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WHITEPAPER PINTEREST BEST PRACTICES SUMMARY Brands and Retailers have been observing rapid growth in Pinterest activty, and are quickly discovering the power of Pinterest to drive viral brand awareness, website traffic and sales conversion. In this whitepaper we will discuss best practices across the wide landscape of things you need to be considering when it comes to Pinterest: Optimizing your website for Pinning Profile strategies and tactics Follower growth and engagement Monitoring competitors Promotions Optimizing for inbound “discovery” traffic Leverage these learnings to enhance the business value you derive from Pinterest, and position your brand as a tastemaker and thought leader in your industry. THE COMPLETE MARKETING SUITE FOR PINTEREST formerly MAY 8, 2013

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Page 1: Pinterest Best Practices

© 2013 Piqora. All rights reserved.

WHITEPAPERPINTEREST BEST PRACTICES

SUMMARY Brands and Retailers have been observing rapid growth in Pinterest activty, and are quickly discovering the power of Pinterest to drive viral brand awareness, website traffic and sales conversion.

In this whitepaper we will discuss best practices across the wide landscape of things you need to be considering when it comes to Pinterest:

• Optimizing your website for Pinning• Profile strategies and tactics• Follower growth and engagement• Monitoring competitors• Promotions• Optimizing for inbound “discovery” traffic

Leverage these learnings to enhance the business value you derive from Pinterest, and position your brand as a tastemaker and thought leader in your industry.

THE COMPLETE MARKETING SUITE FOR PINTEREST

#1F667C #3E3E36

formerly

MAY 8, 2013

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© 2013 Piqora. All rights reserved. 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE CASE FOR PINTEREST ...................

OPTIMIZING YOUR WEBSITE .................

PROFILE BEST PRACTICES ...................

MONITORING THE COMPETITION .........

SWEEPSTAKES & CONTESTS ...............

OPTIMIZING FOR INBOUND TRAFFIC ...

Section

1

2

3

4

5

6

#1F667C #3E3E36

CELEBRITYBLOGGER

CHEF

FASHION GURU

NEIGHBOR

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© 2013 Piqora. All rights reserved.© 2013 Piqora. All rights reserved. 3

THENUMBERS

Pinterest generates more tangible business value than any other “social network”. The primary reason for this is that it’s not just a social network, Pinterest is much more than that. Pinterest has driven a shift in the way people discover products and things they care about. Humans are capable of processing visual information far more rapidly than text, and the “visual web” allows rapid intake and segmentation of information. Driving the proliferation of the “visual web”, Pinterest is helping people more rapidly discover products, collect them, and subsequently purchase them.

PINTEREST’S ROLE IN SOCIAL MEDIA

STRATEGY

1

Social Media Marketers have long sought the elusive “ROI” the C-suite is always demanding. That search is over with the emergence of Pinterest, and a very clear role for Pinterest has crystalized among the major social networks. Pinterest fits squarely in the role of the Social ROI centerpiece of a brands social media strategy!

THE CASE FOR PINTEREST

CELEBRITYBLOGGER

CHEF

FASHION GURU

NEIGHBOR

• 70 Million Users (estimated)*• #4 traffic Driver to

E-Commerce websites** • Average Order Value of $169, compared

to $95 for Facebook and $71 for Twitter***• Pinners spend 1 hour 17 min.** a month on Pinterest • From Sept. ‘12 to Jan. ‘13 key metrics grew dramatically:

• Visits Per Pin* + 300% • Visits & Page Views Per Day* + 200%

ENGAGEMENT & RELATIONSHIP

BUILDING

CUSTOMER SUPPORT & NEWS

WEBSITE TRAFFIC AND SALES

(ROI)

* Piqora Data ** Comscore *** RichRelevance

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A very large majority (80+%) of pins on Pinterest originate from a website, which in turn drives return website traffic. If you want more people pinning from your site follow these tips to help optimize your website for Pinning.

