Using Pinterest To Promote Food Blogs And Restaurant Sites

Pinterest is currently one of the most popular social networks. It is especially useful for niche businesses, such as restaurants or food blogs. You can find a large audience for your food and culinary content on Pinterest. In fact, using Pinterest to promote restaurant sites or food blogs is not a complicated task.

So, how do you use Pinterest to promote restaurant sites and food blogs? Is there any specific strategy to follow?

Well, we know that Pinterest operates almost entirely by means of images. This means your food blog or restaurant too should rely on images to convey the message. But what more?

Ideally, a successful Pinterest strategy for food blogs or restaurants involves a three-step approach.

Focus on the Images

Since all of Pinterest is made up of images, you need to pay special attention to the manner in which this social network treats images. Simply uploading photos and expecting to get good views and repins will not be a sensible idea.

First, you should know that Pinterest images are search-engine friendly. As such, Google and other search engines can and do in fact index photos uploaded to Pinterest, assuming there are no specific viewing or privacy restrictions in place. Naturally, you should follow the standard SEO practices for images, such as using understandable and clean filenames for images.

Secondly, images on Pinterest tend to work differently.

• Pinterest’s layout is mostly reliant on infinite scroll. This means a vertically taller image will do better as compared to the usual horizontal images that are prevalent on other social networks, such as Instagram. A vertical image stays in the viewport for a longer duration of time as the user scrolls down the page.
• Colors matter a lot, and your images should have a color quality that is ideal for food blogs and restaurant sites. Using dull colors or too many monochrome images is not a good idea.
• Food photography, as simple as it might sound, is rather quite complicated. Read up some good food photography tutorials (such as this one) on the internet to ensure that your photos are of the best quality.

User Engagement

No social network exists in the absence of users. Your presence on Pinterest is worth the trouble only if you manage to attract an audience. Plus, once you have a following, you should try to keep your followers engaged by posting content that is worthy of sharing and gets repinned often.

For a food blog or restaurant site, user engagement begins by encouraging your users to take part in the promotion of your content. Here are a few simple ideas:

• Recipes matter a lot. Try to share your own recipes, even if yours is a restaurant. In fact, go a step further and create a separate “Recipes” board. This is the easiest way to attract a loyal following of users.
• You can also invite ideas from your followers. Encourage them to share recipes of their own, and showcase the best ones on your blog or site. Alternatively, ask your followers what food-related topic they would want to learn the most about, and cover the same on your blog.
• Know that people are always looking for inspiration. Having bland images of your food products without any background story is of little use. Try to share thematic images — if yours is a vegan restaurant, make sure the vegans using Pinterest get to know about it. Label the food images that you share as ones meant for a vegetarian diet, and so on.

But that is not all. When sharing images on Pinterest, ask yourself: “how useful can this be for my audience?”

Generally, if a given post on social media serves a specific purpose or solves a problem, it has greater chances of being re-shared. As such, rather than just sharing images of dishes, try to post ones that go with “how to prepare XYZ”. Such meaningful titles can help your posts get noticed in the long run.

Furthermore, followers of food blogs and restaurant sites have a tendency to give attention to details. Rather than sharing “pizza with oregano seasoning”, go with details — such as “hand-tossed pizza with double cheese margherita and oregano seasoning”. Such details tend to attract the attention of visitors who are food enthusiasts.

Lastly, ensure that your Pinterest profile is well organized. If your menu involves multiple cuisines, divide your boards into the nature of each cuisine, or just go with Chinese, Thai and Lebanese, etc. This will help your followers in finding the boards of their preference.

Final Steps

Now that you know how to curate and promote your Pinterest profile, here are a few extra steps that you can take to get more out of Pinterest for your food blog or restaurant website.

• Make sure that your website or blog offers social sharing buttons. This will provide better integration between your blog’s content and your social profiles.
• Try to interact with the community since Pinterest has a strong sense of “sharing” to it. Repin and share posts from boards that might be of interest for your followers once in a while.
• Look for a target niche and stick to it. Food lovers like to know what they are eating, so do not hesitate in providing details (this can include a sneak peek of ingredients).
• From time to time, run discounts or promotions on your Pinterest profile to engage audience and get more followers.

What do you think of these ideas for using Pinterest to promote food blogs and restaurant sites? Got any special tip of your own? Share it in the comments below!