How to Get Followers on Pinterest: 13 Top Tactics
By Mitt Ray
Pinterest users are looking to buy. According to a study by ecommerce platform Nosto, the average order value (AOV) from this network is $68 for unpaid and $154 for paid—higher than Instagram and Snapchat.
Pinterest isn’t just a visual search engine. It is also a social network where people can follow you, repin your pins, and message you.
If you have more followers, more people will see your pins from the moment you pin them. This can boost impressions, traffic, leads, and sales.
To help you gain more of these followers, I have made a list of the best tactics below.
1. Set up an account that resonates with your target audience
Most people will check out your Pinterest account before following you. If you want more account impressions to convert to followers, you need to set up an aesthetic account. It’s similar to making a first impression when you meet someone in person.
Think about what people are going to see when they land on your account. They’ll see your profile picture, cover photo, read your bio, visit your website, and maybe even check out a few of your boards. If your content looks good, they might follow you.
Other than searching for pins, Pinterest users can search profiles too. So, make sure you include your target keywords in the bio so that your potential customers can find you easily.
For some inspiration, check out Myprotein’s Pinterest page.
It’s got an attractive cover image and uses its logo as the profile image. This makes it easy for people to recognize its page. The bio is also well written. You will also find that it features some of its popular products and boards at the top. A well-planned profile like this one can attract followers.
2. Create tall attractive images
Tall images do better on this network as pins appear side by side in your feed in columns. This is different from other networks where posts appear one above the other. A good aspect ratio to aim for is 2:3. A study from Curalate found that pins with this aspect ratio get more repins.
A popular size that matches this ratio is 1,000 X 1,500 pixels. This helps you create big images that take up good space. For some inspiration, check out this pin from Chobani.
As you can see, it is a tall image. It has some overlay text that informs you about the contents of the image.
The pin also contains a link that leads you to the website where people can buy the product. This is an excellent way to generate sales.
You can use PromoRepublic to create these images. It has templates that make it easy to create tall, beautiful Pinterest images. You can also schedule the images you create with it.
PromoRepublic normally costs $49 per month. But you can get it on AppSumo, for life, for a one-time payment of just $49.
As I mentioned earlier, Pinterest isn’t just a social network; it is also a search engine. Another way to drive attention to your pins is by optimizing your descriptions with keywords.
You can use the keyword tool in the Pinterest ad section to find keywords. If you type your keywords, it will find relevant ones and display their search volumes.
Make sure you don’t stuff keywords. You should weave them naturally into well-formed persuasive sentences. More people will take action and convert to leads and sales if you have descriptions that are easy to read.
Also, add some relevant hashtags to your descriptions to help categorize your content and increase reach. Hashtags on Pinterest function similarly to those on Instagram and Twitter. They can also act as keywords and help you rank.
4. Set up rich pins
Rich pins pull metadata from your website and add it to your pins. There are three types of rich pins.
Product: On product pins you will find up-to-date pricing and product information on the pin’s metadata. An example is this pin from Myprotein.
You can see the price of the product and some other essential details like the size. There’s also a big call-to-action button.
Recipe: On recipe pins, you will find details like cook time, serving size, and ingredients like in this pin from Feel Good Foodie.
Article: Article pins contain the article headline, meta description, and the Pinterest account of the website you saved the article from. Like in this pin saved from Buzzfeed’s website.
Stacey Roberts saved the pin. But Pinterest credits both her and Buzzfeed.
5. Pin consistently at the best times
Just like on other social networks, timing matters on Pinterest. If you pin when more people are online, more people will see your pins, interact with them and follow you. According to CoSchedule, the best time to pin is between 8-11 PM and 2-4 AM.
The best days are Fridays and Saturdays. You should develop a good Pinterest management plan and decide how many times you will pin in a day and when. Then pin consistently during those times with a tool like PromoRepublic.
However, studies like the above only offer a good starting point. So, to get maximum impressions, you need to analyze your pins and find your best times.
After you gather enough data through consistent pinning, you should use a good analytics tool to figure out your unique best times to pin and schedule your pins to go out then.