Featuring Pin-it buttons prominently throughout your site will help prompt visitors to Pin, driving viral reach and powerful social recommendations. Because Pinterest is implicitly tied to all things “visual”, the best placement for Pin-it buttons is right on the image itself. Don’t forget to also place a Pinterest icon among your social icons with a “follow” CTA to drive these already highly engaged website visitors to your Pinterest profile. Here they’ll hopefully like what they see and become a follower.

PIN-IT AND FOLLOW BUTTONS

2 OPTIMIZING YOUR WEBSITE FOR PINNING

PINTEREST’S ROLE IN OVERALL

BUSINESS STRATEGY

Pinterest can contribute to your business objectives in a wide variety of ways:

• Websitetraffic: The more pins on pinterest from your site, the more traffic you’ll get.

• Sales: Traffic from Pinterest is discovery traffic with high purchase intent. Provide a good experience on your site, and handle traffic for out of stock items well, and you will convert more traffic to sales.

• Merchandising: Understanding which content is popular and trending on Pinterest can help you make wise inventory and merchandising decisions.

• Brandingandpositioning: Becoming a “taste maker” on Pinterest can help you position your brand in the marketplace and drive viral reach for your visual content.

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DESCRIPTIONSWhen people pin from your site, make it easier for them to complete the action by having a good description pre-populated. Keep it simple and tight, but containing as much pertinent information as possible.

• Brand name and product model info

• Color and material information

• Price (recommend labeling MSRP)

• SKU#

People will only pin things they like, that they feel will look good in their boards. Product “hero” shots will get pinned, but often photos that feature the product in a contextual or lifestyle settings are also very popular.

Brands that have had the most success on Pinterest have begun to take the approach of re-merchandising their site with imagery that will be more attractive to pinners.

The important thing is to make sure as much of your content as possible is both pinable and pinworthy.

CREATE A VISUAL WEB EXPERIENCE

Most websites have been built for the text web: for robots to crawl, index and deliver links to people in search results. These pages don’t work as well for humans. Making your website more visually appealing, and “discoverable” will yield longer time on site, larger cart size and and higher AOV.

Additionally, for incoming traffic from Pinterest, you can leverage Piqora’s Gallery products to provide a discovery experience featuring highly correlated and trending items/images that will create serendipity and help reduce bounce rates while increasing conversion.

CURATION

Piqora-Powered Gallery

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PINNING METRICS

KEY METRICS FOR WEBSITE ACTIVITY

Metric What it Means Actions to Take

Pinsfromwebsite

The more pins the merrier. Clicks from Pinterest are directly correlated with volume of Pins.

• Test Pin-it button implementations

• Test varying content strategies• Create an “inspiration” section

on the site, optimize for pinningAvg.Pins/day

This help you understand pinning volume from your site, and if content and prominence of PinIt buttons is working to drive pins?

• Test various Pin-it button implementations

#ofuniquepinners

A measure of the relevance of your content to Pinners that visit your site

• Ensure Pinterest CTA’s are implemented across all product categories

• Test content/photo strategiesAvg#Pins/Pinner

A measure of the stickiness and discoverability of content on your site

• Surface more relevant products/images on each page

• Test content/photo strategies

#ofRepins

A measure of the virality of your content • Test content/photo strategies• Drive/attract influential pinners

to your siteRepin:Pinratio

Helps understand the quality of your images/Pins to drive virality. Also a gauge of the influence of Pinners pinning from your site

• Test content/photo strategies• Drive/attract influential Pinners

to your site

Visits from Pinterest

The volume of traffic coming to your site from Pinterest

Visits per Pin & Page Views per pin

The number of Page visits and Page Views that will be generated from each Pin on Pinterest. The more Pins the merrier!

• Engage Influencers to Pin your content

• Run a promotion to boost Pin volume

• Include more detail in default Pin descriptions

Page Views

Total volume of page views resulting from visits. An indicator of time on site, content stickiness, and the discoverability of your site.

