There’s no one way to succeed on Pinterest. If there were, maybe all the pros would be doling out the same advice.
But as the Daily Dot discovered, that’s far from the case. When we talked to six highly successful Pinterest pros, each one had different tips for how to pin to win.
1) Mike Street: The Media Marketer
A social media strategist from Harlem, Mike Street has his finger on the pulse of Pinterest. He’s the first blogger to make a definitive primer to Pinterest’s black community and one of President Barack Obama’s first connections on the platform. Pinterest may be visual, but Street’s advice is to go beyond images using third-party services:
“Quotes and pics are M-O-N-E-Y on Pinterest. Use sites likes PinWords.com to allow you to push out a high impact message with ease and you’ll be repinned like crazy. PinWords.com is my new secret weapon!”
2) Lizze Roscoe: The McDonalds Maven
If you haven’t heard of Lizzie Roscoe, you’ve certainly heard of her fast-food empire employer. Roscoe’s job is to manage the McDonald’s Pinterest page, among other accounts. Awash in a sea of bad brand pages, Roscoe’s work caught our eye early on. She instructs users to pin useful content, not sales pitches, in order to engage.
“Before you pin on behalf of a company or brand, always ask yourself: Is this content unique, original, fun or helpful in anyway? Don’t pin everything & anything under the sun, but really give thought to the images or videos you are pinning. What story does it tell? What does the image or video communicate about your company?
“The most popular pin on the McDonald’s Corp board right now is a photo of a hand puppet of a four-armed Grimace! The image is fun, nostalgic & very unique to McDonald’s & it’s part of our company’s marketing history … Grimace originated as a four-armed, milkshake thief! This image, and images like it, are ideal pins for our company, as they are fun representations of our brand.”
3) Kelly Liebermann: The PinChat Founder
Pinterest is great for sharing images, but it isn’t the best for sharing ideas. Enter Kelly Liebermann, the social-media consultant who founded #PinChat, the Web’s first and largest Twitter and Facebook chat for Pinterest enthusiasts. Liebermann’s tip is one every pinner should get in the habit of following:
“Repin responsibly: Click through before you repin. I know that this is time consuming and you might feel like the responsibility is with the original pinner but it is so worth it, to you and your fellow pinners. Make sure that the links work and that the content goes with the image that you are repinning. It can be really frustrating to repin something and find that the image does not direct to the correct site or content.”
4) Allison Tyler: The Pinterest Prankster
Allison Tyler is best known for WTF, Pinterest?, a comedy blog where no pin is sacred. From crafting a Pinterest lexicon to lampooning Pinterest’s wackiest photos, Tyler has Pinterest’s comedy market cornered. Tyler’s tip, however, is no joke. She suggested three helpful tools for determining sources.
“This has been stated, debated and beaten to death, but I STILL think it is the single most important tenant of using Pinterest, CREDIT YOUR SOURCE!… If you don’t know the source of the image, here are three ways to try and track it down. None of these tools are foolproof, but all are a good place to start the search.
1) PinSearch – a plug-in from the Google Chrome app store.
2) TinEye – a plug-in for Firefox, Chrome, IE, Safari, or Opera.
3) If you’re not a plug-in sort of person, simply go to Google.com, select Images, click the little camera icon that appears to the right of the search bar, upload the image you are searching for, and Google will give you suggestions.”
5) Drew Hawkins: The Manly Man
Now it’s not too surprising that Drew Hawkins is big on Pinterest. But when the social-media marketer first joined the site last fall, being on Pinterest with a Y chromosome was a rarity. Rather than turn tail and find solace at Gentlemint or Manteresting, Hawkins made Pinterest work for his interests with Board of Man. Today, his board has over a million followers.
“Find your ‘win space.’ What is something unique you could do in Pinterest that piques interest? The Board of Man was the first male board on Pinterest. It goes to show that you don’t have to be crafty, inspirational or fashion oriented to win on Pinterest.”
6) Tyler Cheese: The Résumé Booster
While other pinners were still debating the legality and etiquette of pinning one’s own images, Tyler Cheese had already become the first person to launch a résumé on Pinterest. It paid off, too. The young copywriter has landed two more jobs than when he started. His success has even inspired similar projects.
“Pinterest works best when you use it along with your other social media channels, especially if you’re using it to try and get the word out about something. My Pinterest resume is kind of cool on its own, but I used Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and even the comments on a Mashable article to promote it. Without the help of my awesome followers, friends and connections not as many people would have seen what I was putting out there. The best part of it is that it totally worked and it landed me, not one, but two jobs so far!”
Photo via Mike Street