Using Pinterest for affiliate marketing

As affiliate marketers we need to be using Pinterest for affiliate marketing because it is one of the largest social media platforms after Facebook, however not every affiliate marketer is aware of how to use Pinterest to bring new traffic from there to their websites.

Do you need more traffic to your site? Of course, you do, everybody does Google keeps changing its algorithms regularly meaning traffic is affected, I read somewhere that they make over 4,000 algorithm changes each year.

Having an effective SEO strategy for social media sites like Pinterest should be a priority for affiliate marketers that depend on a mix of traffic to make money. Let’s look at how you go about using Pinterest for affiliate marketing in detail.

Your Pinterest profile

A lot of people that use Pinterest don’t pay enough attention to their profile, giving your profile a professional business look is easy enough to do. First you need a good strong company logo optimized to their guidelines.

Your profile image should be this size 600×600 pixels 5.08 cm x5.08 cm.

Next you need to write a description of you and your business under branded description, your profile needs to look the part from the outset, it will make the job of building your Pinterest profile up so that your followers will know exactly what you are about.

Content strategy

Think about your content strategy, everybody knows that Pinterest is based on visuals, some of the biggest brands are there, they have figured out how to use photos and images to reach their target audience.

My advice is not to skimp on the cost of images or photos for your pins, make sure they are visually appealing, if you are looking for free images then I recommend Unsplash.com, I use it all the time all you need to do is to credit the person that took the photograph.

What type of pins work best?

People want to be educated in bite size image-based tutorials on how to do this and that, it’s not surprising in this day and age that people on the internet are looking for fast paced information on a variety of subjects.

So, think how to and DIY tutorials for almost everything use images to emphasise your points with this free image maker, it will save you money.

No matter how you look at it, your images and photos on Pinterest need to high definition, up to the minute, and amazing so that your website gets those valuable clicks time after time.

Use your pins fully optimized

Each new pin has a caption area where you have a small space to write why people should click on the VISIT button, this is where your sales skills come into action. Write a little bit about your webpage make sure to include your brands information and a link to your site in the caption.

Leave a little teaser at the end, something like ” if you want to find out more” or ” here’s how” make them a little curious, that way they will want to click to find out more.

Make full use of your Pin captions by explaining why the content would be useful to your customers. Be sure to include your brand’s name and website URL somewhere in the caption as well.

Keywords

Use your keyword tool to find out which keywords are being used when people are searching for content related to your niche or go onto Pinterest and type your niche keyword in there and see what comes back.

So now you have a list of relevant keywords to use in a natural way throughout your pins.

Optimization of your pins

Pinterest started from the idea of pinning content onto a board, this content is then shared by people when they repin that content, these are called pinners as they collect relevant pins for themselves.

It’s very important that you create pins that are visually appealing, engaging to your audience and also very relevant to your brand, so optimize each pin by writing a caption that makes it easy to understand what the pin is about, include your url and brand and use a visually engaging image.

Meta description

Your meta description should ideally be optimized for hash tags as well as keywords, use niche and industry hashtags (# hair loss, # hair restore, # hair loss treatment, etc.) you can use up to 2p of these on Pinterest

It seems that vertical pins perform better on Pinterest because of the layout of the platform, most popular are infographics, try for an aspect ratio of 2-3 or try 4-5, use a width of approx. 735 pixels.

When should you publish?

People often ask what is the best time to publish your pins?

I recommend either Tailwind or Buffer to help you decide this important task, picking a schedule that works can save you time and money in the long run.

Timing is everything in life so when you publish makes a difference on Pinterest just like it does on any of the other platforms, these places are fast paced so releasing a number of pins each day seems to make sense.

Bear in mind that with millions of people on Pinterest you are going to have to contend with different time zones, however common sense would tell you that early mornings, evenings and weekends are the peak times to publish your pins.

Pinterest analytics

Pinterest offer each client analytics on their pins and boards, so check out your analytics dashboard to look at how each pin is performing, from there you can see audience demographics, what their interests are and lots more.

Any successful online business use data to drive sales so your Pinterest business is no different, your priority should be to set up your analytics and confirm your business site on the platform, from there you can analyse what is working and what is not.

You can also compare how well specific page or product URLs are performing on Pinterest compared to other social media sites.