• Surface more relevant products/images on each page

Purchases # of sales conversions from site traffic (Attribution will vary)

• Test & optimize Buy CTA’s

Revenue Total revenue driven (Attribution will vary)

• Test & optimize Buy CTA’s• Test increasing cart value by

Surfacing more relevant and complimentary products/ images on each page

PINNER INFLUENCE

METRICS

PERFORMANCE METRICS

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The decision to launch and manage a Pinterest profile is a decision to proactively drive your content into the network above and beyond the pins that are already occurring from your website. Many brands see far more pinning activity from their website than they could possibly pin to their own profile. So, if you’re managing a profile for your brand, you should view this as an opportunity to become a thought leader and tastemaker in your respective space. Your goal should be to bring value to the community, versus simply pushing your content/products into Pinterest. By taking this approach you will earn and retain a follower base that will repin your content and drive further viral reach, and return website traffic.

BOARD STRATEGIES & BEST PRACTICES

Your board strategy should be driven by your brand strategy, a reflection of the message you want to put into the marketplace. Your boards are an extension of your brand, and visually communicate the way you want people to perceive your brand.

If you want to be a design thought leader, curate your products alongside other content that reflects that design sensibility. If you want to be a helpful source of value, pin your products in the context of How-to’s and DIY.

Follow these key Best Practices to ensure you fulfill your board strategies

• CreateaUniqueBoardStrategy Try to avoid simply replicating your website navigation structure. Organize and curate your boards in a way that delivers a different experience from your website, providing good reason to explore them. Kitchy, interesting, and edgy board names and descriptions help inspire people to explore your boards.

• MixupyourboardcontentYour boards should not simply be collages of product imagery. Focus on mixing up your content with complimentary lifestyle and related imagery that helps convey an aspirational brand identity for people to relate to and associate with. Some leading brands on Pinterest have a policy to use a maximum of 60% their own pins, and the remaining 40% of content must be from other influential pinners and tastemakers, or complimentary products.

BOARD STRATEGIES

& BEST PRACTICES

DETAILS OF TECHNOLOGY3 PROFILE BEST PRACTICES

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• CollaborativeBoardswithInfluentialPinnersA very powerful way to tap into an Influencers follower base is by partnering on a collaborative board. This will help associate your brand more closely with a tastemaker in the space, while dramatically increasing reach and awareness.

KEY METRICS FOR BOARDS

Metric What it Means Actions to Take

EngagementIndex(Piqora)

This is an index of engagement comparing your boards to each other. This helps you understand which of your boards are top performers using a weighted mix of followers, repins, clicks, likes, and comments.

• Harness the momentum of a popular board by pinning more

• Study to derive insights into what elements are driving popularity, and add similar elements to under-performing boards to improve those boards.

MostFollowed This will help you identify individual boards that have gained more followers than others.

• Pin content that helps drive awareness of your other boards, and your overall profile.

• Leverage the extensive follower base to drive your brand and thought leadership.

MostRepinned Which boards contain the most viral content

• Identify the top pins within those boards, and use those pins to help other boards grow

PINNING STRATEGIES & BEST PRACTICES

Like any channel, content is King! Your Pins are your content here, and they will be what really moves the needle in driving virality, awareness, follower growth, and click traffic to your website. Pinterest is a beautiful place, content must be of high quality to belong here. As a member of the Pinterest community, you want to make sure you don’t pin too frequently, or not enough.

Follow some of these simple tips to ensure your Pinning efforts aren’t wasted:

• TimeofDay Pin when followers are most engaged! Using analytics from Piqora, you can know the days/times your followers are most engaged on Pinterest and structure your pinning schedule around those times.

BOARD METRICS

DETAILS OF TECHNOLOGY3 PROFILE BEST PRACTICES (CONT.)

