In case you haven’t noticed yet, Pinterest is kind of a big deal for fashion bloggers. No seriously. The half-life of a Pinterest pin is approximately three and a half months – that’s 1,600+ times longer than a Facebook post. And when it comes to social media referral traffic, Pinterest takes only second place to Facebook. Second place is a small price to pay for content that lasts forever and only gains traction as time goes on. Right?! What’s more, 84% of female Pinterest users who signed up for the service four years ago are still using the site and are only growing more active as time goes on.
If you haven’t been making the most out of Pinterest yet, don’t worry. We won’t judge you. But now is the time to jump on the bandwagon, especially since beautiful visuals are already a big part of your content.
Ahead, find our top five tips for using Pinterest and how your fashion blog can leverage the reigning queen of social traffic.
Get the ‘on-hover’ Pinterest button installed
You know when you hover over some images a little Pinterest icon shows up? This magical little icon makes it super easy for your readers to pin your content to their hearts content. And that’s what you want, right? There are lots of plugins you can install or simply follow these instructions.
Use ‘pin-bait’ to get your content shared
Try an inspirational quote that’s related to the post or use one of your photos to create a meme. You want to create this graphic based on what you think your readers will want to share. It’s kind of like ‘pin-bait.’ You can even take it a step further and use a great photo-editing app to create these memes. A Beautiful Mess is excellent for this. Just send the photo to yourself from your mobile device and insert it somewhere in your blog post. Brownie points if you can find a way to include your website or branding in the graphic.
Add the title of your blog post to the featured image
You never know what people will add to their Pinterest captions, so including some overlay text on the featured image will provide clarity to readers skimming the Pinterest newsfeed. These types of images get repined and clicked a lot more often as well. It’s a win-win situation!
Affiliatize your pins
Are you part of an affiliate network, such as rewardStyle or ShopSense? One of the best reasons to maintain a presence on Pinterest is the opportunity to monetize your content. Most affiliate networks have bookmarklet tools that can grab affiliate links from the pages and ensure you get the credit if someone clicks or buys from the item you pinned. This is also a more subtle approach to affiliate marketing, as you’re not directly plugging affiliate text links or widgets in your blog posts.
Take up more visual real estate in the newsfeed
Taller images take up more visual real estate in the Pinterest newsfeed and are widely known to command more attention. Studies show that vertical images (at least 800px) get higher click through-rates. Use this as a guideline and create Pinterest-specific graphics to increase repins and clicks.
Bonus tip
Surprise! You are already on Pinterest! Access the following link to see what your readers have been pinning straight from your website: http://www.pinterest.com/source/YOUR-URL
So, even if you don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to Pinterest, you can at least access this page to see who is talking about you, what content is getting shared, and most importantly, you can interact with your brand evangelists directly through their pins! Easy, right?!
Do you have any other thoughts on leveraging Pinterest for your fashion blog? Share them in the comments.
Featured photo by StreetScout.Me. Visit their street style gallery for more photos.
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