Change. 

It’s a word that we all hate yet have to adapt to throughout life. I hate change, but as a marketer I have to stay on top of any new technologies or updates that are thrown my way. Similar to Twitter and Facebook, Pinterest is finally changing its algorithm to combat the onslaught of spammers and fake accounts. While I do commend them for the effort it has, however, made it extremely difficult for any content produced by new users to be seen. I haven’t written in detail about the changes just yet, so I’m hoping this post gives you new insights into how you should be adjusting your Pinterest marketing campaigns.

The New Popularity Algorithm 

I’ll be upfront and honest about this update: the new popularity algorithm Pinterest has implemented absolutely SUCKS. It would be cool if the popular page were filled with content that is a couple hours old or maybe a day, but right now it is pulling in content that is over a YEAR old. What type of user really wants to see content that is that old? I know for certain it no long appeals to me, however, it has created a new pattern in traffic to viral pieces.

Where are before the majority of your traffic came within 24-48 hours I have found quite a pleasant surprise in the new algorithm change. While everyone would love to have 50,000 visitors to your site in 24 hours, it’s now looking more realistically like a 50,000 visitors over 10 days scenario.

It seems now that when you submit to Pinterest you will experience a first day spike in traffic, followed by traffic spikes every 2 days. I think we may have a case of the algorithm limiting how many times a piece can “go popular” in a 24-48 hour time span. While this might seem like a bad thing, I’m actually kind of supportive of the fact that my content has a chance to go viral not once, but multiple times over the duration of the content’s life. Even to this day some of my older pieces are still drawing 4-5K visitors from Pinterest on a daily basis. In other words, the content simply doesn’t hit the front page and die! As the site grows so does the potential of your content.

How does this change your marketing? 

It’s no secret, I have several well established Pinterest accounts that I use for testing and submission purposes. However, my submission process has changed since the new algorithm update. First of all, no matter what account, I only submit once every 5 hours.  That’s right, I submit only one time in one category, record it in an excel spreadsheet, and go about my business.

Why is this? Because if it’s a good piece of content, submitting  it so far apart will ensure that your content isn’t caught in the spam filter and it will make it onto the category pages. A well placed piece of content at the right time will get anywhere from 200-300 repins while it’s up, assuming it’s baller status. I do this throughout the day. Account 1 is slated for 6 AM, Account 2 is 7AM, Account 3 is 8AM, etc. I keep track of when, where, what, and who I submitted to through Excel so I will never get them confused.

After your pins have received the 200-300 repins they will likely stop and become stagnant . . . only to be reborn again at a later time! I call this “seeding the content” and it will result in a much longer life for your instructographic or infographic.

Here is an example that I did recently that is sitting around 30K uniques. While it had its initial spike, it has currently finished up its second spike in traffic. The traffic will continue to do this for the next 3-4 weeks. While it might take more time to reach 100K visitors, it will still happen, no doubt in my mind.

Conclusion

Yes Pinterest has changed and yes it isn’t optimal. However, with some creative planning and meticulous marketing it is still possible to bring in the big numbers.

When it comes to marketing on Pinterest the game has changed in the recent weeks regarding the recent algorithm change. In the past, it was possible to submit to your account every two hours and still make it to the category page. The category page is an essential for having your instructographics seen and shared by the users of Pinterest. Without ending up on the category page, your content would simply only be seen by your own users.

After a round of Pinterest algorithm updates, however, it seems that time has changed drastically. Now in order to show up on the category pages of Pinterest, it is absolutely necessary that your pins are at least 5 hours apart. If it is any sooner, the pin will simply be posted to your boards and not the category pages.

To combat this, I strongly suggest that an Excel spreadsheet is made detailing the URL that you pinned and the time that you pinned it. It’s a great way to keep your pin timing in check and allow for the proper amount of time to pass to most efficiently submit your content.

Specifically when it comes to instructographics, this timing is a necessity.

Below is a screen show of a recent instructographic pinned and not making the category page:

While it’s a great instructographic and has received well over 30K in traffic from Pinterest visitors, this pin simply did not work out because it was submitted without hitting the category page.

On the other hand, here’s an example of the same Pinterest user submitting the content properly and hitting the front of the category page:

As you can see, it’s a world of a difference. Hitting the category page is absolutely necessary to get your content viral on Pinterest. If you do it correctly and stay patient with your pins, you will have absolutely no problem bringing in the big traffic.