PINNING STRATEGIES

& BEST PRACTICES

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• Frequency - How often should you Pin? There’s no hard and fast rule here. The answer to this is: “as often as you have good, unique, and interesting content”. Be mindful of how much content you’ll be pushing into users feeds, and not to overdo it. Space your content out gradually. The general rule of thumb that we recommend is 10-20 a day, but not all at once, spread them out a bit. Use competitor metrics to monitor your “share of voice” in that category.

• PinCreative A couple important tips:

- Pinterest is vertically oriented, use portrait and tall imagery, not landscape. - Lightly watermark or brand your original content to help drive awareness, but don’t be gaudy . - If you have text in your graphic, make sure it will be legible in thumbnail format in a feed, otherwise it just looks like a mess. - Standalone product imagery does well, but contextual environments and lifestyle are also very popular.

- Keep it classy and high quality.

• LinkyourpinsMake sure to link your pins to the right place… usually your website. You want to remain mindful of where those pins will land visitors months from now, Many Pins live a long life. Will the product be in stock, what will they experience on your site? See our section on optimizing for inbound traffic from Pinterest.

• ConnectyourFacebookandTwitteraccountstoyourPinterestBe cautious to make sure you want to use this. If you believe many of your Pins will be relevant to your Facebook and Twitter audiences, you can connect your profiles to send Pins out automatically to those channels. This can cause overmessaging in those channels, so be aware of this and plan accordingly.

• Re-PinotherPinnerscontentThere is a social element to Pinterest, it is a community. Pinning and Repinning other Pinners content is a great way to build mutually beneficial relationships, and promote each others content. For brands and retailers, you should focus on supporting influencers in the categories relevant to your space. When the time comes to launch promotions or new products, those relationships can pay off in spades via their extensive reach, often in the millions. Make sure to credit sources when repinning content.

DETAILS OF TECHNOLOGY3 PROFILE BEST PRACTICES (CONT.)

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KEY METRICS FOR PINNING

Metric What it Means Actions to Take

PinsfromWebsite

These are the Pins that website visitors have demonstrated they think are high value

• Pin top pins to your boards, they will do well

• Make this content more prominent

• Add Pin CTA’s besides this content

RepinofPinsfromWebsite

This is a measure the virality of those Pins, and the influence of your website pinners

• Pin top Pins to your boards, they will do well

RepinsfromBoards

This tells you which of the pins you’ve pinned to your boards have driven the most viral reach

• Make those popular/viral Pins more prominent on your website

Top Pins by Site Visits (Piqora)

Using Piqora web analytics integrations - Google Analytics - Core Metics - Site Catalyst (Omniture) you can identify which Pins drive the most click traffic to your website, as well as subsequent page views.

• Pin to your boards (repeat)

• Raise prominence on Website

• Derive insights form image com-position. Lifestyle? Product only? Text on image? Watermark? What kinds of images drive clicks?

Top Pins by Revenue (Piqora)

Using Piqora web analytics integrations (Google Analytics, Core Metics, Site Catalyst), you can identify which pins drive the most revenue when they visit the site.

• Pin to your boards (repeat)

• Raise prominence on Website

• Derive insights from image composition. Lifestyle? Product only? Text on image? Watermark? What kinds of images drive revenue? Do they click the $1000 dress, and buy the $200 shoes?

PIN METRICS

DETAILS OF TECHNOLOGY3 PROFILE BEST PRACTICES (CONT.)

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AUDIENCE / FOLLOWER STRATEGIES & BEST PRACTICES

To leverage the benefits of your efforts to become a tastemaker in the space, you’ll need to grow a quality follower base. A strong follower base made up of the right audience can be a very powerful tool in extending the viral reach of your Pins, and driving massive website traffic gains. Demonstrating ongoing value to followers is key to retaining those followers, and earning their engagement and endorsement via Repins.

APinterestfollowerismoredifficulttoacquirethanaFacebookfan.

