Aug 28, 2014
Whether you’ve struggled to maintain a presence on Pinterest without indulging in hours of procrastination, or if you just haven’t dived into Pinterest yet, this episode has 10 great tips for staying active on Pinterest in just minutes a day.
Following these 10 tips takes just a few minutes a day, but allows you to grow a following on interest and engage with your fans and colleagues.
Pick a number of pins (5, 10, or 15, depending on your schedule) that you will commit to each day. Pin binges are still ok – in moderation! – but approach your visits to Pinterest with your target goal in mind and leave when you’ve reached it.
If it’s too difficult to visit the Pinterest website without getting lost in the visual beauty, rely on a Pin It button in your browser. You can find instructions for adding the button to various browsers here.
When pinning content, be sure to include the source in your text. When re-pinning, this may require a visit to the original link to get information that the first pinner didn’t include. Share enough information in the description to make the original material sound interesting and to encourage people to click through to the original post. Don’t copy and paste so much information that visiting the original source is no longer necessary.
Re-pinning is a great way to engage with your Pinterest community and meet new (to you) pinners. It also adds diversity to your Pinterest content since you may not be exposed to the same websites as someone else. It can also prevent you from being spammy and pinning too much of your own content.
To stay within my number of pins per day, I alternate, focusing on pinning new content on some days and only re-pinning content on other days.
After pinning content that is already on Pinterest, the Also on screen will pop up.
It’s a great way to find new pinners with similar interests. You can grow your followers, find great content to re-pin, and engage with other pinners. I especially checking out boards that have the same content I’ve pinned organized differently. For example, they’ve pinned the same pattern I have on a crochet board to a photography board. I can usually find interesting information to diversify my pins that way.
Group boards can be a great way to engage with other pinners or cross-promote content with other businesses. PinGroupie allows you to search for group boards in different categories and sort them based on several different factors. You can also find group boards through Also On, or be invited to join based on your pins. Be sure to follow the guidelines established by the group (usually listed on the group’s board in the description) about how often and what type of content can be pinned.
Once you join a group, the board will appear as an option in your drop down menu as you pin new content.
You can refresh your boards by reordering them, splitting larger boards into multiple smaller boards, and/or optimizing your board titles and keywords.
Feature your own content prominently at the top if you have a lot of boards, since most people won’t scroll all the way down. (Also, most mobile devices only display the first two boards on the screen.) As you add new boards, these automatically move to the bottom of your list, so refreshing periodically is a great way to make sure the most important content for your business right now is at the top.
You can find instructions for adding, editing, deleting, and reordering boards on a variety of devices on Pinterest here.
Secret boards are a great way to pin content privately. Secret boards can be converted to public boards, and can be shared with collaborators.
There are three great reasons for using secret boards:
You can find instructions for creating, using, and sharing secret boards on Pinterest here.
In the beginning, you weren’t supposed to use Pinterest for business reasons. If you want to convert your existing personal account to a business account (or create a separate business account), visit Pinterest for Business. You’ll get access to improved analytics and you won’t run into problems when pinning your own content. You can also verify your website, which allows other people on Pinterest to see you own it (and you aren’t some shady business).
For most of this, taking better picture is a constant struggle or growth process. But the fact is that better pictures are more likely to be pinned. Here are some basic tips to help you get on your way (in a just minutes on day!) to being a better photographer.
Remember that portrait and square images fill an entire column on Pinterest. Landscape pictures look very small. This can be updated in post-production. This doesn’t mean you can never take landscape pictures, but try to include at least a few portrait or square pictures in each post.
Sometimes, Pins get separated from links. Maybe the person who originally pinned your content linked to your main blog page, and now the post with that image is buried. Or, perhaps they didn’t write a description and you changed your permalinks, so no one can find the original post.
For other sites, try to pin your own content. What shows up in the text? Is it the image title, the caption, the description? That is the text you want to optimize for future uploads.
Remember the first tip, which is to limit your total time on Pinterest. I’m not expecting you to go back through all of your pre-existing content and optimize it for Pinterest, or take 10x more pictures for your blog. If you make these adjustments as you add new content, you will only spend a few minutes a day while using Pinterest to grow your business.
The Creative Yarn Entrepreneur Show is no longer broadcasting. Episodes are available as a service to the yarn community. This episode originally aired in August, 2014. Be aware that content may be outdated.
If you'd like to chat with other yarn-related business owners, join the Creative Yarn Entrepreneurs Facebook group. Support Marie's work by buying one of her books, Make Money Teaching Crochet: Launch Your Business, Increase Your Side Income, Reach More Students (Amazon | Gumroad) or Design It, Promote It, Sell It: Online Marketing for Your Crochet and Knit Patterns (Amazon | Gumroad).