While Twitter and Facebook lead the pack in social media popularity, many online entrepreneurs are finding huge success with Instagram and Pinterest. In fact, Pinterest is the number one social media traffic source for Work-At-Home Success. But like all social media platforms, you’ll waste your time if you don’t do it right. This week we asked work-at-home experts to share their best Instagram and Pinterest Marketing Hacks.
Stacy Caprio
Growth Marketing
@stacy4startups
My favorite Pinterest hack is great because you don’t need to take the time to build your own audience and you’re able to capitalize on the existing audience other people have already built up.
I’ve personally gained over 100 visitors / day per site using this hack. What I do is, join group boards with thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers using the website PinGroupie.com. Then I embed rich pins on my site, and use Boardbooster to schedule 5 pins/day from my site to be pinned to these boards.
The pins reach the hundreds of thousands already built up in the group board audience, and you get to reap the traffic benefits.
Corbyn Hanson Wittig
![]()
1. Instagram Stories are like Google AdWords, but free. Stories show up at the very top of every search–even above the sometimes unbeatable top posts. They’re literally a shortcut to the top.
2. Don’t get caught up in vanity metrics and the culture that comes with it. Ten real customers who love you is better than 100,000 followers who don’t know or care who you are.
3. Don’t be afraid of paid ads. Organic is great, but social media algorithms are heavily influenced by momentum. As little as $5 per week, used intelligently, can be enough to make a measurable difference. This remains true up to a surprising scale.
Gregory Golinski
WAH business owners should add a clear call to action directly over some of the images they publish on Pinterest and Instagram. This call to action should be concise and straight to the point. It should also be subtle, without overpowering the image. In my experience, social media posts with a short call to action on the image lead to more visits to your WAH website than pictures without text on them.
Publishing content on Pinterest and Instagram that’s only about your WAH business is a bad idea, because your audience will quickly get tired of it. Share the latest news in your industry, and publications from other websites to add a bit of variety and establish new relationships with other WAH businesses. You don’t want your followers to think you’re only trying to sell them something.
Nate Masterson
Maple Holistics
@mapleholistics
1. Run Instagram Contests- One of the most useful ways to utilize Instagram is to promote engagement and activity from your followers. By calling for a contest – for example, asking followers to send in a picture of themselves with your product – not only do you drive organic engagement with your brand, you get yourself a wealth of content and customer feedback to utilize for promotional materials. Win-win.
2. Don’t Get Tunnel Vision- All too often, companies make the mistake of talking only about themselves and their products on social media. Fans want to become more connected with your brand, and one way to do this is by showing that your social media accounts are more than mere marketing vehicles. By posting about relevant global events, holidays and the like, you give off the vibe of a living, breathing entity – not a stiff corporate tool. This applies to both Instagram and Pinterest.
Lesya Liu
1. People love to follow brands and accounts that they find valuable in some way. What’s a better way to provide value that sharing helpful advice? To position yourself as an expert in the field, share tips, hacks and shortcuts. One type of content that works amazingly well independently of the business and industry are bite-sized tips, clever shortcuts, and productivity hacks. You can share tips as overlays on pretty images or as mini info graphics. You may also record a 15-second video where you talk, or better yet, demonstrate the tip. If you’re not feeling creative, share a nice image and simply put your tip in the caption section.
2. You have to have at least a few success stories in your business. Ask people to leave you a testimonial. Overlay a cool image with an awesome testimonial and share it on Instagram. If you have a service-based business, it may be a bit more challenging to get the user photos, but not as impossible as you might expect. Think of the success stories people have because of using your service. You could share case studies or success stories. It may be as simple as a written or recorded testimonial. Or, you could turn it into a whole mini-case study (or even case study series) where you talk about your strategies for achieving success.
3. Sell the solution to their problems. People oftentimes flock to social media for inspirational content. Think of your company not only as a list of products you sell or services you perform, but as a lifestyle you enable your clients to have. Are they enjoying greater financial freedom? Having better health? Having more time to spend with their families? Feeling more confident in their own skin? All of these are great inspirational messages you can portray through images. Your business is solving real problems your clients are facing.
![Top Expert Instagram and Pinterest Marketing Hacks]()
Notes from Leslie
Notes from LeslieI pretty much agree with the advice given by this week’s experts. If you’re just starting out, think about the Instagram and Pinterest posts that you gravitate to. What attracts you? The picture? The content? Your goal is to do the same. You want to attract people who will be interested in what you have to offer, but not in a salesy way. You want to inform, entertain, educate, and have fun. Consumers particularly enjoy feeling like they’re getting to know you, so behind the scenes posts on Instagram can be a really cool way to build trust and rapport.
While I’m far from a master of either platform, I will say that Pinterest has been a great way for WAHS to gain traffic. Creating group boards and joining other people’s group boards has made a significant impact in growing my following.
The problem with social media is that there is no one size fits all. For every post now at WAHS, I make 3 graphics; one for Facebook, one for Pinterest, and one for Twitter. I use Canva’s paid professional level so it’s easy to click the “resize” image to adjust and tweak them, but it’s still time consuming. Further, the types of content you post and how you post varies. While hashtags are crucial in Instagram and Twitter, they’re not much used on Facebook or Pinterest. In Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, he details all the social media platforms and how to best master them.