Avoid the temptation to think of followers as similar to Facebook fans. Following any ID on Pinterest is a more serious indicator of interest and loyalty than a “like”. This is indicated by research that has shown Pinners follow fewer entities on Pinterest than they would ‘like’ on Facebook. Research** shows that Pinners follow on average 20-50 entities on Pinterest, versus 130 on Facebook. The good news for brands is that as a proportion of overall following, Pinners follow 50% brands and retailers, versus less than 5% on Facebook.

We believe the reason Pinners follow a select group is because their feed can quickly become unmanageable. Unlike Facebooks EdgeRank algorithm, Pinterest is a feed of all recent activity, so as a user, following 50+ brands can get out of control quickly and feel very overwhelming.

There are several great ways to grow a quality follower base:

• Becomeatastemaker If you are the clear thought leader in your category, creating and repinning the best content around a topic, you will organically grow a loyal follower base.

• LeverageotherchannelstogrowawarenessofyourPinterestPresence - Post on Facebook

- Tweet on Twitter - Placement in email - Icons and banners on Website - In store - In packaging - In shipping materials

PINTEREST FOLLOWERS VS.

FACEBOOK FANS

DETAILS OF TECHNOLOGY3 PROFILE BEST PRACTICES (CONT.)

GROWING FOLLOWERS

** Comscore

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• BuildandLeverageInfluencerRelationships Pinterest Influencers can have very broad reach and even just a few repins from your profile can do wonders to grow awareness for your brand. Many of these influencers are already popular bloggers, so there’s a chance your PR team may already have a relationship in place. Leverage Piqora’s Pinner analytics to identify the most engaged and influential Pinners in each category.

• Promotions-Sweepstakes&Contests Running Promotions can create a boost in Pin activity that drives reach and awareness. The spikes in activity will increase organic follower growth. As part of a promotion you can require the participant to follow for eligibility, but we don’t usually recommend it, for several reasons: - Quality of follower could be low, as they might only follow to participate. - It is a high barrier to entry, and will cause significant drop off in entry and eligibility rates. You can expect < 30% of participants to complete this step. - Without it, you will see higher participation and more Pinning, which will drive further reach and impressions, and the followers you do gain will follow because they want to. In other words, it will be quality followership.

See the Promotions section of this whitepaper, and our Promotions Best Practices whitepaper for more Promotions details.

Though different in its own right, Pinterest has strong social network elements, providing you an opportunity to engage in meaningful ways with your follower base, advocates, and influencers. The really nice thing about Pinterest is that it is resoundingly positive, so you will be doing very little “fire extinguishing” here, versus other social channels.

Leverage these best practices to engage your audience on Pinterest in a meaningful and impactful way.

• RepinContentfromothers Perhaps best reserved for identified influencers, repinning a Pin is the highest form of compliment you can pay within Pinterest. Repinning sends the message that you recognize their taste, believe it aligns well with your brand, and you want to incorporate that content into your boards. If the content is original, be sure to recognize the source of it in your description and an @ mention.

GROWING FOLLOWERS

(CONT.)

DETAILS OF TECHNOLOGY3 PROFILE BEST PRACTICES (CONT.)

ENGAGEMENT

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• Liking&Commenting Not as strong a signal as repinning, liking and commenting is a way to throw love and appreciation towards others. Specifically, if a Pinner has Pinned or repinned your content, these things can go a long way: - A simple “thank you” on a repin has profound effects on fostering loyalty - Commenting with additional details shows your attentiveness - It is important to be authentic when doing this. Make sure your comments are real, and specific to the case. Copying a default and just pasting it on 100 pins is inauthentic, and humans don’t like that. In addition, Pinterest may block you from posting if you exhibit this behavior. - Use caution when using links, this can also result in being blocked by Pinterest.

• Influencers&AdvocatesMuch like a blogger outreach program, identifying the Pinners that carry the most influence in their respective categories and building relationships with them is a fantastic way to gain extended reach through a trusted and influential channel. Influencers often have 100’s of thousands, sometimes Millions of followers on Pinterest, meaning that Pins from the leading Pinterest influencers can theoretically reach a majority of the Pinterest userbase. There are three main types of Influencers you can identifty using Piqora, see below for descriptions of each:

ENGAGED WEBSITE PINNERS

Who&What:

These are brand advocates Pinning from your website the most. They love your product(s), and there are many many of these Pinners.

