So Pinterest seems like a waste of time

Unfortunately, the spam has gotten really bad over the last 3 or 4 months, but the folks at Pinterest are hard at work getting rid of spam accounts left and right.

When done properly, Pinterest marketing really is worth the effort. But marketers who don't know any better do tend to be obvious with their self-promotions and it turns people off. However, if the pins don't look like promos then people do respond to them.

Unfortunately, I have similar experience...

But.... Pinterest is one of top 50 websites based on Alexa.com. Million of visitors visits to Pinterest monthly....

You must think about how to lure visitors from Pinterest toward to your site.

The key to Pintrest is three things:

1. Grow Pintrest: Have relevant pins that are actually useful for your niche. This gets your followers re-pinning all your stuff. Don't put any products or self promo's here.

2. Sell Products: Create a separate board that has direct links to products, but don't make them look like products. For example, if you're selling shirts, just pin the design that is on the shirt, not the actual picture of the shirt.

3. Drive Traffic: Best way to drive traffic from pintrest is giveaways. Send them to super simple squeeze pages. Check out what I do on my Being Country Pintrest profile.

This works for me. Hope it helps.

Ummm, I feel like I'm missing something. I'm just not understanding how you've determined following & being followed would equal "traffic from Pinterest".

Traffic from Pinterest doesnt' require any followers at all. Loads of websites have gotten traffic from Pinterest long before they ever set up a Pinterest account. It just matters that your site has something interesting that people want to pin and subsequently repin.

As far as spam and self-promotion... I don't tend to come across that all that much. The most annoying things I find in Pinterest is pins to those annoying websites that take the image from the original site, add a link just below to the original source and finally surround the image with a ton of stinking ads. Like I have nothing better to do but click another link to get to the content I wanted in the 1st place. If that's what you mean by spam then yes, the network is full of that garbage.

Rashell

may be because you are following the wrong people,
generating traffic through pinterest is not difficult, you must make a better appearance and interact with right people, give value and you'll get in return what you want.

The problem is probably that you've spent "a few hours" on it. It's a social networking site - it takes more than a few hours to properly network.

I find it an incredibly effective driver of traffic, as long as pins are pitched correctly and relevant to my followers.

Pinterest has been helpful for me and my blog, another thing is to be a contributor of other larger boards in your niche and pin your blog post there.

I love pinterest. It works great for certain niches and can get you 100's of visitors a day in a couple of days time. You just need a good strategy (and some automation).

We got lots of traffic from pinterest. It is not a waste of time, plus it is one of the top social media sites that can give your site traffic and leads eventually.

A lot of marketers have given up on Pinterest lately when they quit allowing dofollow backlinks on anything but, as I understand it, your profile link.

I think the point has been missed when you say chawk that you have thousands of followers but no engagement. The numbers of followers will not determine engagement - else you could just buy followers like on Twitter.

I find the following really helps on Pinterest and I am only just starting (75 followers)
1. follow the right boards and people relevant to your niche
2. share content that is targeted to those people
3. visual content gets more action (depends on what you are doing - could be infographics, pictures, visual blog post images, etc)
4. getting onto group boards (takes time and invites but comes with sharing great stuff)
5. getting your other social media followers to follow you on pinterest - they already like your stuff.

It is a slow road on any social media network and there are few shortcuts if any

I think pinterest works for those who dont focus on using it as a way to make money or market. They just do it. Build a natural following and then they come across an article on how a single stay at home mom banked 10k using pinterest...

At that point, they just keep doing what they're doing and just implement what they need to do to make money..

Yea I'm sure there are others making money the marketing way but they really have a good system in place..

A good thing to do is test out where your real market is. So if you set up G Analytics on your site and set up accounts with twitter, pinterest, fb, stumbleupon, etc. and run the accounts for at least a month you can see where the majority of your traffic comes from and where your main market hangs out. after you have a good amount of data you can stop focusing as much time on the platforms that are not working for you and focus more on the platforms that drive the most traffic (in this case pinterest).

I wouldn't completely discredit pinterest as this platform can and has driven tons of traffic to sites but also pinterest is made up of mostly women. so if that isn't your market then you probably wont see a ton of traffic from it... at least as much as you could get from another platform.

It can be good for traffic if you're followers are in the same niche as you. Pinterest doesn't work for all niches though. You need to make sure the photos you are posting are interesting and make people want to repin them and share them. Don't just post a link along with the photo either, put some interesting text in too.

It's all about being creative and posting content that your followers will genuinely be interested in/like. Like some others have mentioned it depends on the niche, some are more difficult than others. Try to get inside the heads of your target audience and how you can provide them with pictures and information that will subsequently encourage them to trust you.

It benefits you if your pins have a link to your site (or something you're promoting). If you're popular with active users on Pinterest and they like your pins, they'll click them and be taken to your landing page and thus it increases traffic.

