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Did you know Pinterest has a “Source” page for your website? The page displays the most recent pins sourced from your website. You find it by going to http://pinterest.com/source/[your URL].
I am obsessed with Offbeat Bride’s source page at pinterest.com/source/offbeatbride.com, and it’s one of my browser’s most frequently visited pages. I don’t even visit Pinterest.com any more — I’ve bookmarked Offbeat Bride’s source page, and it’s one of the most effective ways I have of marketing my business. Here’s how…
1. Gauge pinner interest
Obviously, the most obvious way to use the source page is to see a real-time indication of people on Pinterest are most loving from your site. As a publisher, I’m trying to unlearn thinking that readers are most interested in my newest content, and watching my Pinterest source page is a huge part of that process. I’d estimate that two-thirds of the content pinned from Offbeat Bride is old — in many cases, several years old. It’s great market research for me to see what folks are loving.
- Check out your source page and see if you’re surprised by what people are pinning from your site. Are people interested in the things you’d think they’d be?
2. Reward pinners
I almost never pin directly from my own sites — instead, I repin other people’s posts from my Pinterest source page. This helps me not feel gross about self-pinning (…what?! I’m just repinning!), but also gives a little teeny tiny reward to folks pinning from my site. It’s a way of saying, “Hey, you noticed my website — and hey, I noticed your pin. I see you, and you’re awesome!” It’s a small thing, but it feels like a nice way to say thanks… AND share their pin with our other followers!
- Try repinning from your source page as a way to thank folks for pinning your stuff.
3. Find old posts to share elsewhere
Sometimes, when I see an old post getting pinned a lot, I’ll carry the news over to Facebook and post about it there. My theory is that if folks on Pinterest are freaking out about 18-month-old content, then folks on Facebook might too.
Often, I’ll then share these older posts on our Facebook page, which amplifies the sharing of content that was produced years ago. I like to be transparent about why I’m sharing old posts — I’ll often say things like, “Based on number of pins, this bride’s hair basically wins the internet…”
How I engineered a viral post
Recently, a post I wrote about cell phones at weddings went WAY viral, getting shared 43,000 times in one day. It wasn't an accident. Here's... Read more
That particular post was over a year old, and then went on to get 340 fresh Likes on Facebook. I do a lot of this sharing back and forth, using shares on social networks as a way to gauge what archived content might still resonate with readers. It can take hours to write a post, but only seconds to share a post that was written (and forgotten about!) a couple of years ago.
- Try sharing the most popular pin from your source page on your Facebook page. How do people respond?
4. Develop new content or products
On Offbeat Bride, we’ve featured paper flowers many times, with have archives going back to 2008. Over the past couple months, I’ve noticed a remarkable up-tick of people pinning paper flower bouquets from Offbeat Bride. Based on this up-tick, I suggested Megan do a fresh round-up of paper flowers created by our readers, a relatively easy post to produce that then resulted in even MORE pins.
- Based on your Pinterest source page, what posts or products could you develop?
5. Watch competitor’s source pages
You can see the source page for any URL! Consider watching what people are pinning from your competitors, and consider whether there are any content gaps that you could be filling on your site. For instance, if you notice a lot of people pinning paper bouquets from other blogs, why not write your own post about them?
- Based on your competitor’s Pinterest source pages, what concepts could you be writing about more to generate more pins from your page?
Want more tips & tricks?
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I do check out my pinterest source page a lot! It’s fun to see people pin photos from my site. I’m getting more into pinterest now- In the beginning I wasn’t really into it. I was that way with facebook too, and now I’m also checking up on my FB biz page fairly often.
Side note, it doesn’t show up on the source page, but when I use the search function and search on pinterest for my business name without spaces, I found a couple of people who had taken photographs of their save the dates and pinned them, and just typed that into the description.
I didn’t realize how obsessed I was with my Pinterest Source pages until they stopped updating a few months ago. It took Pinterest weeks to even acknowledge the problem (and another month or so to fix it) but life got better once my Source pages were working again.
Yay for rewarding pinners! I had a positively fangirl moment the first time I saw that *Ariel* had re-pinned from me. Still makes me smile when I see Offbeat Bride in my notification box. 🙂
HA! 😛 I switched from using my personal Pinterest account a few months ago, and now I only pin as Offbeat Bride and Offbeat Home & Life. I’m happy for the smiles!!
ME TOO- I saw Offbeat Home and Life repinning from me a ton when I went through that entire blog in 3 days, and it gave me warm fuzzies. (And maybe a hope that I could be offbeat enough to stick around at the Empire.)
Pish posh: EVERYONE is “offbeat enough” to stick around… the joy of the Empire is that if you identify as as offbeat — YOU ARE!!! 🙂
One secret with pinterest SEO is that If you post a comment on a popular pin, then where ever that pin goes, or where ever it gets repined your comment goes with it, giving you exposure again and again.
Holy crap. Why did I also not know about this before? (I have booked two clients to date from pinterest, even though I’ve been neglecting it totally.)
Also, apparently the slideshow code that shows 80% of the images on my website renders them unpinnable. I’m clearly going to have to fix that ASAP.
*fist bump*
And my final bit of advice? Trawl your competitors’ Pinterest source pages to see what your potential customers are loving. Source pages aren’t just great for market research — they’re great for competitor research!
You have a lot of great tips. Thanks for sharing them. I’ve made my images able to be pinned, even have share buttons and a widget on the side of my blog to show recent things I’ve pinned. I love looking through source pages on Pinterest to see what other kind of great stuff come from the same place but may not link up in the similar pins shown below the pin I just looked at.