How to Win With Pinterest Contests

Have you con­sid­ered run­ning a Pin­ter­est contest?

Look­ing for tools to help?

Pin­ter­est con­tests can increase your fol­low­ers, boost engage­ment, and pro­mote your brand and products.

In this arti­cle, you’ll dis­cov­er how to eas­i­ly host and man­age a win­ning con­test on Pinterest.

#1: Choose a Contest Management Tool

Pin­ter­est con­tests can be chal­leng­ing to run, sim­ply because they’re hard to keep up with. For­tu­nate­ly, Pin­ter­est con­test apps can make the process sig­nif­i­cant­ly eas­i­er. Some apps will even cre­ate land­ing pages to cap­ture valu­able lead infor­ma­tion (like email address­es and phone num­bers) that users oth­er­wise wouldn’t like­ly sub­mit on a social media platform.

If you’re going to host a Pin­ter­est con­test, here are three apps you may want to try.

Wishpond

Wish­pond has a user-friend­ly inter­face and fea­tures a lot of great tools for cus­tomiz­ing your con­test to fit your needs. Wishpond’s con­test app allows you to cre­ate “entry gal­leries” where oth­er users can vote on their favorite pins or boards that have been entered into the con­test. Users can do this by sub­mit­ting their email address­es, pro­vid­ing an addi­tion­al way to cap­ture lead information.

Oth­er fea­tures allow you to choose cus­tomiz­able land­ing page tem­plates, add a count­down to your land­ing page to increase urgency (and entries), and access ana­lyt­ics to see views, con­ver­sions, and con­ver­sion rates.

You can also share entry forms on Face­book and Twit­ter. The land­ing page is designed to be both desk­top- and mobile-friend­ly. You can pre­view the land­ing page and entry forms while cre­at­ing them.

The Wish­pond con­test app fea­tures the abil­i­ty to have two dif­fer­ent peri­ods (or sec­tions) of the con­test: one peri­od allows entries and anoth­er only allows vot­ing on the entries.

Wish­pond offers a free tri­al, so you can see if the soft­ware is right for you. The basic plan, which includes social pro­mo­tions, starts at $45 per month.

PromoJam

PromoJam’s Pin-It-to-Win-It pro­mo­tions app makes it easy to run a Pin­ter­est con­test. It can take as lit­tle as 10 min­utes to get your con­test up and running.

With PromoJam’s Pin­ter­est con­test app, you can cre­ate an SEO-opti­mized URL for your land­ing page. Choose from a vari­ety of stun­ning and ful­ly cus­tomiz­able land­ing page tem­plates. This land­ing page con­verts into a con­fir­ma­tion page once users have sub­mit­ted their entry.

Oth­er Pro­mo­Jam fea­tures include the abil­i­ty to share cus­tomized QR codes for your con­test, view ana­lyt­ics and user entries as the con­test pro­gress­es, add social plu­g­in but­tons (like a Face­book like option) to your cam­paign, and use a ran­dom win­ner selec­tion tool.

To use PromoJam’s Pin­ter­est con­test app, you need to upgrade to the pro plan, which costs $249.99 a month, and allows you to col­lect up to 10,000 user submissions.

Woobox

Woobox is anoth­er amaz­ing con­test app that’s used by brands like Fish­er-Price, Cray­ola, and Shopify.

Woobox’s Pin­ter­est con­test fea­tures let you col­lect email address­es, allow unlim­it­ed entries or only one per user, cre­ate tabs for Face­book pages, cre­ate HTML entry forms, add an age restric­tion, and require users to fol­low you to enter (users must fol­low you on Pin­ter­est for con­test eligibility).

Woobox has a free plan and tri­al, so you can get a feel for the inter­face before you pur­chase. To access all of the social pro­mo­tion apps con­tin­u­al­ly, includ­ing the Pin to Win app, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan. The basic plan starts at $30 per month.

#2: Pick a Contest Type

At a first glance, it seems like the eas­i­est way to host a Pin­ter­est con­test would be to ask users to repin a spe­cif­ic pin. That would be easy to track and easy for users to participate.

