Pinterest: Increasing Your Web Traffic Using Photo Sharing

I was an early adopter when Pinterest came out. It was like a bad addiction, except good. I loved it! I couldn't get enough. Although my time spent on the site has wained over time, I've still got the same love for Pinterest as I did in the beginning. 

There's two main reasons for that. 1) It's always been very easy to use and 2) it's visually appealing!

As a blogger, I adopted using Pinterest pretty early on as well. At that time it was best used for recipes and tutorials, neither of which I did very often, but it helped me get insight into what other bloggers were doing more than anything else. 

As a Mom, Pinterest is great. It's chalk full of amazing ideas, visual interpretations and link-backs to some pretty amazing blogs. It's like Pandora's box, once you start it's hard to stop! 

As a business owner or blogger it may be difficult, at first, to find a place where you fit in on Pinterest, but as more people adopt the site into their daily web lives, the opportunities only grow! One of my big projects in my new role is to create some brand awareness online for our car dealership. Most people would think that the automotive industry is male-driven (it's not) and that pinterest wouldn't be an ideal place to set up shop online (it is.) There's some very good reasons for that: 

• Pinterest is photo-rich which means things that look beautiful in pictures, like cars for instance, perform well
• Photography is key here, so if you've got a good photographer you will do well
• People share on Pinterest more than any other site, so if you've created good content you're far more likely to be shared
• Pinterest Click-Backs (people following your photo's link back to your website or blog) are higher than Google, Facebook and Twitter COMBINED
• People who get to your site via Pinterest have a longer bounce rate (the time that they stay on your site) than from any other site
• Pinterest works well with nostalgic/history rich material, so things like vintage cars perform very well also
• Just like Facebook, LinkedIn and Google +, a well-maintained and properly filled-out Pinterest for Business page is patrolled by Google, giving you a higher Page Rank (contingent on you indexing properly, of course!)
• Pinterest recently launched a Business-oriented option, like Facebook Pages, but... on Pinterest!

So what are some things you can do to help leverage this Pinteresting Craze?  I've got a few ideas for you!

1. Use Pinterest Goodies to help people easily pin items from your site directly onto their Pinterest Boards
2. Create high-quality, information rich photos and infographics that encourage sharing - include accurate web links, proper information and a hashtag or two!
3. ASK and you shall receive! Ask your fans/visitors to follow you on Pinterest and Pin from your site!
4. Link Up! Link your other accounts (Facebook, Website, Twitter, etc.) to your Pinterest Page for easy syncing and sharing
5. Create Pinterest-Oriented content.... cool things you found on pinterest, stuff that would be good for pinterest...