Welcome to the return of 97th Floor’s Content Fridays! If you haven’t met me yet, my name is Colby Almond and I like to think of myself as a ninja when it comes to turning boring things into traffic.

If you work in a “boring” industry and use that as an excuse for not marketing yourself on Pinterest or social networks, then the only person at fault is yourself. With a little creativity and “getting weird” with your products, it’s possible to turn any yawn-inducing industry into the talk of the social networks.

To prove this point, at the beginning of writing this article I spent 5 minutes making the piece of content I’ll be talking about today. At the end of the article, I’ll post the analytics.

After the barrage of tweet and messages  of people asking for help in their industry, I looked into all of them and chose the one that I completely didn’t understand and I think is boring. My choice: Architecture.

I’ll admit my decision was a little biased seeing as the only architect I really know is Ted Mosby, however, it’s just not the type of content that you see every day on the social networks. That’s why I took it upon myself to make something involving this industry go viral in a 30 minute time frame. No offense to any of the architects out there that might be reading this, but Ted Mosby is boring. So boring.

So let’s take a look inside the architecture industry . . . there are buildings, creative design, history and all sorts of magnificent things that could be used for infographics. An infographic outlining the history of the NYC skyline would be magnificent.  However, I only have 30 minutes so none of this will work. I do however, have a set routine I always use when brainstorming content.

The Demographics

Today I’m going to focus on the Pinterest demographic because it’s honestly the social network that I know the best. In Pinterest we have to think about several things such as:

• Creativity
• Good design and colors
• Appeal to share
• Not boring

The Plan

Awesome! I have the first part of my graphic in the mall blueprint. Now what to do with it in only 5 minutes? Whatever I do with it, I know I will not have time to research for an info or instructographic. So I’ll use a little cheap trick and invoke one feeling that’s common throughout both sexes: competition.

Since the beginning of time, men and women have had their differences. And nothing is more different than the shopping habits of men and women while at the mall. For me it’s a quick trip to get what I need, a trip to Brookstone to sit in the chairs, food court, and out. For my mom and girlfriend, however, it’s a maze of stores walking and more stores. I might be overgeneralizing here, but 99% of the time my girlfriend says “I need a shirt” that’s never the case.

So what’s the overall point? Both sexes will either agree or disagree with the graphic. Whether they like it or not, even people arguing will still drive traffic to the site.

So after 5 simple minutes in Photoshop I created the following graphic based on accurate data gathered from my last mall excursion and using the blueprint from the actual mall I visited:

As I said at the beginning of this article, I submitted it to the social networks once I began writing. It’s been 30 minutes now, so my time is up. How did the blueprint of the mall workout?

501 page views in 30 minutes for only 5 minutes of work. Not bad if you ask me.

This was an idea that came to me last night and I figured out this morning: how to tell a story on Pinterest. For content such as comics, DIY books, or instructions this could potentially be a game-changer.

The idea was how to connect pins in a sequential order so that a story could be told on Pinterest without the readers losing interest. The flow of the pins should be as followed:

In order to do this, you’ll need to use the following steps.

1. Cut up the image into separate parts in order so that it “tells a story”.

2. Upload the images to your account in order and keep note of the order.

3. After all the images are uploaded, convert the pin URLs into bit.ly URLs.

4. After this is done, edit the Pin URLS so that each image contains the URL of the next image:

5. On the final URL, loop it back to the title image and instruct the user they can go there to “repin” the story.

6. Promote your new story on Pinterest.

While this is a very clever and innovative way to present your content on Pinterest, it should be noted that it will not result in a large amount of traffic through to your site. I see this being used more for branding purposes than anything else or for comic creators looking to share their stories on Pinterest.

It is also a negative that Pinterest opens the pins in a new window each time, but hopefully that will change in the future.

Here is an example that 97th Floor did with our Easter Mafia infographic : http://pinterest.com/pin/176344141629412424/

The original infographic can be found here: http://www.97thfloor.com/blog/easter-mafia/

Happy Pinning!

Colby Almond

97th Floor

There have been several posts in the last few days harping this message, so I just wanted to clear some things up about the intricacies of viral marketing. Indeed, Pinterest traffic isn’t valuable if you don’t know what to do with it. Driving thousands of visitors your site is an art. It takes time, effort, creativity, and passion. But even more challenging than driving the traffic is determining how to present your content once the visitors arrive to your site.

