Building your crowdfunding campaign is only half of the work. It’s the promotion, engagement and marketing that really drive your contributions. As you start to dive into the different tools and channels to promote your campaign, think through your audience and who you are trying to reach. Most campaigners can engage their contributors through email, web, SEO and social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. What many campaigners may not know, is that Pinterest is an effective social media channel for product marketing. Campaigns focused around a remarkable product that want to reach an engaged audience, should consider marketing on Pinterest. This doesn’t mean that you should abandon all other marketing channels, it means that Pinterest could be a valuable tool for your campaign promotion.

Because we want your crowdfunding campaign to succeed, we’ve put together the best tips for how to use Pinterest for campaign promotion.

Pinterest By the Numbers

Considered both a social media site and content marketing channel, Pinterest is defined as “a visual bookmarking tool that helps you discover and save creative ideas.” Sounds perfect for your crowdfunding campaign, doesn’t it?

Pinterest was founded in March 2010 and currently has 100 million active users of its 176 million registered users, reports DMR.

• 42% of all online adult woman and 13-percent of all online men in the U.S. use Pinterest.
• 30% of all social media users in the U.S. use Pinterest.
• 45% of all Pinterest users are from outside the United States.
• 47% of all Pinterest users use the site weekly.
• 23% of all Pinterest users use the site daily.
• Women using Pinterest are 33-percent more likely to have purchased consumer electronics in the last six months.

Pinterest 101: How to Promote Your Crowdfunding Campaign

Pinterest has evolved into so much more than just a social media site for sharing recipes, DIY project ideas and pop culture GIFs. Authors regularly use it to promote their latest books, setting up boards to showcase the inspirations for their characters, settings and more as a way to connect with their readers. It’s being used regularly by small business owners as well as corporate giants because it’s simply an effective way to reach a targeted audience.

Here’s how you can use Pinterest specifically for your campaign:

Open an Account. It’s free to open a Pinterest account for your crowdfunding campaign. Follow the prompts and in minutes you can begin to leverage this site for campaign awareness and support. This account should be created under the name of your campaign or brand and be used exclusively for your campaign and product promotions.

Create Specific Boards for Your Campaign. If you’re new to Pinterest, think of it as a millions of bulletin boards, each labeled with a specific title. On each titled board are dozens (even hundreds) of images, also labeled and many contain a description (think meta). These boards and their images contain links back to their original content pages so if a Pinterest viewer likes your pin (the image), all they have to do is click on it to navigate to your campaign page.

Add a CTA in Your Campaign Board Title. Like anything else on the internet, you need to grab your viewer’s attention immediately and a call-to-action or CTA placed in your campaign board’s title can help do that. It may be as simple as adding “Donate Now” or “Make a Difference” to the campaign board title.

Utilize the Hashtag. Pinterest is like other social media sites, including Twitter and Facebook, a home for the hashtag. Users can type any hashtag into the search bar and pull up pages of pins that correspond. For your campaign, opt for hashtags such as #crowdfunding, #crowdfund, #crowd and #indiegogo. Don’t forget to incorporate hashtags that fit your crowdfunding campaign. Think categories like #gadgets, #electronics, #mobile, #app and #tech.

Create a Compelling Pin Description. While images are king on Pinterest, it’s the pin description that will help boost traffic to your campaign page.

• Choose an image from your campaign page to pin to your Pinterest board.
• Create a headline with a CTA.
• Create a compelling pin description. Keep it simple yet provocative, using the same type of structure as you would for a meta. Incorporate keywords and three or four hashtags that relate to your campaign, including at least one general hashtag like #crowdfund.

Use Other Social Media Sites to Promote Your Pinterest Boards. Cross-media promotion is essential when building a successful crowdfunding campaign. Tweet each new pin you add to your boards and be sure to include an image with each tweet as images always capture more attention that plain text. Promote your Pinterest boards through Facebook, Google+, Instagram, YouTube and your campaign’s other social media accounts.

There are many ways to promote your campaign and engage with your audience. With Pinterest, you can take advantage of the visual layout and product friendly boards. However you decided to market your campaign, be sure to have fun and share that fun with your audience.