Actions:

• Follow them to demonstrate your appreciation. They will notice that you followed them, these Pinners often have modest follower counts. It might yield a follow back.

• Also leverage Twitter (if connected) to begin a dialogue with them.

ENGAGEMENT (CONT.)

DETAILS OF TECHNOLOGY3 PROFILE BEST PRACTICES (CONT.)

ADVOCATES & INFLUENCERS

CELEBRITYBLOGGER

CHEF

FASHION GURU

NEIGHBOR

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INFLUENTIAL WEBSITE PINNERS

Who&What:

These are influential Pinners (10’s of thousands to millions of followers) that have Pinned from your website. They have exhibited endorsement of your product(s), and they reach a lot of people with their social recommendations.

Actions:

• Follow them to demonstrate your appreciation, though they may not notice because they get so many followers.

• If they have Twitter connected, send a tweet to begin the dialogue.

• If these influencers generate content around your industry/category, invite them to have sneak peeks and previews of upcoming products or campaigns to get them excited.

• Invite them to be a guest Pinner and collaborate on a board with them.

INFLUENTIAL PINNERS ON ALL OF PINTEREST (BY CATEGORY)

Who&What:

Similar to the previous two these are Pinners with the overall largest follower bases on Pinterest. This can also be sorted by category to find the Pinners with the most influence in your category (ie: weddings, food, fashion, etc.). if you don’t find them in your influential website Pinners list, then they may have never pinned your content. But with their reach and influence, there’s nothing you want more than for them to do so!

Actions:

• Follow them to demonstrate your appreciation, though they most likely will not notice because they get so many followers.

• If they have twitter connected, send a tweet to begin the dialogue.

• You may need to use off social-network approaches to engage with them. Some of these influencers may also have agents, or be part of influencer networks that handle all of the interest in their influence, like agents. See note above.

• Your relationship with them will likely be more formal, and may take some time to establish. Always check with your PR team to see if they have any pre-existing relationships with these individuals, as they are often also influential bloggers.

ADVOCATES & INFLUENCERS

(CONT.)

DETAILS OF TECHNOLOGY3 PROFILE BEST PRACTICES (CONT.)

Note: Think very carefully before paying, compensating, or monetarily rewarding advocates & influencers in exchange for their endorsements. Consider the po-tential implications of such activities, and your brands appetite for this approach.

The Golden Rule = Be Authentic!

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FAQ: How many Pins should we put on a board?

There is no hard and fast rule to how many pins you should have on a board. We recommend a minimum of 5-10 to ensure the board does not look empty. Pinners enjoy the infinite scrolling experience in Pinterest, so having a deep board can be a good thing. However, having more than 200 Pins on a board starts to be a bit much, and gives impression that not a lot of “curation” went into the board, and it was just a “Pin dump” (the act of Pinning way too many Pins in one shot, clogging up followers feeds).

FAQ: How should we use secret boards?

Secret boards are a great tool when you’re planning a board and want to see how it will look in advance, or when you want a board to go live with a high volume of pins. To avoid “Pin dumping”, you can curate a secret board that you push live once it’s almost completed.

FAQ: Is it OK to Pin the same Pin twice?

You may find a Pin in your analytics that is extremely popular and you want to Repin it to get even more traction out of it, and bring it back up top on the board. We recommend doing so sparingly, and with enough time between that you don’t appear too repetitive. A good timeframe might be to post 10+ days apart at least. We recommend Pinning it at a very different day/time to reduce the odds of repeating exposure to the same followers. Your goal is to reach a new audience. We also advise going back and removing the earlier Pin from your board if it is too close together (within 3-4 rows) so there is not repetition.

