BlogWorld & New Media Expo Presents… The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Your , Podcast, or Videos with Everything you need to know about using Pinterest to build your brand and drive traffic to your blog, podcast, videos, or other online content.

By Allison Boyer The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest

Copyright © BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2012

Written by Allison Boyer for BlogWorld & New Media Expo, with support from Jessica Boyer, Amber Avines, and the rest of the BlogWorld staff.

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BlogWorld & New Media Expo and Allison Boyer are not affiliated with Pinterest, Inc. The Pinterest name and logo, and any other products or brand names mentioned in this publication are the trademarks of their respective holders. Any of trademarked name or other mark is for reference purposes only in sharing educational content. Copyright / trademark infringements are not intended, or implied.

An excerpt of this eBook may be shared without seeking permission if credited to BlogWorld & New Media Expo with a link back to more information about the eBook. For all other sharing questions, email [email protected].

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Contents Introduction: ...... 6 Chapter One: Why Pinterest? ...... 8 Chapter Two: Pinterest 101 ‐ How to Get Started ...... 17 Joining Pinterest ...... 18 Creating Pinterest Boards ...... 19 Group Pinterest Boards ...... 23 Time to Start Pinning! ...... 27 How to Pin ...... 30 Can You Pin Anything? ...... 32 Finding People to Follow ...... 33 Following Boards Versus Profiles ...... 35 Like and Comments ...... 38 Pins Versus Repins ...... 39 Even More Pinterest User Tips ...... 41 Chapter Three: Advanced Pinterest for Content Promotion ...... 43 It’s All About the Pictures ...... 43 It’s All About the Pictures, Part Two ...... 48 Creating Content Channels ...... 49 Video Pins ...... 52 Content with a High Repin Value ...... 54 What’s Your Call to Action? ...... 59 Pinterest Exclusive Coupons ...... 60 Running Contests on Pinterest ...... 62 Chapter Four: Building Your Brand and Community with Pinterest ...... 68 Introduce Your Team ...... 68 Daily Find Board ...... 70 Project Progression ...... 71 Create Conversations on Pinterest ...... 72 Promote Where You’ve Been Featured ...... 74 Community Member Feature Board ...... 75 The – Pinterest Link ...... 76

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Chapter Five: The Pinterest Search Engine Game ...... 78 On‐Site Search ...... 78 Pinterest and Search Engines ...... 80 Chapter Six: Pinterest Statistics and Monitoring ...... 82 Find Out What Are People Pinning ...... 82 Your Own Analytics ...... 83 *Gasp* Blocking Pinterest ...... 84 Third Party Analytics ...... 86 Track Your Pins and Drive More Pinterest Traffic with Pinerly: Interview with CEO Rick Kats ...... 89 A Final Thought: So, Is Pinterest Right For Your Content? ...... 93 About the Author ...... 95 About BlogWorld & New Media Expo ...... 96

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Introduction:

Right now, Pinterest is hot. How hot? Hot enough that Mark Zuckerberg signed up for an account. Hot enough that Google's VP of corporate development, David Lawee, has at least put some thought into a potential purchase. Hot enough that major companies like Whole Foods and HGTV are jumping on board.

Hot enough that you should care about how this new social experience could benefit your online content.

One of the reasons Pinterest is so popular is that this network is unlike any other platform out there. The downfall to being different, of course, is that marketing techniques we use on , Facebook, Google+, and others networks doesn’t really work for Pinterest. This eBook is going to be a whirlwind of information, but before we get started, you have to understand the basics of what this network is all about and, more importantly, why you should care.

Essentially, Pinterest is a way to organize and share your bookmarks in a visual way. Each “board” is a category (e.g. recipes or flowers) and each “pin” is a link or picture you want to remember and share with your friends. As you browse online, you can pin cool stuff you find to a corresponding board. You can also “repin” anything you see someone else has pinned.

Pinterest is “just another social network,” or so some would have you believe. It’s hot right now, but MySpace was once hot too. It seems like only a few days ago we were raving about Google+ and now we’re supposed to learn and use yet another social network? I know that’s what a lot of you are thinking, because I was thinking it too when I first heard of Pinterest.

And so, I resisted joining for several months. I only finally joined after one of my friends (someone who isn’t into blogging and social media at all, by the way) insisted—and even then, I did so begrudgingly.

