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Follow and Be Followed
Why Follow Pinners? You want to follow certain pinners and specific boards for several reasons. Your Personal Tastemakers One reason is because other people with similar taste are going to find images that you hadn't found yet, but really like. It's like they are your personal researchers....finding cool stuff out there and then delivering the recommendation to your doorstep. Your digital Pinterest doorstep is the first page that comes up every time you log into Pinterest on your computer or phone. You will immediately see the pins of "Pinners You Follow." Many of these images will be relevant to your interests and you will want to repin some. If you see nothing to repin, you may just find it interesting to see what others are pinning and enjoy a similar experience to "window shopping" for ideas and inspiration online. The Follow Exchange When you click the Follow button and begin following a pinner on one of her boards, that pinner receives an email and an onscreen notification that you started following her. That email will prompt her to follow you back and often times she will. It's like building a little friendship, or saying "thanks for following me, and I'll return the favor and check you out too." Why is it Important to Have Followers? It is important to have followers, because this puts your pins directly in front of them every time they log on to Pinterest. They are seeing your pins on their "Pinners {they} follow" screen so there is a much greater chance they will see your pin, like it, and then repin it. Also, the more followers you have, the more followed you will become. When a new person signs up for Pinterest, the program prompts the newbie by giving her a few ideas of who she might like to follow. Those suggested "Pinners to Follow" are the popular ones who already have a lot of followers Lastly, if you are widely followed, you have a large audience so obviously more influence. More people are seeing your pins, so more people are repining your pins. And the more pins you have out there, the more links back to your website or blog. So, work to get a great following. Here's how. Establishing Your Own Following on Pinterest Start by Following Others Find people you are interested in watching and then start following them. You can do this in one of two ways. Find Pinners to Follow - Method 1 When you see a pin you like, click on the pin and it will make it larger. Above the pin you will see one or two names. The first name is the (re)pinner and second name after the "via" is the original pinner. You can click on either name to check out their other pins. If you like their stuff, follow them. If you click the red "follow" button to the right of their name, then you will automatically be signed up to follow all of the first name's boards. This may be good, but it also could be overwhelming. Some people have dozens of boards and thousands of pins which will completely overwhelm your "Pinners You Follow" page. That page is meant to become tailored to your specific taste, and too broad of a filter will leave you saturated with too many random images. What I suggest doing is following an individual's boards that are related to your interests. There may be an occasional tastemaker whose boards you want to follow in entirety and therefore follow the person herself, but I haven't found that to be the case very often. Find Pinners to Follow - Method 2 Seek out those who have specific boards that match your interests (the theme of your online business or blog.) Let's go back to our local running store example. You want to find people who maintain boards on running and then follow those boards. Type running into the search bar. Then once your search results load, click on Boards. Pages and pages of running boards will emerge. Go ahead and scroll through. Any that really rises to the surface? If so, Follow that board. (If you perform this function on your phone, you will get a list of boards without all the images. This is a nice feature to quickly begin following boards you know you want to follow without assessing content. However, on your computer you can get a feel for interesting boards by seeing the 5 images displayed without having to open up each board.) Every time you choose to follow a person or their board, they will receive an email that you are following them. A lot of those people are going to follow you back. You are on your way to having your own following on Pinterest. Start Repinning Others' Stuff Another way to get in front of someone is to repin their pin. If you see a pin that is perfect for one of your boards, snag it. That person will receive an email and an onscreen notification that you have repinned their pin. This feels good to them, so they might click on your profile to see what you are all about. Then they might start following you. You don't want to get stuck ONLY repinning other people's pins - if you are trying to drive traffic to your site you will definitely need original pins and original content generating from your site - however it is essential to still repin the images of other pinners with regularity. Someone only pushing their own images will be sniffed out as a scammer. You've got to understand and play Pinterest for real, not work it. It's part of the whole Pinterest experience and being a real member of the community is how you will eventually be successful in using Pinterest to bring traffic and sales to your website or blog. Embed a "Follow Me on Pinterest" Button to Your Website Pinterest makes this easy. They want their button everywhere. And this button will make it easy for people to find and follow you. Here's what you do:
Source: Pinterest Traffic | |
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