How to resurrect old content with Pinterest

I’ve been using Pinterest for a little over five months. The website seemed to gain some traction in the SEO realm back in November in a few posts and tips on how to utilize Pinterest for your internet marketing efforts. In most of the posts I’ve read they focus on the backlink and social benefits of the website, however none of them touched on how Pinterest can be used as a great way to revive older content on your blog or website.

Pinterest is a virtual pinboard that let’s you organize and share images from around the web. You can pin things yourself by adding the URL or using the bookmarklet, or you can repin something from another user onto one of your own boards. Think Twitter for eye candy. The site has been growing in popularity over the last few months and from my experience has a very responsive and engaged audience.

The nice thing about Pinterest is that it’s a new medium and a new audience that may be receptive to your content even if you’ve shared it on other networks in the past. Last month I did some tests with my personal blog to see what sort of traffic Pinterest could generate to older content on my blog and the results surprised me. After pinning a couple of humorous original images from my personal blog I was surprised to see Pinterest jump into the top ten referrers for my site.

Know Your Audience

Like any social network, you have to get a feel for what the locals are into. Skimming the pins on the homepage of Pinterest is a great place to start as well as through the pins of your friends and followers. In my experience the following subject matter seem to do really well with Pinterest users:

• Infographics
• Humor
• Food
• Photography
• Arts & Crafts
• Holiday ideas
• Style/Fashion
• Decorating Ideas

These are just a handful of things I have seen in my own circles that seem to get repinned and liked on a regular basis. Ultimately Pinterest has something for everyone, and so long as your content is eye grabbing enough and inspiring it has the opportunity to do well.

Finding Opportunities

If you create a lot of original graphics for your website content or if you feature a lot of original imagery on your website it may be time to dive in to some of your past content and look for things that may fit into some of the categories mentioned above. As I began this post one of the first examples that came to mind was Dave’s Spam Assassin (which I just pinned) from 2007. It’s humorous, it’s timeless enough to still get a chuckle and I’m sure not everyone in the internet marketing realm is aware of it.

Some other content ideas that may be eye grabbing in your post may be useful screenshots, diagrams, and the like. Keep in mind your audience, they probably don’t want to come across your logo or a stock image, but if the content is exciting enough it may just get some play years later.

Results

In my experience Pinterest traffic delivers similar trends to what many websites see from StumbleUpon. The submission creates a sudden spike in traffic that tapers off over a few days. Additionally it may not generate targeted traffic that converts, but instead gives your content some additional exposure.

However, unlike StumbleUpon I am finding that users that enjoy your pins tend to begin following your boards and engaging your content more. I have earned more unique, non-internet marketing followers on Pinterest than on any social network I have recently joined, which is great because it generates a brand new audience for the content I share.

Pinterest creates a unique opportunity to resurrect your content in ways that may not work as well on other social networks. Most social networks work in real time, so sharing a post from years past probably wouldn’t seem relevant, but since you are letting the pictures do the talking the timeliness of the content becomes obsolete. Your infographic from 2 years ago may be of interest simply as a resource, the remodel of the home you did in 2005 may be an inspiration to someone looking to remodel in 2012, and the link bait you did of Matt Cutts in 2007 may provide a whole new generation of SEO’s a bit of a laugh.