The Pinterest Revolution and How to Make it Work for You

If you're not familiar with Pinterest, it's the popular visual bookmarking site where users, from fashionistas to dog lovers, create "pin" boards or categories of their favorite photos gathered from all over the web.  This visual layout has inspired users to collect and share what interests them and serves as a platform for amazing photos of all of our favorite things, like grilled cheese sandwiches and favorite quotes. But Pinterest isn't just for fun. It also serves as one of the most powerful emerging business and social media marketing tools at your disposal. Studies show that Pinterest is driving more traffic to websites than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined. Its unusual design and the way it organizes information have played a remarkable part in transforming web design as we know it. Pinterest isn't built in the traditional web building sense. It puts the content and visual impact in the user's hands. These colorful image-filled "blocks" fill the entire browser screen, the majority of each block is filled by a photo and a prompt to "like", "repin" or "comment" at the bottom. Designers describe the look of Pinterest's site as a vertical layout and refer to it as the first successful use of jQuery Masonry. It also broke away from the system of organizing information online based on reverse chronology as Twitter and Facebook do it. Clients are now mentioning Pinterest to their designers when discussing what they want their website designs to look like. Pinterest is moving the industry, so you might as well get on board. We at WebSight Design can help you create your own Pinterest account today. Three Tips for Making Pinterest Work for You:Create Your Own Original Content to Pin This is a rule of thumb for any social networking site, but on Pinterest it is particularly relevant because over 80% of pins are repins. And if you are just repining everyone else's pins you're not going to get very far. But if you create valuable visual content of your own, like videos, photos, or infographics, you'll have a crowd of people wanting to circulate your boards and link to your web site giving you plenty of exposure. It's important to make sure you add a link to your pin after uploading an image to pin from your computer. This is one of the most common mistakes and results in a dead link and zero traffic. Focus on trending topics A highly underutilized technique is to incorporate trending topics into board titles or captions. The Olympics, for instance, was a great trending topic this summer. Pins featuring trending topics see a 94% increase in click-through rate. Halloween is coming up, pin it! Include a "call to action" Simply asking people to "click here" or "repin" or "post it in comments" in your captions increases engagement of a pin by 80%. This is a powerful marketing strategy that you use elsewhere, why not use it in Pinterest too?