Not only is Pin­ter­est a fun source for cre­ative inspi­ra­tion and ideas, but it is also a valu­able brand­ing plat­form for com­pa­nies. You can build your Pin­ter­est page into a strong source of traf­fic that will con­vert into users and sales. Here’s how, over the course of a year, I increased one Pin­ter­est page’s fol­low­ers by over 996 per­cent, bring­ing it to over 200,000 fol­low­ers, help­ing it become the most influ­en­tial Pin­ter­est account world­wide for col­lege stu­dents.

1. Pin High Quality Pins

What your com­pa­ny pins reflects what your com­pa­ny endors­es. Make sure your boards are of reli­able high qual­i­ty.

Above all, your images should look great (not blur­ry).

If your pin links to a web­site, check to make sure the link works and goes to a rep­utable site that relates to the image. For exam­ple, if a pin has a title like “3 Pho­to­shop tips for scenic pho­tos,” it should link to the rel­e­vant arti­cle. So many pins don’t match their links and point to use­less or spam­my con­tent.

You want to ensure that your com­pa­ny fol­lows best prac­tices and does not acci­den­tal­ly engage in any­thing that would hurt your brand image. This includes inad­ver­tent­ly re-pin­ning con­tent that leads users to any­thing coun­ter­feit, inap­pro­pri­ate, or oth­er­wise unfa­vor­able to your brand.

Pin high qual­i­ty pins regard­less of whether they are from your com­pa­ny, or even a com­peti­tor. Sim­i­lar to how food trucks are more suc­cess­ful when they are close to each oth­er, your items will be more suc­cess­ful among oth­er excel­lent prod­ucts.

You will grow when trust is earned. Your fol­low­ers should trust that fol­low­ing you will ben­e­fit their expe­ri­ence with Pin­ter­est, and trust that you’re con­tribut­ing for the ben­e­fit of the user and not just to sell your prod­ucts and make mon­ey.

2. Create Your Own Content & Contribute New Shared Content

Pin­ter­est is sat­u­rat­ed with accounts that re-pin con­tent that is already out there – con­tent pin­ners may have already seen time and time again.

Ide­al­ly, you will cre­ate your own con­tent in the form of com­pelling pho­tog­ra­phy and inter­est­ing arti­cles.

If you are able to pin a lot of orig­i­nal con­tent, be sure to also mix in oth­er peo­ple’s con­tent. In the same way that no one appre­ci­ates when a com­pa­ny is too self-pro­mo­tion­al, you should be re-pin­ning from oth­er accoun­t’s rel­e­vant boards as well.

How­ev­er, orig­i­nal con­tent is a big invest­ment and under­tak­ing, espe­cial­ly if your com­pa­ny isn’t visu­al in nature. So, if orig­i­nal con­tent isn’t some­thing you can do now, try to be the first to share cur­rent con­tent, such as new arti­cles, blog posts, and pho­tog­ra­phy.

3. Pin At The Best Times

Look at your Pin­ter­est ana­lyt­ics to fig­ure out when you should be pin­ning. When are you get­ting the most re-pins? When are you get­ting the high engage­ments?

Max­i­mize your con­tent by deliv­er­ing at peak times, while keep­ing the con­tent com­ing at least slow­ly oth­er times of the week so that your Pin­ter­est vis­i­tors will always see fresh con­tent on your boards.

The best times to pin depend on your tar­get audi­ence, whether they set their own sched­ule or hold a 9 to 5 job. Your tim­ing strate­gies will dif­fer depend­ing on the type of board.

DIY boards tend to do bet­ter on the week­ends since peo­ple tend to have more free time to actu­al­ly work on crafts. Inte­ri­or design boards may expe­ri­ence more activ­i­ty dur­ing the day if fol­low­ers tend to be design pro­fes­sion­als who are brows­ing dur­ing work.

Across the plat­form, Pin­ter­est is busier on week­ends.

4. Engage With Other Pinners

Pop­u­lar guest boards offer an oppor­tu­ni­ty to reach a new audi­ence and grow your fol­low­ing.

Reach out to influ­en­tial pin­ners and see if there is some sort of part­ner­ship that you can arrange, per­haps re-pin­ning each other’s top con­tent or guest blog­ging. Com­ment, like, repin, and reach out to them out­side of Pin­ter­est.

Engage with peo­ple who com­ment on your pins.

One prob­lem ecom­merce brands may run into is when cus­tomers are dis­ap­point­ed to dis­cov­er a prod­uct they want­ed to pur­chase is no longer avail­able. If this hap­pens you can go above and beyond by rec­om­mend­ing a sim­i­lar prod­uct to your users, even if its offered by anoth­er com­pa­ny.

Engag­ing with Pin­ter­est users and earn­ing their trust and brand loy­al­ty offers brands a very high ROI com­pared to oth­er social media plat­forms, because Pin­ter­est’s users are more like­ly to buy.

What else has helped improve your Pin­ter­est mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy?