How many Pinterest followers would make you happy – a hundred, a few thousand, a hundred thousand? How about a million?
What I love about Pinterest
is that you don’t have to be a popular celebrity to gain many
followers. You can gain followers just by sharing quality content and
images that people enjoy looking at. Take a look at this
post on Huffington Post to see the most followed accounts on Pinterest. None of them are big name celebrities. If you work hard and find and share helpful content and images, you could get lots of followers too.
post on Huffington Post to see the most followed accounts on Pinterest. None of them are big name celebrities. If you work hard and find and share helpful content and images, you could get lots of followers too.
Getting more board followers is the key…
The key to gaining a million Pinterest followers is to focus on
creating popular boards instead of a popular account, as it is easier to
gain board followers than complete account followers.
This can be seen in the case of Nordstorm’s Pinterest brand page.
When you visit their main page you will notice that they have over 4.5
million followers (at the time of writing). But when you click and
carefully study the boards – you will notice most of the boards have
around 125,000 followers. Please click on a few boards and see for
yourself.
An e.g. is the Beauty Spot board which has 129,189 followers (at the time of writing).
On the entire page the only board which has more than a million followers is the Garden Wedding Ideas board with over 4.3 million followers.
Similarly, pages like Lowes, ModCloth and Sqrall.com
just have one board with over a million followers and are making the
most of it too, by regularly adding pins. It should be easy to locate
the popular boards on most pages as they usually contain the highest
number of pins.
This way of having several board followers is advantageous too: as
you can gradually build your influence on them and get them to follow
you completely, these followers are added to your total number of
followers and displayed on your main page which adds credibility and
helps it attract more complete page followers. Most of the pages with
high numbers of board followers make the most of them by adding a lot of
pins to them. Nordstorm for example have added the highest number of
pins on to their most followed board too (380 at the time of writing).
So work on gaining more board followers.
How to get more board followers:-
Before we go into different ways to gain more board followers, it is
necessary for you to locate your most popular boards, if you don’t
already know them. You can easily do this by clicking through your
boards and finding your most popular ones. If you have got a new page or
haven’t gained many followers on any of your boards, you can spend some
time researching and figuring out what boards would work well for you.
You could do this by browsing through other brand pages that come under
your niche and locating their most popular boards and then creating
similar ones.
You could also create boards that belong to popular categories and add popular pins to them.
Choose a board on a topic you are passionate about – you could be an
expert on this topic or it could be something you are eager to learn
more about. You could experiment and create a board which doesn’t belong
to a popular category too, as you could be one of the few who has such a
board which can help you stand out and gather more followers. For tips
on finding quality content to share, read the post 10 Ways to Find Great Content to Share on Social Media.
Now that you have your most popular board(s) I am going to show you how to promote it to get more board followers:-
1. Optimize:
Optimize your boards to make sure they can help you gather followers…
a) Use a Short Board Name: The first thing you want to do is
to give it a short board name. The first 25 characters of the board name
will be visible on your profile page itself. When it gets longer than
this people will need to click on the board to see the entire name. So
make sure you keep your board length inside 25 characters so that people
can easily identify what they contain and follow them without having to
click through and browse.
b) Add a good description: Also add a good description to your
boards. Focus more writing an engaging description than an SEO friendly
one. Of course SEO plays an important role, but engagement is more
important on any social network, so place your focus on engaging your
audience. Once you are sure it is engaging enough, you can search engine
optimize it. Keep it short, just about 2 to 3 lines. In it explain what
your board is about, what you share and how they will find it helpful.
You could also add a call to action by asking them to follow you.
c) Choose a good board cover: By default, the first pin on
your board is chosen as the board cover, but you do have the option to
make one of your pins as the board cover. You can also drag it around
till it looks its best in the 217 X147 pixels of space allotted. I have
written more about choosing and creating board covers in the post 12 Steps to a Flawless Pinterest Brand Page (check the 7th step).
d) Add a category: Also add categories to your board as when
you add pins to the board they will also appear in the categories
section of Pinterest, which help your pins get more exposure. These pins
will then lead back to your boards, thereby helping you obtain
followers. You can learn more about categories and their importance by
reading the post 4 Ways to Get More People to See Your Pins on Pinterest.
A well optimized board is the Star Wars
board (which has over 1.5 million followers) on Sqrall.com’s Pinterest
page. It has a short name, a well written description and an attractive
board cover.
2. Share pins regularly:
When you share regularly more people see your pins, therefore your
boards get more exposure. So pin and repin regularly. Don’t just do it
randomly – have a proper plan – share entertaining and helpful pins,
make sure they aren’t spam, share during the best times,
etc. The more exposure your pins receive the more exposure your board
will receive too, thereby helping you get more followers.
3. Organize your boards:
Place your most popular boards (the ones you want to attract most
followers to) in the topmost row, as they will be visible as soon as
soon as people visit your account. They don’t even have to scroll down.
Here’s a post on Mashable, by Sarah Kessler,
on what people see on visiting a Pinterest page. This was analyzed
using a heat map. Use it as a reference to arrange your boards or use a
heat map yourself and see what people see on your page.
The Create, Craft, Inspire
board, which has over 2.2 million followers, is the first board on
ModCloth’s Pinterest brand page. This makes it easily visible to the
page’s visitors – it’s one of the first things they see.
4. Invite:
Inviting guest pinners can also be effective in attracting followers.
This will not only help your board get more exposure from the pins they
add, but it will also help you attract visitors who browse through your
contributors profiles as the board will be displayed there. The post How to Invite Guest Pinners to Your Pinterest Boards can help you with inviting guest contributors.
5. Use board widget:
A great tool that can help attract Pinterest followers is the board widget. The board widget which can be found on the widget builder
page can be added to websites. This board helps display up to 30 of
your latest pins on the selected board on your website. When people
click on it they are sent to your board – this can result in followers. I
have written about how this widget has helped me attract followers to
my board Painting With Words (as I display it on my personal site) in the post 62 Ways to Promote Yourself on Pinterest (read the 11th point). You can learn how to install it by reading the post 6 Ways Businesses Can Make the Most of the Latest Pinterest Updates.
So make use of the above tips and work on gaining more board
followers and try to reach the million follower mark. Remember that you
need to be very patient as this could take a lot of time – and maybe you
might not reach the million followers aim, but you might get a few
thousand to tens of thousands of followers, which could make a lot of
difference.
Are there any other ways to get more Pinterest followers? Have you
got some Pinterest tips you would like to share with us? Please leave
your comments below.