For pinterest to be successful for pinterest you have to think like a pinterest user. You are now a wanna-be crafter/cook/ thrives on inspirational quotes that they LOVE sharing to all there girl friends. (cause that's the majority of pinterest)

Think of that in your images in your site. Not saying to put a picture of food in every post you do, but make your site as visually appealing as possible

I have tried Pinterest too. Never really had any good results, waste of time

you got your point. For me, my purpose for pinterest is to drive traffic to my site and get that backlinks at the same time. So, if I don't get that traffic, at least I have that backlink. That's my thinking when it comes to social media sites.

You can't say that Pinterest is a waste of time after a few hours spent over there. It is not about following people and hope they follow you back. Creating Pinterest campaign (and not only Pinterest but in general social media) requires much more effort and good strategy. The most important for any social media campaign is content that you want to share. In case of Pinterest these are great photos and they must be related to your offer. Create attractive boards, get invitations to group boards related to your pins and your offer. Remember to keep good ratio of followers to following (much more followers than following). This is how you create stron Pinterest account. So following other pinners will definitely not gonna improve it. And Keep Pinning - it must be your daily habit. Otherwise you will definitely not succeed.
P.S. Pinterest does care about SPAM and not appropriate content.

Pinterest does pretty good for us, just use it the proper way, and don't try and game it. Like things you actually like, and pin things you would pin on your wall at home for yourself, eventually you will get a following, and if you put up a product infront of that following, then many people will see it.

I am very much satisfied with all the positive contributions here. Thank you guys!

How the heck did you get a couple thousand followers, doesnt seem like you put much work in it? I have been at it for ages, posting, following, liking, commenting, but only have 150 followers, what kinda pics did you post?

You need to think about what niche you're in? Is it a high engagement niche? Are your pins clickable? Are you following people in your niche or just random people?

Stuff to think about.

Pinterest works wonders if you do it right.

Yes, social media space is becoming spammy day-by-day...To get better traffic via pinterest, all you need to do is syndicate the pins in popular areas such as social media sites, photo sharing sites, document sharing sites and guest blogging areas

People are always lured to visual feeds especially when they are catchy and interesting. Pinterest boards even though now filled with junks, real interesting pins still are captured by many real viewers. If used wisely then there surely is a place for this social media website

Pinterest is a primary source of traffic for 2 of my websites. I was an early adopter on Pinterest, but then I used it off and on for a couple of years. Since August 2013, however, I've tripled my followers on Pinterest, after attending a blog conference where there was a panel on Pinterest led by a user with almost a million followers.

To make Pinterest work for you, I think you need to be genuine and not spammy. (Although I think that is true for almost any sort of affiliate marketing. Create helpful, useful, interesting content first, and the money will follow.)

Pinterest actually does allow some direct affiliate links - Zazzle is one, but RewardStyle, which is specifically for fashion bloggers, also has a tool called Link Ninja which allows you to pin your affiliate linked products to Pinterest. But the key is to pin things that are visually interesting, which is why a fashion niche works great.

One thing that has helped me is that I also got really niche & specific with all of my boards. Before the August conference, I had far less boards - I had one big fashion board, but I broke it up into many specific boards instead - one for shoes, one for dresses, etc. That way people who are only interested in dresses can follow just that board. I'm now about to hit 4,000 followers, and I know that the more my Pinterest presence grows, the more it helps send traffic back to my other sites.

I agree with you, Pinterest is totally wastage of time. I think it's the homeland for spammers!

Yes there is no second opinion in this
Pinterest is homeland for spammers right now but that is some part of pinterest

Like that part consists of group boards, the other part is totally different

That's why whenever some user joins pinterest they never recommend group boards
Just simple boards having a lot of activity
So if you play it nicely and wisely you can get some pretty good results out of it
First try to grow your profile and your audience using group boards
After getting certain number of followers you can delete group boards and start pinning regularly to your own boards, if you do it consistently you will surely see some good results

Honestly, you can;t just start making money on Pinterest right away. The way it works is as time goes on and you get more followers and people repinning your pins your earnings increase greatly. If you think that you're going to get rich off of Pinterest right away by spamming you're dead wrong.

Pinterest is not a waste of time.
If you aren't getting much response from pinterest, then that could probably mean that the followers you do have, they are probably fake or random accounts who don't care about your business. But to make them care about your business, you need to post interesting things on pinterest so that more and more people would notice what is posted. Usually you might have noticed that people respond to info graphics a lot. So make such things and post everyday and get genuine followers for yourself. Don't think that the followers you got from addmefast is going to help you.

Really hard at the beginning times. I have 1000 followers, but very few traffic and less sales. Everyday, about 10 guys share my pin, but the final effect - sale is not very well.

Everything has its drawback but it depends on us how we can make it useful for us. So may be you have select wrong people or people that doesn't relate to your services or products.

I follow best practices when setting up and maintaining my Pinterest accounts. There's tons of information out there on what best practices are, both free and paid. It's always good to get training ahead of jumping into the unknown.

I've made a few sales from my Pinterest account, so it's definitely working.

One thing that I do in all my niches is make sure I have a *Inspiring Quotes* pin board. Beautiful, inspiring picture quotes get shared a lot and when they do, it brings people back to your Pinterest profile to look around at your other stuff.

I use Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram in my marketing mix. After I get some more training in Google Plus and LinkedIn, I plan on adding them to the mix too.