When you first establish a Pinterest account for your brand, you’re likely excited that this large base of active users has the potential to see your brand. But how do you begin to grow your follower base from nothing?
1- Find other reputable brands to follow.
For any industry you’re in, there are likely relevant news sources that you can follow to begin to show interaction on the platform. In the travel industry? Follow brands like STA Travel, Fodor’s Travel and Southwest Air to name a few.
2- Cross promote your Pinterest channel to your other active fans.
If you have an active following on other channels, cross-promote your Pinterest profile onto these. Instead of just sharing your profile page, try focusing on a particular pin or board. As in the example below, this image was pinned to the brand’s board, but also included as an image on Facebook. This way, users can see what kind of items you pin on Pinterest.
3- Repin others.
Build awareness of your Pinterest account by repinning others. Utilize the search function on Pinterest as well as the categories to find other pins that would be helpful on your boards. Here it’s important to get creative with keywords. While “travel” may bring about results that are overused and potentially spam, more specific keywords can help bring new life into your boards. Think about what users might label their boards or what they might caption their pins with. It might not align with the keywords you think you’re looking for.
4- Pin directly from websites.
In order to gain exposure to a wide audience without users already following you, it is wise to also post original pins instead of only repinning others. These freshly pinned items are more likely to show up in the categories and in the everything tab on Pinterest. It is best to pin directly from your own site, as well as from other sites.
5- See what others have pinned from your site.
Seeing what others are interested in on your site helps you to understand what people want to see more of from you on Pinterest. Whether you have a blog or a business, this will help you learn more about Pinterest fans.
To access this, follow the following example from Overdrive, just replace Overdrive’s URL with your own.
http://pinterest.com/source/ovrdrv.com/
What other strategies do you use to grow your Pinterest following?
