Many owners have created Pinterest accounts for their yoga studios. They use Pinterest to share content with their students and other users who may be interested in yoga or wellness in general. A common mistake we see yoga studio owner make on Pinterest is that they treat it the same way they would their Twitter or Facebook accounts. This may lead them to wasted time and effort spent on a faulty Pinterest marketing strategy. Let’s look at some of the marketing mistakes yoga studio owner make on Pinterest.

Overthinking timing

In our article about using social media to drive traffic to your yoga studio website, we discussed the importance of identifying the best times for posting your content. Timing is critical for social media platforms that are linear in their structure. Twitter and Facebook activity is displayed in a chronological timeline. The result is that content is pushed down the timeline as new content is presented. If you haven’t logged into Twitter for a few days, how far down do you scroll to see past activity? That means that any “older” tweets are now lost for good. It’s important for us to address that because with Twitter and Facebook we need to reach people at or around the time they check their accounts in order to increase the likelihood that our content is noticed. Pinterest on the other hand has an algorithm that looks for high quality content that is ALSO related to pins you have already shown interest in. Pinterest uses that algorithm, rather than a chronological order, to determine which pins are displayed in your account. This distinction cannot be understated as it leads pins having a significantly longer shelf life than a tweet.

Focusing on Followers

The number of followers you have on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and several other social media platforms is very important. The more (real, relevant) followers your yoga studio has, the greater the chance a piece of content is viewed and shared. Again, Pinterest is different. Due to it’s content-related algorithm, Pinterest displays Pins based on interests you are following, related pins based on what you pin and the highest quality pins from the people you follow. And unlike Facebook, your Pins (unless private) can be seen by other Pinterest users who are not your followers. This makes it much more likely that someone who does not follow you on Pinterest will see your pins.

Less Social, Less Networking

Pinterest just isn’t used in the same way Twitter and Facebook are. While Twitter and Facebook are used to tell people who you are and what you’re doing, Pinterest is mostly focused on the future. People generally Pin things like food they enjoy, places they want to go visit, projects they you are interested in, etc. Pinterest therefore gives yoga studio owners the opportunity to Pin different content than they do on other social networks and with a different objective: promoting the brand.

Savasana

Yoga studio owners should use Pinterest to promote and strengthen their studio’s brand. Focus on the future instead of the present and use different strategies than the ones you use for Twitter and Facebook to achieve them most marketing bang for your buck on Pinterest. Remember that good images are the perfect way to grab a reader’s attention, so make sure to always add a nice photo or graphic to your content. Good luck with your social media marketing!