I didn’t get a chance to speak on this at Linklove Boston, however, I just wanted to give everyone some insights that I’ve learned over the years when it comes to making viral traffic convert.

For the case study that I’ll be using for this post the client’s products are related to the food industry. While I have always said to “never let your client interfere with your creativity”, it should always be a main goal to create an infographic or instructographic that will fit in well with the site.

By doing this on Pinterest you will be submitting your content to categories that are completely inline with the overall appeal to your client’s site. The instructographic was a bit off topic dealing with Mason Jars, however, the nearly all of the 15,000+ visitors since last week have been from the Food and Do It Yourself categories on Pinterest. They are users that are interested in food and projects and this content most certainly appealed to their tastes.

Make the content engaging.

I have submitted a number of static graphics, however, for this content piece I decided to use a great service called Thinglink (for real, it’s awesome) to make it interactive. Once the users arrived to the client’s site they were encouraged to click on the content to view the recipes and projects that were being displayed in the Instructographic.

While the data is no where near on the scale of the 100K+ that I’ve been known for creating, it is worth noting that over 1/3 of the visitors are actually engaging in the content. Today, April 4th, we can see that the amount of clicks on the content actually outnumbers the visitors. Earlier this morning I did a huge push on only the food category of Pinterest, driving all the traffic from users that are particularly interested in this area. As you can see it led to a significant increase in interaction with the graphic as well as the site itself. So how does this equate to analytics?

With static graphics I am seeing bounce rates in the 93-94% range with a visitor duration of about 2:20. However, with more engaging and targeted content I was able to decrease the bounce rate by nearly 8% and increase the duration by nearly 32 seconds. This has essentially led to an increase in interaction to the site as a whole, increasing the pages per visitor from about 1.2 pages/visit to a whopping 1.8 pages/visit.

Make your products visible.

I can’t stress this enough and it’s something that a lot of companies never think about before posting to a client site. I have  a set layout that I like to follow that not only increases the visibility of the products, but also helps guides the users into clicking through to other areas of the site.

The most important aspect to think about when placing products next to your content is human psychology. When a user arrives at an infographic or instructographic nearly all of the users will move their mouse to the right of the content and begin scrolling down. Since the majority of visitors read left to right, this is a no-brainer. However, there are some other important elements of the human mind that can play into increasing product clicks.

First of all, the longest wavelength in the visible spectrum is red. This makes it the most visible of all colors and is the reason that stoplights, stop signs, and the majority of warning signs have some variation of red. Whether the visitors like it or not, their eyes will subconsciously notice anything in red before any other color. I usually prefer clients have their products or at least one aspect of their site in red prior to promoting any content on social networks.

If you don’t believe me, go back and ask yourself which heading you noticed first in this post. Was it the black or the red text? Exactly.

So how does all of this information make Pinterest traffic valuable? Because if you create the content correctly, present your products on the site properly, and make the pieces encourage clicks on the content, it will pay off. Below is the conversion data from the piece mentioned above:

The viral push went popular on Pinterest on March 26th and the client immediately saw a large spike in conversions. Since the new Pinterest algorithm keeps pins from hitting the popular page now for 4-5 days, it immediately picked back up on April 1st and has continued to grow as older pins continue to make it.

So is Pinterest traffic valuable?

Yes. Only if you know how to use it. With great traffic comes great responsibility.

Some other Pinteresting Notes:

Some people have been asking me about the new algorithm updates and I haven’t had a chance to post about it just yet.

• First of all, check the source of the content that you’re pinning to make sure it hasn’t been pinned before. You can do this by simply checking http://pinterest.com/source/URL . If it’s been submitted before then chances are it will not make the category pages and you will receive very few likes or repins.
• Secondly, increase your timing between pins to 4-6 hours. You’re welcome to repin as many things as you like during this wait, however, it seems the algorithm has become a bit more sophisticated and is now blocking post earlier than 4 hours. This is due to the recent rise in spam and while I don’t completely agree with it, it’s something you need to take into consideration.

In conclusion, Pinterest is changing and will continue to do so until it can handle its overwhelming growth. Be sure to check back on 97th Floor’s blog for any more updates and new information.

Colby Almond

97th Floor

If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.

