ByHow many Pinterest followers would make you happy – a hundred, a few thousand, a hundred thousand? How about a million? Yes, would you like to learn how to get a million Pinterest followers?
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.
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 Nordstrom’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 example 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. Nordstrom for example has 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 that doesn’t belong to a popular category too, as you could be one of the few who has such a board. This 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 on 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 helps 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 the most followers to) in the topmost row, as they will be visible 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 widget 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 a million followers’ aim, but you might get hundreds of thousands of followers, which could make a lot of difference.
For more Pinterest marketing tips, watch our Free Pinterest Marketing Video Tutorial which can be accessed by Signing Up to our blog updates.
Are there any other ways to get a million Pinterest followers? Have you got some Pinterest tips you would like to share with us? Please leave your comments below.
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