NOTE: when you remove a Pin from your board, you will lose the repin counts/metrics, and likes/comments for that Pin, but it does not delete the Pin from the boards of those that repinned it, those will be unaffected.

FAQ: How did some brands get Millions of followers, when it’s hard to even get 1,000?!?!

The simple answer to that is, they were given them! When users first sign up for Pinterest, they are immediately given a range of brands to follow in a variety of categories. Pinterest selects what they’ve determined to be high quality content to serve to these new users. So, as Pinterest’s user base grows, so does the follower base of those brands worthy enough to be selected by Pinterest for that select pool. While those brands have effectively “earned” those followers, it is not an even playing ground and therefore you’re doing yourself a disservice if you try to compare your brand to them.

PROFILE FAQ’S

DETAILS OF TECHNOLOGY3 PROFILE BEST PRACTICES (CONT.)

Tip: When you make a secret board public, the pins do not go into followers feeds. Save your best Pins until after the board goes live, so that you can Pin to that board, drawing the attention of followers to that board.

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FAQ- I’ve been doing all this stuff, why am I having a really hard time growing followers?

It isn’t easy to grow a follower base, as we’ve described above. And some brands just can’t expect to ever grow a sizable following, your brand just may not be conducive to it. The brands that seem to have the most success are a combination of extremely high quality content, and have a very targeted product/need they fill. Focus on maximizing your influencer relationships, and on-site Pinning.

Monitoring competitor activity and keeping track of notable Pinners can help keep tabs on what’s working and what isn’t. Understanding which brands are knocking it out of the park, and which are making errors that hurt their brand can inform the decisions you make around your brand.

Use these tips to keep a leg up on competition:

• Competitorsactivity: Track when your competition is Pinning, and how frequently. Are they overdoing it, or asleep behind the wheel? Key metrics for understanding competitor activity:

- Repin rate: Are their Pins being repined at a high rate, in relation to their audience

- Follower growth: Are their efforts yielding new followers

- Site Pin rate: Is their site more “pinworthy”, driving more Pins from their site

• Competitorsfollowers: Identify the Pinners that are most engaged and following your competitors, then draw them into your brand/profile. Look for the most highly engaged and influential Pinners as your primary targets to attract to your brand.

• Competitivecontentstrategies: Evaluate competitors content, to understand what is/isn’t working. Especially if you’re new to the medium, before you create a content strategy, get a feel for what your competitors are doing and make an educated move into the space. Evaluate competitor content strategies for Pins, and boards within the Piqora platform.

PROFILE FAQ’S

DETAILS OF TECHNOLOGY3 PROFILE BEST PRACTICES (CONT.)

DETAILS OF TECHNOLOGY4 MONITORING THE COMPETITION

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Pinterest promotions like sweepstakes, contests, and giveaways are a great way to drive incremental Pinning activity, grow followers, and generate boosted return website traffic.

There are three keys to driving successful promotions on Pinterest. These are strategies that can and should be applied to promotions in any channel, but you can and should apply these to promotions in Pinterest.

ESTABLISH OBJECTIVES

Before any promotion, you should know your prioritized objectives. Everything you do should drive towards these desired objectives, and you should not be trying to accomplish everything in one promotion. Ideal objectives should achieve real business goals, such as:• Driving Site Traffic• Driving Sales• Boosting awareness • User Engagement• Growing Followers

CREATE A GREAT USER EXPERIENCE

Participants can be temperamental, so it’s important to have an easy, fun, smooth user flow to ensure the highest participation rates.

Piqora’s promotions platform simplifies any desired user experience. The most successful we’ve seen on our platform include:• Pin from website• Repin from our boards• Create a board

3 KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL

PROMOTIONS

DETAILS OF TECHNOLOGY5 PROMOTIONS: CONTESTS & SWEEPSTAKES

Note: Pinterest specifies promotion guidelines on their site. See our “Promotions Best Practices” Whitepaper for more details. Piqoraonlysupportspromotionsthatadheretothoseguidelines.

