Perhaps you’ve been writing for years but are just now hearing about the power of Pinterest. If so, you might be asking yourself how to use Pinterest to market your business as a writer. Fasten your seatbelts, friends! Once you discover how to use this visual search engine, you’ll be hooked just like me.
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How to use Pinterest to market your business as a writer is a huge topic, much of which falls outside the scope of a single blog post. But I will get you started with a comprehensive overview and pointed in the right direction.
First, you have to know WHY you want to use Pinterest. Are you doing it to drive traffic to your blog or website? Or are you trying to give an audience you already have (readers of your novels and other works) a place to get to know you better? This post is mainly directed toward the former group, but the basic first steps will be the same. Just keep in mind that people use Pinterest differently depending on their purpose.
Now, onto the good stuff!
How to Use Pinterest to Market Your Business as a Writer
Set up your account
If you’re using Pinterest in any kind of professional capacity, you’ll want to have a business account. If you already have a Pinterest, you can switch over. This way you will have analytics that tell you what kind of visibility you’re gaining from Pinterest and which pins of yours are working hard for you.
Set up your boards
Believe it or not, your purpose in using Pinterest is key to what kind of boards you need to set up. If you are an established author and you want to connect to your readers, you may set up boards that show snippets of who you are, your book covers and especially pictures that inspire your works. You can have a board for each book that includes pictures of your characters (mostly people use actors’ photos) and setting locations.
No matter what your purpose is for Pinterest, the first board on your page should contain your works, whether that means books or blog posts or articles.
If you’re trying to drive traffic to your website, you need to set up boards for each of the categories on your blog, or each of your article topics. This will be key later when you start pinning from your site. For example, I blog a lot about personal development for writers, therefore I have a personal development for writers board.
When setting up your boards, make sure to use key words in your descriptions. Remember, Pinterest users search for pins by typing key words into the search bar. You want to be found!
Create eye-catching pins
This is the fun part! I love creating pins. While I can’t go step-by-step in an overview-type post about how to create pins, this is KEY to getting people to your website.
Think about the kinds of pins that catch your eye—that’s what you need to catch other people’s attention. You can also research what other pins in your niche look like by using the Pinterest search bar.
Every category on your blog should have a corresponding board on Pinterest. If you have categories on your blog about cake decorating because you’re writing a series where the heroine owns a bakery, then you search cake decorating on Pinterest and see what the top pins look like.
You can use free photo sites to create the base of your pins, then make adjustments on PicMonkey and Canva to crop and do text overlay.
**Caution: make sure you are using photos that are licensed for use from a reputable site like Unsplash**
Once you have a great pin, put it on your site with the corresponding blog post, then share it to your board on Pinterest that contains all of your work. But before you do, remember to put in a great description that uses key words that people can search when they are looking for that kind of content on Pinterest.
Start pinning!
Can you say F-U-N??? I love seeing my own pins go live. Here’s a bare bones sketch of my pinning practices:
- Pin from my blog post to my article board
- Pin from my article board to my category boards
- Pin to group boards
After you get your pin “out there” you must keep pinning it! Well, you don’t need to inundate Pinterest with the same pin all the time—their algorithm will probably ding you—but you can’t let it go dormant forever. I use both Tailwind and Boardbooster to schedule my pins and keep them in circulation.
Also, remember to pin other people’s pins! Try to keep boards and pins within your niche.
Follow other pinners
Pinterest is a visual search engine. But we still need to have followers to increase the chances of our pins being seen and getting repinned by others, therefore driving traffic to your site.
The kinds of people you want to follow (in the hopes they will follow you back) all go back to your purpose in using Pinterest. If you want to attract readers and gain exposure for your books, then you need to find readers. If you want to find readers who are interested in your website content, then there’s a good chance those are different people. Many times there is some overlap.
One of the best ways to get started is to look at other pinners who are:
- In your niche
- Already have a Pinterest following
Then you follow that pinner AND some of their followers. If you are targeting a certain publishing house, you can look at their followers and follow them. When you follow others, they may take a look at your profile and decide whether or not they want to follow you.
**Gaining followers on Pinterest takes time! Don’t get discouraged**
Join group boards
In order to get your pins seen by more people, join as many relevant group boards as you can. Look for boards that are open to collaborators and follow their instructions to join. Even though Pinterest is increasingly becoming a search engine that requires good SEO, there is still power in numbers. If you’re on Boardbooster, they have a feature that shows you group boards that might benefit you.
These are the basics on how to use Pinterest to market your business as a writer. There are so many more strategies you can dig into once you get the basics rolling, like rich pins, SEO, and participating in tribes.
Are you ready to dig in and dive deep into the rabbit hole? I hope you enjoy yourself as much as I have over the last year. Mostly I worked on my mom blog Pinterest site, and now I’m coming back to the Pinterest account that’s an offshoot of this blog. Both of them are a work in progress, and I’m having way too much fun!
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