In the past two weeks, we shared 5 tips for connecting with educators on Facebook and talked about using social media to attract teachers to your brand. This week we look at why Pinterest is your best long-term social investment (hint: teachers love it), and share tips on how to make the most of your Pinterest presence.
TIP 1: Teachers LOVE Pinterest
1.3 million education-related pins are shared every day. Teachers use Pinterest as a visual search engine to find, save, and share lessons, crafts, products, activities, and professional development materials.
TIP 2: Pinterest is SEO-friendly
Pinterest boards and individual pins rank highly in Google searches, making it wonderful for teacher-friendly articles, checklists, and other long-term content plays that boost SEO performance over time.
Important: Educators are often on Pinterest searching for materials related to upcoming holidays and events. By adding pins to relevant content during these times of the year, it improves SEO performance.
TIP 3: Raise your profile
When crafting your brand’s Pinterest profile, use a combination of SEO strategy, humor, and creativity.
Important: The first 4-6 boards on your profile are highlighted on most search engines. This is your chance to tell your brand’s story and why teachers should follow you.
TIP 4: Boards should build your brand
- Topics should be teacher-specific, focused, and search-optimized
- Showcase your expertise through board topics
- Use a photo with visual impact; Pinners scan; make them STOP!
- Keep imagery timely and/or seasonally appropriate
TIP 5: Keep pins thin and relevant
Because all pin images are resized to the same width, skinny vertical images are the most eye-catching. Pinterest uses captions to point people to the right content so think about SEO when writing captions as well.
TIP 6: Re-pin more than you pin
Of course, you want to promote your own content on Pinterest, but sharing content aligned with your brand helps teachers find you. To start, repin about 3 to 4 times as often as you pin, then grow from there.
TIP 7: Grow with Guests and Groups
- Guest pinners and group boards help build an audience quickly
- They introduce you to the followers of contributing pinners
- It’s easy: add a username to the “Who Can Pin” field
- The board will show on your profile page, and the guest pinner’s as well
Next week we’ll talk about Twitter and how to get your Tweets noticed—and shared–by educators.
