It’s that time of year where you as a business owner may be looking at running a holiday season campaign. With so many mediums open to you, you may wonder through which platform you should run yours. The beauty of running anything online is that you can integrate pretty much any platform you want to use with anything else you are using online, for example, using your blog and Pinterest to advertise a campaign that is being run through Facebook.
As for using Pinterest, the holiday season seems to really see it come into its own. The appeal of a highly visual platform during a season where people are creating wish-lists and gift-buying is unmistakable. If you want to have a better chance at success for your cross-promotion through Pinterest, here are a few tips:
1. Make sure you have the correct links added to your pins
If you are pinning directly from a website using the ‘pin it’ applet, it will automatically link back to where you got it from, but if you are uploading pictures to your board from your computer, you will need to edit the pin to add a link (probably to the site where people can enter your promotion). To do this, edit the uploaded pin by clicking on the pencil symbol at the top right corner, a box will pop up like the image below with a space designated as ‘source’ where you can add your link.
2. Use #hashtags
Hashtags are a great way to connect your cross-promoting efforts across all platforms. Use something that is easy and unique to your brand and include it in the board title and description of your pins.
3. Make sure your prize is on brand
(This goes for promotions across all platforms!).Your followers follow you for a reason so it only makes sense to offer a prize that is in alignment with your brand. Of course you’d like to attract more followers through your promotion, but as a business your best bang for buck lies with targeted followers. We’d all like to win $1000 cash, but you are more likely to attract those who are truly interested in you if you offer something less universally appealing and more aimed at your target audience.
4. Keep it simple
If you are using Pinterest to cross-promote a campaign that is being run from another platform, you want to make it easy for people to enter through Pinterest. Let them know exactly what to do to enter (e.g. ‘click here’) and don’t make it too elaborate (for example, asking people to create a board is probably best for Pinterest-based promotions rather than a promotion you are cross-promoting). You could consider offering extra entries if they repin your pin…
5. Embed your board into posts
You can cross-promote your Pinterest cross-promotion (see what we did there!) by embedding your Pinterest board as a widget into your blog post. This has the added bonus of bringing visual appeal to your blog and, even if viewers don’t read the actual blog post, if they click on the Pinterest widget they will be taken through to your board on Pinterest, giving you another chance to capture their attention.
Follow Autopilot Your Business’s board #WinVIPOnline 12 Days of Christmas on Pinterest.
Have you run any cross-promoting campaigns on Pinterest? What did you find?