Women’s Health is poised to launch its first advertiser campaign on Pinterest, reported Mashable on May 29. Notice we say "advertiser" campaign and not "advertising" campaign. At present, Pinterest does not allow first-party advertising on its platform.
But the edict does allow third-party publishers like Women's Health to host campaigns on behalf of their advertisers, in this case, Forevermark Diamonds, according to Mashable. Starting Friday, June 1, the magazine will invite readers to create “Sparkling Summer” Pinterest boards incorporating images from Forevermark Diamonds.
The key to getting followers and fans to respond to an obvious sponsored message could be the prize, in this case a chance to receive a trip to a Women’s Health party in the Hamptons later this summer. Mashable points out that magazines' social media efforts have remained within editorial departments that use platforms like Pinterest to create awareness and drive traffic to their sites.
Thus, it will be interesting to monitor how this more marketing-centric campaign works out. In the meantime, here are five tips from Kaelin Zawilinski, digital editorial manager for Better Homes and Gardens and speaker at PR News' June 21-22 two-day Social Media Summit event, on how to best integrate Pinterest into your digital strategies:
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Kaelin Zawilinski Develop a Pinning Strategy: Before launching a Pinterest account for your brand, you need to consider what your overall Pinterest strategy will be. This means dedicating time to determining what types of content you’ll want to pin, where you’ll be pinning from (solely your site, other sites, etc.) and how often you’ll be pinning.
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Pin Often: "We’ve found that the more we pin, the more followers we gain—so be prepared to pin like crazy," says Zawilinski, who adds that some of the bigger brands on Pinterest are pinning 15 to 20 images per day. Also, pay attention to the time of day when your images get repinned the most. "We’ve found that over the lunch hour and into the evening that Pinterest is more active, so we tend to save our pins for then," says Zawilinski.
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Add the "Pin It" Button: "For BHG.com, we knew our readers were already pinning the images from our site, so by adding the 'Pin It' button we made it even easier for them to share our images with their friends," says Zawilinski.
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Analyze What’s Being Pinned: It’s also important to see what’s popular on Pinterest so you can pin items from your site that are similar and/or might be just as appealing to Pinterest users, says Zawilinski. You can do this by looking at what's popular on Pinterest, or by seeing what is being pinned directly from your site. (See Better Homes and Gardens for an example.)
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Promote Your Pinterest Account: Use your other social outlets to grow your Pinterest followers. "Doing Facebook posts or Twitter posts promoting a certain pin or board is the best way to highlight this and intrigue your social audience to follow your brand on this platform," says Zawilinski.
Follow Scott Van Camp: @svancamp01