Yes, you read that right. It took someone who barely uses her computer to get me to try out Pinterest. I felt guilted into it because she wanted to use it to stay

Page 6 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest better connected. Also, she showed me the vast world of funny cat pictures on Pinterest, which is totally cheating.

In roughly two minutes, I had a full‐ Like with anything, whether or not blown addiction to Pinterest. You think Pinterest is right for you depends on Facebook is addictive? Please. That’s a your goals and your audience. But this gateway drug compared to Pinterest. is a network most people should be In just another two minutes, I also using for content marketing and realized the potential of this network is nothing short of astounding. branding.

Since then, I’ve been sucking up all the information I possibly can about Pinterest, and feeding my addiction to learn as much as possible about how content creators like bloggers, podcasters, and WebTV producers can use it. That’s what I want to share with you in this ebook.

Let’s get started…

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Chapter One: Why Pinterest?

Pinterest is another social network you need to learn. It’s going to take up some time in your day. There’s no getting around that. But for people who are in a visual niche, spending time on Pinterest will bring you a lot more traffic than other social networks. And if you sell products in conjunction with your blog, podcast, or videos? You’re only going to boost your profits with Pinterest.

Still not sure Pinterest is for you? Let’s do a little convincing.

Growth

First of all, joining Pinterest makes sense purely because of its growth. Did you know that as of March 2012 it’s the third most popular social network, according to the “2012 Digital Marketer: Benchmark and Trend Report” by Experian? Now, I’m not denying that someday other networks like Google+ could overtake it as they are nurtured. However, Pinterest is hot right now. And that’s not going to suddenly change. Growth will slow (there’s only so many people on the Internet), but this site is going to remain very Pinterest Unique U.S. Visitors popular for the foreseeable future. 15 10 The great thing about 5

Pinterest is not just (in millions) its size, though. A lot 0 of networks are big. May‐ Jun‐ Jul‐ Aug‐ Sep‐ Oct‐ Nov‐ Dec‐ Jan‐ 11 11 11 11 11 11 11 11 12 But people are turning to Pinterest Data Source: comScore at an astounding rate. While Facebook and Twitter took several years to “go mainstream,” building up slowly, Pinterest has virtually exploded, going from this little, no‐name network to a full‐force major player in the social scene over the course of a few months. Like other networks, it has taken them years to get to this point, but

Page 8 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest unlike most others, which grew over time, Pinterest went from zero to hero almost overnight.

In other words, Pinterest is a trend right now be a lasting trend and become a mainstay in our social media world, but the “trend” status allows you to join up while it’s hot. Pinterest is in the news. Pinterest is the darling child of social networks. According to Mashable, more than one fifth of all connected Facebook users are pinning daily, with even more pinning at least occasionally.

You want to be able to tell people that you’re on Pinterest now, not down the line when everyone and their mom are using the network (as is the case with Facebook, for example).

Early Adopter Status

The newness of Pinterest means that you have the chance to be an early adopter. Big brands and a lot of digital content creators still aren’t using Pinterest. And even many who have signed up for an account are not using it effectively for marketing.

However, the competition is minimal right now, so promoting your own content is a lot easier than on, say, Facebook, where competition is growing fiercer every day.

The newness also means that mistakes are okay; everyone is learning together. When Pinterest is old and gray (in social terms, so about five years, heh), you will be one of the old‐timers who got started “way back when.” While your competitors are struggling to get started in a crowded network, you will have already built a following and be solidified as one of Pinterest’s the long‐term users.

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And you can tell those young whippersnappers how you used to walk uphill in a snowstorm just to get to your computer and log into Pinterest.

SEO

Believe it or not, Pinterest makes it possible for you to beat out competitors in the search engines. In Chapter Five, we’ll discuss how to optimize your profile. While you aren’t going to jump from page 100 to page 1 of search results just by using Pinterest, if you’re flirting with the front page or flip‐flopping for the coveted top stop with a competitor, having an effective Pinterest profile can give you the oomph to secure a more valuable search engine slot.

