Like some of you, I have been doing Pinterest marketing for some time, but with no real goals or consistency. I have set up and optimized many clients on Pinterest. Then they manage it for themselves. Now I am realizing this platform should be a higher part of my marketing strategy.

I try to look at my Google Analytics weekly. I logged in a couple weeks ago and noticed something I was not expecting. Pinterest was my #9 Traffic Source in the month of August! Really? I am really surprised by this because all I was doing was posting my blog images to Pinterest weekly. That’s about it. #3 was Facebook because that is where I spend the majority of my time and focus. But, notice something? No Twitter. No Google+. No Linkedin. I spend just as much, if not more time, on those sites. So that is why I was surprised that Pinterest was #9!

Soon after I looked at these analytics, I signed up for a training by Melanie Duncan on CreativeLive about Pinterest. This Pinterest training gave me so many nuggets. Since I am a big believer in taking action, that’s what I did. I am going to share 2 tips from this training that I learned and applied, then show you the details of what happened.

Pinterest Tip #1: Checklists are Popular on Pinterest

We all love checklists! Pinterest users especially love checklists! When you can check items off, it feels like an accomplishment. That’s why we make to-do lists. Does your business have some sort of checklist that you could turn into an image? Think hard. I had a posting checklist that I created for an email opt-in, but was not using it for that person anymore. So I thought why not put that image on my Pinterest board?

I posted it on a Thursday. It is Tuesday now. So in 3 days it has been shared 31 times…and still being shared daily! Most of my images were shared before this only a 1 or 2 times. Plus, I posted about 10 other images at the same time and the checklists were shared the most. What did this tell me? It is true. Pinterest users love checklists! (Below are the images I posted. If you’d like to download them yourself, here’s my board)

Pinterest Tip #2: Pinterest Users are Most Active on Saturdays

I posted this image on a Thursday. I saw one repin on Friday. Suddenly, Saturday morning came and then the action really started happening. I kept seeing repin after repin from 8 am and throughout the day. Now I did get a few on Sunday and Monday, but the majority of traffic was on Saturday morning. Since this is the case, you want to make sure you are posting your best image content on Friday/Saturday to increase your exposure.

I hope this gave you some ideas as to why you should use Pinterest, what to post on Pinterest and when to put in your most efforts. Have you seen similar or different results? I’d love to hear them!

You can post images and video on Pinterest. Looking for more ideas? Then feel free to download my ebook: Ultimate Guide to Social Media Content Creation