That was the case with the last Pinterest popularity algorithm. It was of elegant and fair design that prevented spam as well as promoted new content. Probably the most important factor in the old algorithm was the chance for ANY user to show up at the top of a specific category page. This is vital because it gave regular users a chance to have their unique content promoted and seen before thousands of eyes.

However with this new Pinterest update that is no more. In what seems like a glitch more than anything, the brains behind Pinterest have decided to flood the category pages with content that is, at some times, up to a year old.

Let’s just hope this is a simple glitch because if it’s not, Pinterest as we know it has just died.

I first noticed that the category pages were not populating correctly earlier this morning. After dropping my girlfriend off at the airport at 5AM, I was able to pin several new pieces of content with no problem. However, around 11AM EST, I began to notice that no content of mine was showing up in any category pages.

Puzzled, I began testing several pinning methods that I thought would alleviate the problem and get my content to the top of the category pages again. After trying uploading directly, several proxies, making new accounts, using URL shortners, rehosting the image, and even pinning images I had JUST created . . . none of the images were to be found. I have tested every possible method under the sun to understand this new update, however, one thing is apparent : they’re giving preference to age. In a social age when new and unique content is what drive’s the internet, this could possibly cause a mass exodus from Pinterest similar to Digg in 2009.

Successful networks are the ones that give new content a chance.

Right now if you’re a new Pinterest user that has very little following, I’m sorry. This glitch (or update) has eliminated any possibility that your content will be seen as well as the chance of you gaining followers. Right now if a new user uploads any content it is likely that it will be seen by only a handful of users, if at all. The category pages acted as a springboard for unique content to make it to the popular page. It made Pinterest a level playing field for all, not just the Pinterest juggernauts that automatically get 2.9 million followers when any users signs up. Even accounts with several thousands of followers will not be able to compete with the 10-12 powerhouses on Pinterest. In the coming days expect the only visible content on the popular boards to be coming from these sources.

Is this fair?

Absolutely not, which is why I’m hoping it’s a mistake. Every user on any network deserves a chance for their voice to be heard. Reddit has its “new” page so users can vote on content that has been submitted within seconds.

Like Reddit, the old Pinterest allowed for every piece of content (barring a few exceptions) to be voted on in the category pages by all the users. The good content would rise to the top while the bad content would disappear into the internet abyss. It’s simple, fair, and it allows the USERS to decide what they want to see make it to the popular page of THEIR network.

Social networks aren’t built in backrooms and from tricky algorithms. They’re built by the voice of the community and allowing for each of those users to feel like they’re a part of something.

In conclusion this could all be a minor glitch. However if it’s not then it is time to let your voices be heard. Speak out against this change and let the creators of Pinterest know that the 10 million+ users joining every month deserve a chance.

So here it is . . . a new direction for Pinterest. I think it’s absolutely detrimental to the site, but we’d love to hear what you think by commenting below.

It has been a crazy last couple of months or really last 6 months. The biggest and most exciting transition for us was to move all of our services completely in house. Our SEO and link building services have been in house for years but our Social Department has not. It is now totally in house, we have the infographic designers, researchers, promoters etc… all under one roof and it has been awesome on getting things done quickly and it makes for a much better quality control.

In February we moved to a new office on the boarder of Lehi/Highland, UT off of Center street and it has been a lot of fun.

Over the last year I have taken a step back, stopped blogging, stopped reading a lot of stuff and really just focused on what 97th Floor has needed to do to get to the next level, to get to where I have always envisioned it would go. We are well underway now with that vision and I couldn’t be happier with our team, the work we are doing and with our clients.

We just launched the new site, we know there are some bugs and small things missing, but if you see anything BIG or glaring please let us know.

Lastly we love Pinterest! It is like Digg 1.0 over here in the offices, its like the wild wild west again and Social hasn’t been like that for a long time. Look for us to start blogging, presenting and sharing more about Pinterest strategies that are working for our clients. Here is one that Colby our newest hire did on Pinterest Marketing on SEOMOz. If you haven’t tried Pinterest or have written it off, I would urge you to take another look, it is very very powerful.

Lastly wanted to write this post to sort of break the bottle on the ship and kick the blog back up again, look forward to a lot of new tactics, tools etc…I think this will be the best year yet in 97th Floors existence which is coming up on 8 yrs and that is very very cool.