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DRIVE TRAFFIC TO THE PROMOTION

Unfortunately, in the world of promotions, the expression “If you build it they will come” does not apply. You’ll need to drive people to your promotion using all channels possible.

When driving traffic to your promotion, leverage the following:

• Owned Media - Social - Email - Website - Print

• Advocates & Influencers

• Press

• Paid Media - Social Ads (Facebook & Twitter) - Display Ads - Print Ads - Broadcast

FormoredetailedPromotionsStrategyresources,referencethePiqora“PromotionsBestPractices”Whitepaper.

DISCOVERY IS THE NEW TOP OF THE FUNNEL

The “visual web” presents us with a new paradigm in which people are discovering content more rapidly than ever before. Using limitless feeds of visual hyperlinks, people are finding and collecting the things they aspire to purchase far more rapidly, effectively shortening the purchase consideration cycle and driving more e-commerce to brands that have had traction in Pinterest. Traffic coming to your website from sites like Pinterest are often in “discovery mode”, and come to you with high purchase intent.

3 KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL

PROMOTIONS (CONT.)

DETAILS OF TECHNOLOGY5 PROMOTIONS: CONTESTS & SWEEPSTAKES

DETAILS OF TECHNOLOGY6 OPTIMIZING FOR INBOUND TRAFFIC

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Your website was built with SEO in mind. This means you’ve optimized for robots to crawl and index your pages, not for humans to consume the content quickly, and move closer to a sale. There is a need to optimize your website experience for site visitors that come from “discovery” mediums: Pinterest, tablet & mobile traffic, category keyword searches, etc.

To optimize for Discovery traffic, follow these two key concepts:

ACKNOWLEDGE WHAT BROUGHT THIS VISITOR TO THE SITE

They have just exhibited a higher level of interest which may lead them closer to conversion. Make sure they see the item/image they demonstrated interest in. There are several potentially poor experiences that can occur:

• Productoutofstock Many brands/retailers do not have a good way of dealing with traffic that comes to a product page that is out of stock. If a user is simply redirected to home page, or shown an out of stock product page, it’s likely that user will bounce.

• Pagedisabled Some sites simply disable the page of the product that is out of stock, which leads to a very negative user experience of landing on a 404 error page.

• TakentoofarintothesiteSome people want to continue their discovery experience, so being taken straight to a “buy now” page can be counter-productive. These users need to see more of products related to this before making a purchase decision.

DISCOVERY IS THE NEW TOP

OF THE FUNNEL

DETAILS OF TECHNOLOGY6 OPTIMIZING FOR INBOUND TRAFFIC (CONT.)

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SURFACE RELATED TRENDING ITEMS TO DEEPEN DISCOVERY

Piqora Gallery offers on-site optimization tools that combine social signals with your inventory and pricing data to create serendipitous infinite discovery experiences for site visitors that help:

• Increasesalesconversion The more of your products they discover, the more likely they are to convert.

• Extendtimeonsite&pageviewsMore time and activity on your site means more opportunities for Pinning and conversion at a higher Average Order Value (AOV).

• DeepenproductdiscoveryAdditional product discovery and product impressions can increase awareness of your product offering, future recall, and generate higher brand affinity.

KEY METRICS FOR ON-SITE PERFORMANCE

Metric What it Means Actions to Take

PageViews Visitors spend more time on your site, viewing more pages, products, and getting closer to sales conversion.

To increase page views and extend time on site, you must deliver more meaningful content to keep users engaged

SalesConversion

Dollars in the door. If discovery traffic is converting less frequently, test buy CTA’s and extend time on site.

AverageOrderValue(AOV)

Total amount of tracked revenue across total # of purchases.

Compare this to the AOV of other sources of traffic to understand the potential revenue driving power of Pinterest

DETAILS OF TECHNOLOGY6 OPTIMIZING FOR INBOUND TRAFFIC (CONT.)

For information on the Piqora Suite of Pinterest Marketing Tools

Contact: [email protected] or 866-857-8433