Mistakes Businesses Make on Pinterest OSP 090

“Happy little accidents” are what painter Bob Ross used to call mistakes. I really like that philosophy, especially when it comes to Pinterest. I give kudos to those who even try and most mistakes businesses make on Pinterest are usually easily remedied.

In this week’s episode

Jeff Sieh of Manly Pinterest Tips, special guest Azure Collier of Constant Contact and I met up just before Social Media Marketing World ‘15 kicked off in San Diego, CA to record a webinar. We talked about five of the biggest mistakes businesses make on Pinterest.

#1 Not being consistent with Pinterest

Consistency can go a long way in growing a following and driving traffic from Pinterest back to your website. A scheduling tool like Tailwind can really help with this.

Not only should you be consistent with pinning you should also be consistent with replying to comments and questions left on pins. I’ve found that pins with multiple comments tend to get repinned more often.

#2 Pinning only for yourself

While it’s ok to show a little personality on your account and pin things you’re interested in it shouldn’t be the focus. Most of your boards should be created to serve your ideal customers.

It’s okay to pin your own content but it should also be mixed in with other content from high-quality reputable sources. This really goes a long way to show your credibility as a resource or expert in your industry.

#3 Forgetting about SEO

Pinterest is often categorized among other services such as Twitter and Facebook but it’s not really a social network. It’s actually more of a search and discovery tool with some social media characteristics. It’s more like Google than Twitter.

Businesses often make the mistake of remembering to keyword optimize their account names, pin descriptions, board titles and board descriptions. Making this kind of mistake can keep their boards and pins from appearing in users’ search results.

# 4 Using images that can’t stand alone

Your images on Pinterest are competing for attention among thousands of others and users are looking for pins that spark their interest or solve their problem. On Pinterest, users don’t have the benefit of the context of your website or blog post to understand what the image really represents. A good test is to ask yourself this question: If someone saw this image by itself, would they understand the topic of the content it links to?

A few more things to consider about images:

· Are they mobile friendly?

· Do they have optimized alt text?

· Is the file name keyword optimized?

#5 Not having a business account

According to Pinterest terms of service, “If you want to use our Products for commercial purposes you must create a business account and agree to our Business Terms of Service.” Who knows what Pinterest could do if you don’t comply with their terms? Dare I say it…. They could shut down your account!!!!

To avoid any problems and to follow the rules you can open a new Pinterest account or convert an existing one at business.pinterest.com.

There are some added benefits to having a business account too!

· Analytics

· Promoted pins

· Business focused emails from Pinterest

During the webinar we also got a few questions from the viewers so be sure take a listen to those.

Coming Soon!

Jeff and I are also very excited to talk about our upcoming Pinterest Boot Camp! It’s going to be a one-day, intensive Pinterest training course for businesses that are really serious about optimizing their Pinterest account.

This is an online boot camp that’s going to be brought to you live on April 18th at 3pm Eastern Time. It’s scheduled to last between 4 ½ and five hours depending on the number of questions we receive through out the training. We want to be sure to answer everyone’s questions so we are limiting the number of participants.

To register for the boot camp and to learn more about the topics we will be covering go to MyPinterestBootCamp.com.

Are you up to the challenge?