Infographics

Let’s clear up what is an infographic, it is a collection of images with a minimum amount of text that immediately gives the reader an understanding of a topic.

Research will show that infographics are tops in shared content within all of the social media platforms, focus on these for high scores in sharing and embeds.

Make Pinterest part of your brand

It’s a smart move to put the Pinterest feed on your site to get the most exposure for your brand, you want people to follow your Pinterest business and share your content. It’s so easy with Pinterest’s customizable copy and paste widget builder, the widget can be placed on your site sidebar, at the bottom or in the header for maximum exposure.

Change things around a little

My knowledge of Pinterest tells me that it’s in your interest to change things around a little every now and then for example, a giant in Pinterest terms is Penguin Random House, they are changing from inspirational to memes every couple of hours to keep their followers interested.

I hope you see what I mean don’t fall into the trap off “the same old” keep thinking on your feet about different ways to get your message across to your followers.

Social media selling

If you are using Pinterest for affiliate marketing then you are in the business of social media selling, a relatively new concept.

Having said that most social media platforms want you to provide useful information to your followers and not to sell products directly.

At the end of the day as affiliate marketers we need to sell product to sustain our online business, so social selling is indirect selling or soft selling of products or services.

According to research by Shopify the online store provider Pinterest is the place for the highest order value in social sales, moreover the research also shows that shoppers are using Pinterest to search for products.

Some of the larger brands are using stunning product photos to drive traffic directly to their store, Pinterest has an ad platform that’s has a kind of a soft sell feel to it, they also boast buyable pins whereby a pinner stays on the platform and can buy products directly.

Pinterest is becoming a very real marketplace for online sales, so using Pinterest for affiliate marketing makes a lot of sense.

Be realistic in your expectations

Again every good business owner has a goal in mind for their business, a social platform like Pinterest isn’t the same as other platforms in the sense that it is image driven, it’s not a direct selling platform but at 5he same time it is worth the time and effort to build your brand around the platform.

Decide what you want from your social media presence on Pinterest, are you looking to raise awareness of your brand? Are you looking to drive more quality traffic to your site and extract more sales from the affiliate links in your content?

Both of those questions would provoke the right answer because Pinterest is the place to achieve these results according to their own research more than 67% of pinners are actively discovering new brands and their products from within this social media platform.

Having said that, your expectations and goals will determine how you approach this beast in terms of your content, how you want to optimize content, ultimately how much of your time you decide to spend on this aspect of your business.

Spending on ads

A lot of marketers use the free account on Pinterest to make more sales to their sites, you also have the paid ads and it works like this. Ads on Pinterest work a by paying for placement system on user’s home feeds, basically your ad will consist of a caption, image and a link to your sales page.

Pinterest is a bit different to other social media platforms in the sense that it is a place where people find ideas through images or ads that they save to look at later, the figures bear this out 93% say they plan to buy later while 87% made a purchase after they saw the product on the platform.

Budget

Like any ad spend it starts with a budget, once you decide on that your next step is to consider your target audience demographics focus on location, language, gender and device usage.

Use your keyword tool or Pinterest to find relevant keywords to find out what type if search will your pin be seen in. You are allowed up to 150 keywords in each pin that is shown to your audience however Pinterest themselves you use only 20-30.

Use your main keywords and build in more associated or long tail keywords into your content so that your pin will get picked up in the searches, one other method you can pick people with interests in your niche, your content will be shown to them in their news feeds.

Stay active

Sounds a bit silly, but staying active on Pinterest is worth the effort, it can be slow to take off but once you have established a small following it can mushroom and it’s not uncommon for affiliate marketers and brands to have tens of thousands of followers in a relatively short time frame.

Keep checking your analytics data, keep freshening your pins up, keep posting to a schedule, if spending on add makes are getting a good return on investment and above all else stay positive and keep smiling g!!!

Conclusion

Pinterest is by now a very visible and a still growing social media site the latest figures speak for themselves more than 250 million people are using the platform every month, 87% of those who saved information from there go on and buy something.

If you are considering using Pinterest for affiliate marketing then it is definitely not too late to start building your Pinterest business profile, I hope that you have gained some knowledge from what I have written here.

In terms of affiliate marketing may I suggest that you check out this online platform where affiliate marketers gather to share information and build relationships that can only enhance online business.