A few easy-to-implement changes can greatly increase the visibility, engagement, and sales generated by your pins.

1: Add Alt Text to Provide Optimized Pin Descriptions to Improve Search Visibility

On a web page, have you ever noticed text appearing in place of an image? This text appears when your cursor hovers over the image, too. The technical name is image alternative text (or alt text). Many website images don’t include alt text or don’t optimize this text, even though doing so can benefit your social marketing on Pinterest.

When someone pins an image from your website, the alt text becomes the pin description. By adding alt text to images, you ensure the image automatically has a good description that will help drive engagement and clicks.

Alt text can also help your image rank well in Pinterest search results. On Pinterest, people do 2 billion searches every month. The pins that appear in the top results will reap the benefits through repins and clicks. Pins that do well in search results have two things in common: keywords and repins.

Write Image Alt Text

For the feature images for your blog, write alt text that piques curiosity. Your alt text might read like a headline.

You also want to include relevant search keywords and hashtags. Make sure the keywords you pick are relevant to the image and the page they lead to because you don’t want to confuse your audience. For help determining what keywords to use, check the search suggestions that appear on a Pinterest search results page.

Add Alt Text to Website Images

In any website’s HTML, an image’s alt text appears in the image tag’s “alt=” attribute. If you’re comfortable writing in an HTML editor, you can modify the alt text on any image by changing the words that appear after the attribute.

2: Position Your Most Popular Board to Increase Overall Profile Engagement

On Pinterest, people can follow either your whole feed or selected boards. Your Pinterest page likely has one or two boards with more followers than your other boards. By making your most popular board (or boards) the focal point of your Pinterest page, you can increase traffic and engagement.

Clearly, the most followed board is the one most people like, so it’s easier to get people to follow it. You can then interest the main board’s followers in your other boards, too.

When you place your most popular board in the top row of your Pinterest page, visitors will see that board first and be more likely to follow you. To make this board stand out in the top row, give it the most attractive cover image.

Alternately, with Pinterest’s Showcase feature, you can highlight pins from a single board at the top of your Pinterest page. When visitors land on your Pinterest page, the showcase is one of the first things they see.

You can also try pinning more images to your top board. More people will see these pins, check out the board, and hopefully follow it. This technique can also help boost repins and traffic to your site. To increase the number of pins, make the board into a group board and invite contributors.

3: Use Yotpo to Streamline Crowdsourced Image Shares That Boost Product Sales

Crowdsourcing is a great way to drive up engagement. You get free content to share and a potential increase in sales.

For example, the luxury brand Coach asked customers on Instagram and Twitter to share a selfie taken while wearing their shoes, using the hashtag #coachfromabove.

Your business can take advantage of crowdsourcing by combining Instagram and Pinterest. People like sharing pictures of themselves on Instagram, but Pinterest drives more traffic and sales.

With this tactic, you crowdsource images from Instagram and then share them on Pinterest as product pins and buyable pins. However, before you share a user’s image, make sure you get permission from the person who owns the photo.

A great tool for executing a crowdsourcing campaign is Yotpo. Through your dashboard, you can find images on Instagram. Look for tall, portrait-oriented images because they get the highest engagement.

Conclusion

If you’re looking to increase traffic or drive more sales organically, Pinterest is probably the best social network to focus on. It drives a healthy bit of social media traffic, and does this with only 150 million users, compared to Facebook’s 1.8 billion. Using the three tips above can help you drive more traffic, sales, and engagement on Pinterest.