Every food blogger wants to increase the traffic to their site. And one of the strategies we are constantly told to employ is to find and promoting that elusive, “Viral Pin”. You know the one. It’s the Pin that’s going to go global and send your blog traffic through the roof.
Unfortunately, the pursuit of that viral traffic often leaves many bloggers feeling either despair or exhaustion. Viral is good, but it is also very hard to come by.
Fear not! Recent statistics from Pinterest show that while viral pins may add some fuel to your business brand recognition, there are more powerful and subtle strategies that build a far more valuable kind of traffic. The Strategies I have in mind are those that build trust.
There is a reason why the majority of users on Pinterest have been female – and it’s not all the shiney fashion images or the giggly celebrity picks.
While men tend to look for the sensation or the utility, women tend to hang around in places that engender trust. And Pinterest provides it in spades.
David Trounce from Mallee Blue Media has put together this light-hearted and easy-to-follow infographic on user habits and statistics that are driving traffic on Pinterest.
What’s really valuable about the infographic are the take-aways that food bloggers can employ to build not only traffic, but trust for their brand and their blog.
Source: Mallee Blue Media
Pin this Infographic to your board and use it, and it’s take-aways as a reference when deciding what to pin and how to promote it. Here are some of the take-aways from the data that every Food Blogger can use to build their Brand.
1. Focus on Your Brand Reputation, not the Hype
Pinterest users prefer brands over Celebrities. This is refreshing news, especially for brands whose products or services are not traditionally found in the celebrity market.
What Pinterest does so well is enable you to develop your brand and online reputation using well crafted Pin Boards.
To build both traffic and trust for your Brand or Blog, make sure your brand uses consistent styles, images and themes. This is one place where being predictable is a very good thing. If are the brand, aim to be an authority in your niche by providing trustworthy information to your audience.
Leave the Hype to others. How can you build trust on Pinterest in your industry niche?
2. Market the Information, not the Product
Speaking of people with moustaches, while Pinterest has been a traditional market for women, Pinterest’s latest data shows a whopping 74% increase in male users over the last twelve months.
And the winning brands have been brands that found a way to provide useful and reliable information about their products.
Ryobi is a great example of this. Their demographic is most commonly (though not exclusively), men, and they have found a way to use Pinterest with great success. You won’t find Tom Cruise holding a drill between his teeth: There is not a celebrity in sight.
You won’t find them promoting all the features of their products either. What you will find are quality, high converting boards that are building the Ryobi brand by offering ideas on the things you can build with their tools.
Notice the switch. Instead of telling their Pinterest audience what to buy, they are helping their audience by teaching them how to build.
How can you help your audience using Pinterest? What information can you provide that is trustworthy, consistent, and helps users achieve their goals?
3. Call users to Action by Offering to Answer Questions
47% is nothing to sneeze at. That’s the percentage of people whose browsing on Pinterest leads to sales on the corresponding website. While Facebook holds the top spot for conversion, Pinterest is outdoing them in average price per sale.
What are these users getting from Pinterest? Answers. When people are looking at a recipe or food item for example, what questions are they likely to ask of the product?
What questions do you ask?
One of the ways you can improve user engagement and traffic is by inviting users to ask questions about your Pins or Products. And then be sure you are around to answer them.
Don’t just throw up your recipe. make a point of inviting questions. This not only build trust, but also brand loyalty, since the user is now engaging directly with you – and not just the pin.
As a final note, this data shows that Pinterest gets over 70% of its traffic from Mobile users. This fits the demographic. It also tells us what we should be doing to transform that traffic in to sales.
Pinterest on Mobile meets the need for users who want information presented simply and quickly. The picture should speak a thousand words so that users don’t have to read them. Pinterest does that really well on mobile devices.
What can you take away from this? make sure that the user gets the same experience when they click through to your site. Make sure your own site is mobile friendly, simple and fast in loading and design and make sure your images match the promises made about your product.
Pinterest is a Social Media Platform that has not suffered the credibility issues of some other platforms. They are a discerning audience who know what they want.
You can take advantage of this by keeping your Pinterest Boards professional, honest and genuinely useful and by using visual and other rich media tactics that sell the brand and not just the Product.
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