campaign.

A competition like this would provide the company with greater brand awareness. All those entering would have a specific Modcloth board on their profile, complete with 20 pins signifying the Modcloth style.

Another Pin It To Win It example is the use of the #loveiseverywhere hashtag in particular, by KeVita Drinks. Participants had to follow a particular board (not necessarily all their boards), repin a particular image, pin an image of a love heart in an unusual place and tag it with two specified hashtags.

#3 ‘Pin Up Live’ Comment Contest

The Pin Up Live concept is an interesting one. The example I’m going to share with you was organised by a travel blogger in collaboration with a travel agent G Adventures and the prize was $100 Amazon gift card.

They set an exact time for the competition, in this case 7pm EST (6-10pm is the most popular time for American pinners to be logged in).  G Adventures seems to specialise in expeditions, small group tours and safaris and the theme of the competition is pins concerning travel and adventure.

The organisers pin an image of ‘adventurous travel’ with a question every few minutes.  Followers can chat to G Adventures and ask questions by leaving comments under the pins. To enter the competition, pinners have to leave a comment under the ‘featured question pin’ and repin the image to one of their own boards.  Followers do have to refresh the page every few minutes to see the new pins.  You can check out the Pin Up Live board here and see how it works each week.

Of course, the benefits to the company are that their pins are being repinned to various boards, thus increasing the chance of virality and being seen by many more people.  The repins, likes and comments may mean that the pins could be featured on repinly if they make it into the top Travel pins too – thus receiving more exposure.  The Pin Up Live board is doing well with 733,000 followers which shows it really does work well for exposure.

#4. Photo Contest

This type of contest  involves asking people to take a photo of themselves using or wearing one of the company’s specified products in a creative way and pinning it to a particular board (be it their own board or your contributor board) and using a particular hashtag.

This type of contest would mean that participants would have to follow your pinterest account and buy one of the specified products in advance. For it to work really well, the product should be instantly recognizable as being your brand.  This would work for clothing, accessories, pet accessories, ready made pastry, jewellery, recipes, using your facilities, cooking equipment …. the list goes on.

This lego contest is over so the page promoting it has been removed and I was unable to find more details but it looks like kids could build a creative piece using their lego, submit it on a board for a chance to win a trip / dream adventure to Legoland – what a great competition, my 10 year old would have loved that!

And here’s an example by  Rent the Runway, participants had to repin their favourite dress from the Oscars for a chance to win.  However, it isn’t clear from the promotional pin how the winner will be chosen.

Tips to Remember for Pinterest Contests:

1. Ensure the rules and/or terms and conditions are available on your website (and the link is provided on the contest pin)
2. Make entry easy – don’t make it too complicated.  Encourage engagement and fun.
3. Make the prize worthwhile and of interest to your target audience.
4. Make following your pinterest account one of the terms and conditions of entry.
5. Share the contest on your other social networks, e.g twitter, facebook and google+ to maximise entries.
6. Ensure the winner is judged fairly – remember sweepstakes are no longer permitted by Pinterest

Have you run a contest on Pinterest? We’d love to hear how it worked for you. Which contest method would you like to try for your business?

We will be starting our first online course on Pinterest in April/early May so do sign up at We Teach Social if you’d like to receive a newsletter with all the details.

The post Pinterest Tutorial – How To Run An Effective Pinterest Contest appeared first on Write On Track.

How To Get More Followers On Pinterest:

1. Follow Me: Add the ‘follow me on pinterest’ button to the sidebar of your blog or on your website.
2. Email: You could add it to the signature of your emails too.
3. Facebook connections: If you log in with facebook, pinterest flags your account to those friends already on pinterest so most will start to follow you immediately.
4. Facebook & Twitter: Sync your pinterest account with your twitter and facebook accounts (bear in mind, you can only sync it to your personal facebook account, not a business page) but don’t overdo the pinning to twitter or facebook. Little and often!
5. Personality & Great Pins: Before you start following lots of people that you don’t know, spend some time setting up some boards and some great pins which others might be interested in repinning and which show your personality.  Think about what your potential customers are interested in e.g. if you are selling vacuum cleaners that are great for getting rid of pet hair, then create a board for cute dogs. If you are selling kitchen sinks, pinning pictures of amazing kitchens in different styles should attract those planning a new kitchen.
6. Good Quality Pictures: Always pin pictures with a wow quality – be they your own or other images.  Poor photography just won’t be repinned nor will it impress.
7. Keywords: Think about how you name your boards – using keywords if possible.  The same goes for your pins and descriptors. Look at the most popular pins on repinly and see how they are named.
8. Boards – Remember to re-arrange your boards. Move seasonal ones to the bottom of the page e.g. Easter and vary other boards around every now and then too. Do Not have Christmas boards at the top of your page in February (yes, I’ve seen plenty of them).
9. Follow other people.  The easiest way to follow people with similar interests is to look at the top right hand corner on the profile of someone you are following and you’ll see the accounts they have pinned from. The follow button is right beside their name and avatar.
10. Look at Ratio: If you want most of the people to follow you back, choose those who have an almost equal number of ‘following’ as they have ‘followers’.  Don’t expect someone with thousands of followers who is only following 60 people to follow you back.
11. Comment on other pins and use the @username if you want to bring someone else’s attention to that pin.  People will respond to comments (and follow back) but I’ve noticed not that many people are commenting on pins.
12. Hashtags: You can use hashtags in your description (but don’t overdo it – apply the same rules as to twitter as a tweet or description filled with hashtags makes many people want to reach for the ‘unfollow’ button)
13. Pay: You can buy Pinterest followers but I always think that the followers will come if the content is good.
14. Pin regularly, some say anything between 5-30 pins a day is recommended. I’d suggest little and often. I don’t like going to my pinterest page and seeing it full of the same type of pins from one user. You can schedule pinning now on pingraphy (still in beta phase though and like pinerly, it doesn’t display the name of the website you pinned from. It doesn’t offer GMT as a time zone yet either)
15. 80:20 rule:  Pin some of your own content but also pin from other sources too, rather than just repinning all the other content. Be original! Aim to have about 20% of your own content within your pins.
16. Pinning buddies:  No harm setting up a pinning relationship with a friend whereby you pin some content from their website and they pin from yours (if that fits in with your boards). Then, both of you get double exposure.
17. Use Pinerly:  Having signed up to pinerly, I was invited to submit my details and am now listed there as a ‘suggested follow’. However, I haven’t noticed an influx of followers from it as yet.
18. Shared boards: Creating and becoming members of shared boards and pinning to them means that you and your pins get more exposure (and more followers).  I pinned a number of ‘pinterest blog posts’ to a shared ‘Pinterest Day’ board yesterday and received more followers immediately.

Remember Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither are hugely popular pinterest accounts so do give it some time. Pinterest is one way to increase your brand awareness and then, to build on sales. Like all the social media platforms, it takes time and good content.

If you have any questions or comments regarding your own pinterest account, do share them in the comment box.

Are you on Pinterest? Do connect with me there.

The post Find It Friday – How To Get More Followers On Pinterest appeared first on Write On Track.