How­ev­er, it’s not a valid option. You’re not allowed to ask users to pin one spe­cif­ic pin. Here are some oth­er options to consider.

Require Pinners to Use a Specific Hashtag

This can be your typ­i­cal brand­ed hash­tag, but it’s most effec­tive if you have pin­ners use a hash­tag cre­at­ed specif­i­cal­ly for the con­test. This is the best way to track entries, reach, and engage­ment of your contest.

Whether users are adding their own con­tent or repin­ning yours, use the hash­tag to find it. Just as with Insta­gram con­tests, hash­tags can be impor­tant for Pin­ter­est contests.

Send Users to a Landing Page

While this isn’t nec­es­sary for all con­tests, if you’re seek­ing more than just repins, you’ll want a land­ing page. A land­ing page allows you to col­lect lead infor­ma­tion from users and spell out con­test par­tic­i­pa­tion rules and terms. The Pin­ter­est con­test apps described above can help you cre­ate these land­ing pages.

Ask Pinners to Create Their Own Boards

Pin­ter­est prides itself on cre­ativ­i­ty and using this to your advan­tage could mean a lot of engage­ment for your posts. Ask pin­ners to cre­ate a themed board and sub­mit it to the con­test, either with a hash­tag or by send­ing you the link through your land­ing page.

For exam­ple, if you run a design or home improve­ment store, you could ask users to cre­ate a board of DIY projects. Or if you’re the pub­lish­er of a food mag­a­zine, you could ask users to cre­ate a board of their favorite hol­i­day recipes.

Advertise a Giveaway

This is pret­ty straight­for­ward, and while it may not get you a crazy amount of engage­ment on Pin­ter­est, it can give you valu­able lead infor­ma­tion. Post a pin adver­tis­ing a give­away, which will send users to a land­ing page to col­lect their infor­ma­tion in exchange for a chance to win a prize. If you’re after lead infor­ma­tion, this is an easy-to-run con­test that can pro­vide what you’re look­ing for.

Run a “Pin to Win” Contest

While you can’t ask pin­ners to repin a spe­cif­ic image, you can ask users to pin their favorite image from your web­site or Pin­ter­est boards with your con­test hash­tag attached.

There are apps that allow you to cre­ate land­ing pages where you can ask users to choose from one of sev­er­al pins. This gets your con­tent dis­trib­uted across the plat­form to new users with­out break­ing any of Pinterest’s rules. Pin­ners don’t have to do much to enter this type of con­test, so they’re like­ly to engage with it.

#3: Understand Pinterest Contest Guidelines

If you want to run a Pin­ter­est con­test, you first need to make sure you fol­low both brand guide­lines and con­test guidelines.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant brand guide­lines include:

• Don’t use Pinterest’s name or logo with­out their consent.
• Don’t use off-domain redi­rects for third-par­ty tracking.
• Don’t col­lect or store per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion from Pin­ter­est or its users with­out permission.
• Don’t com­pen­sate or incen­tivize pin­ners to take actions like pin­ning or following.

Pinterest’s three con­test guide­lines are:

• Don’t require par­tic­i­pants to pin a spe­cif­ic image; ask them to choose a pin based on their inter­ests, even if the pin can only come from a small selec­tion or a spe­cif­ic web­site. You need to give them options.
• Don’t allow more than one entry per par­tic­i­pant; state this in your terms.
• Don’t sug­gest that Pin­ter­est is spon­sor­ing the promotion.

You can see a full list of brand guide­lines and in-depth expla­na­tions and exam­ples of what is and isn’t okay for con­tests here.

Conclusion

Pin­ter­est con­tests are a great way to get more engage­ment, con­nect with new mem­bers of a rel­e­vant audi­ence, and even get new lead infor­ma­tion. While there are guide­lines that you need to fol­low, Pin­ter­est is a plat­form designed to pri­or­i­tize ideas and creativity.

Tak­ing advan­tage of this can help increase the suc­cess of your con­tests, par­tic­u­lar­ly when com­bined with con­test apps that make the process even easier.

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