Pinterest Tip: how to run a Pin it to Win It competition
Pin it to Win It is a very popular tactic to grow your Pinterest followers. In this post I’m going to explain exactly how to run your own Pin It To Win It competition.
What is Pin It to Win It?
Your customers pin photos of your products onto Pinterest during a specified time period, then once the time is up you pick a winner.
Often the prize will be the item that’s been pinned. But not always.
It might be:
- A Pin from a specific range using the photos on your website
- A pin of anything from your website
- Over an hour / a day / a week / a month
- A pin of a picture of our products with a
You can see lots of examples on these 2 Pinterest boards:
As you’ll see from those a Pinterest competition can become very complex, it’s not uncommon for the entrant to have to:
- Follow the Pinner
- Create a board with a specific name (how they find the entries)
- Pin a list of random things
- Then fill in a form on Facebook or the website
I suggest you keep it simple and fun!
Legal Restrictions for Pin It to Win It
You do however need to be aware that *technically* some Pin It to Win it is contrary to Pinterests Ts and Cs which state (read the whole thing here):
If you run a contest or other type of promotion on Pinterest, you agree not to:
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Suggest that Pinterest sponsors or endorses you or the promotion;
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Require people to pin from a selection;
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Make people pin your contest rules;
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Run a sweepstakes where each pin, board, like or follow represents an entry;
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Encourage spammy behavior, such as asking participants to comment;
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Ask pinners to vote with pins, boards, or likes; or
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Require a minimum number of pins.
Therefore make sure you’re not asking entrants to comment, you’re not asking them to pin lots and lots of thing, they can’t get more entries with multiple pins. Don’t be too specific with which images you want them to pin – a product from our website fine, one of these 3 probably not!
How to Track and Select the Winners?
Essentially you’re going to do this using the Pinterest search function. That means you need to have a unique phrase that your entrants must put in the title of the pin or board they create for you.
e.g. create a board and call it “eCMPComp” (you can be more creative than that!)
At the end of the competition run the search and pick your winner!
During the competition you may also want to run the search and thank people for entering.
So have a go and let me know how you get on!