6. Create a group board
For a long while, group boards were a great way to drive traffic as you could reach so many people who follow popular group boards. But recently, Pinterest changed the algorithm, and the people who mainly see the pins on the boards are other contributors. This makes boards less effective for driving traffic, but they’re still an excellent way to network, build relationships, and gain followers.
So, create a group board for your page like My Whole Food Life did here. This group board called Best Comfort Foods has 980 contributors. That’s a lot of people to connect with quickly.
The board owner can build strong relationships with all the contributors, which can benefit the account in other ways.
7. Contribute to popular group boards
Another way to take advantage of group boards is by contributing to popular group boards that already have many group pinners. You can connect with these people, build relationships, and grow your following.
To find group boards, you can use a tool like Pingroupie.
Just search a keyword, set the filters, and hit search. It’ll show you the most relevant boards and the number of followers and collaborators they have. You can check out the boards and pick the ones you like most and contact the owners.
The easiest way to contact board owners is by messaging them on Pinterest. However, if you want to stand out you can email them. This may be more effective as people with a large following are bombarded with messages from people who want to contribute to their boards.
Some board owners share their email address in the board description like 007 Marketing did here.
8. Follow other pinners and engage with their pins
An easy way to get people to check out your account is by engaging with their pins. Very few people do this, so it can help you stand out. Reserve about 15 to 30 minutes a day for finding people who could potentially buy your products or sign up and save their pins, comment on them, and follow them.
Some of these people will get curious about your account, check it out, and follow you. You can continue following the ones who follow you back and unfollow the ones who don’t. This is a simple activity you can do even on a mobile device while you’re on the go.
If you use this tactic, only unfollow those who don’t follow you back. Never unfollow people who follow you back.
9. Run contests and offers
A growth hacking technique many people use to grow followers on Pinterest is through contests. Using contests, you can ask people to follow you to participate in the contest, and you can also ask them to save a pin to drive sales.
Many people like to call them Pin It to Win It contests, where a user has to pin an image, follow an account, and sign up to the email list to participate. This is a great way to grow your account and your email list and drive sales.
You could also use a tool like KingSumo to run a contest that attracts followers. The process will be different here. Participants will need to sign up to your email list first and then follow you on Pinterest to gain extra entries. The extra entries will improve their chances of winning.
Offers are also a great way to get followers as people will follow your account to stay up to date on the latest offers. You can even use a call to action like “Follow us on Pinterest to be the first one to see our latest offers” every time you announce an offer on Pinterest.
A simple way to promote your Pinterest account is by cross-promoting on other social media. You can simply share the URL to social networks where you have a larger following. You can include a call to action in the description that informs them about the type of content you post and why they should follow you.
You can also add the “follow” button to your website. To get the “follow” button, go to the widget builder page.
Here you can also build prominent widgets to promote your entire page or boards. You simply need to add your page’s URL, choose the size and finally copy and paste the code Pinterest creates.
12. Use Pinterest analytics
Pinterest analytics offers a wealth of insights. In the Audience Insights, you can learn about the demographics and interests of your followers.
You can see how old they are, where they live, what device they use, and get detailed information on their interests. If you visit “Overview” you will find details about your best-performing pins. You can use this data to create better content and generate more impressions and followers.
There’s also a trends page for finding trending topics to create content around. Pinterest even introduced conversion insights which are great for tracking sales.
13. Run ads
Pinterest offers the option to create brand awareness ads.
These can be great for generating followers. You should take advantage of them. But make sure that you track how much it costs you to get followers from these ads.
Also, check if you eventually generate sales from these followers. It is only worth it to invest in ads if you see an ROI. This will also depend on the quality of content you post to nurture your following. So, make sure you get your content strategy right if you want to use ads to gain followers.
Now get some Pinterest followers
You don’t need followers to be successful on Pinterest. Just relying on keyword optimization and ads can help you generate sales. But if you want an edge over the competition, you should work on gaining more followers as only few people have large followings. This will help you generate results quickly too, as you won’t need to wait for pins to rank to get you the sales. You will simply generate sales when your followers see those pins.
Therefore, use the above tactics to grow your following quickly and use them to generate more leads and sales.
If you are looking for tools to help you create better pins and grow your followers, you should check out the AppSumo store. We have several lifetime deals on popular software that will simplify your Pinterest marketing.