A Different Audience

It’s important to note that Pinterest offers a different market. It’s more comparable to Facebook than anything else out there, but even that’s not an accurate comparison. Pinterest does something that no other network does (at least not well); it allows you share the content you love in a visual way. You don’t talk about your day or make announcements or anything like that. You just share (and Pinterest is about visually show!) stuff you love. curating content that you love, without all the other profile Most people are visual learners, so it makes options. sense to create a social network that’s sole purpose is to share content in the form of images. When people start blogging, one of the most valuable pieces of advice they can get is to include pictures with posts to make them more visually appealing. Today, Pinterest is all about that visual aspect of content sharing. So, if you work in a very visual niche, it makes sense to be a part of this network.

That doesn’t mean you have to be involved in the photography niche to market your content with Pinterest. Lots of niches are visual–fashion, cooking, crafting/art. Even other fields can be visual if you’re smart about creating great images to go with your text or audio files (more on that later). Videos can also be easily pinned.

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Pinterest is a social network where two worlds are merging: the world of commerce and the world of content. People are heavily sharing content (like blog posts) the same way they do on Twitter, Google+, etc. But they’re also sharing products like clothing, food, and movies. Both large corporations and small businesses are reaping the benefits–and alongside content creators. Pinterest is for everyone, if used properly.

You should also take notice of Pinterest because of the different demographic it’s attracting. Google+ and even Twitter, to some extent, aren’t used by the general public on the same level as Facebook. Pinterest, on the other hand, is attracting mainstream users in droves. The difference is that while most people keep their Facebook profiles pretty private, Pinterest is a more open way to share things you like. Connecting with consumers, readers, listeners, etc. is possible in ways it never was before.

It’s worth noting, as well, that Pinterest users are overwhelmingly female in the United States. Depending on the source estimates are anywhere from 80% to 99%. More men are starting to join, but for now, Pinterest is still female‐heavy, at least in the United States.

Get Casual

Unlike other communities, part of the Pinterest experience is the ability to get casual with your followers. You can share content that is personal, like your favorite recipes, while also sharing content that is professional, like infographics, without watering down your stream or taking emphasis away from your business endeavors with personal updates. That barrier between the creator and consumer is broken; we’re all just people. And that can do amazing things for your brand.

It’s unlikely that Pinterest will help you solve problems or address negativity, but you (hopefully) have other channels for customer service. The casual bond

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Pinterest creates, however, is a lot more important than you may think. When you’re a personable brand (and yes, bloggers, podcasters and video content creators are brands!), people start thinking of you as a trusted friend. We are all more likely to promote people we consider friends. Getting chummy is how you grow your fan base, and Pinterest allows that like no social network ever has before.

Promotion without Spam

One of the challenges when you’re a content creator looking for traffic, or have a product to sell in conjunction with your blog or podcast, is to have that friendly interaction with readers while still promoting your links. Social media “gurus” and “ninjas” make a living speculating when and how to post links. The advice can get downright confusing given that schools of thought on this topic are often conflicting. Once you put all of the suggestions into place, it can feel like you’re spamming followers with promotion.

But on Pinterest, promotion is possible without turning into a spammer. Yes, there are users who take advantage of the system and spam their followers. If you have good intentions, though (and most of you reading this book probably do), you can definitely promote your links without turning off your fans.

That’s because Pinterest gives users a choice regarding what content to follow. In other social networks, this choice is given to the content creator, not the user (if it is given at all). For example, on Google+ and with Facebook’s list feature, you can control who can sees what content by putting people in circles or on lists. But on Pinterest, you specify the topic areas you’re going to include in your stream, and followers choose what they want to see. No more guesswork!

This also means that if you set up your profile correctly (more on that in the Chapter Two), you can promote your own links to your little heart’s content. Woo hoo!

With Pinterest, users who don’t want to see certain kinds of content can simply choose not to see it while still choosing to see other content you post. Of course, this does have the disadvantage of making all of your content public, without the ability to control who sees it, like is the case if you have your Twitter stream

Page 12 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest unlocked. However, Pinterest fans have been calling for the ability to make private channels (called “boards” on Pinterest) where you get to control who sees the content. I wouldn’t be surprised if this feature is introduced in the near future. In fact, by the time you’re reading this, it may have already been introduced.

Regardless, the point is that it is much easier to promote on Pinterest without being accused of spamming your audience. If you have lots of content to share, this is the place to do it.

A More Interactive Experience

I find Pinterest to be an extremely interactive experience where every piece of content you post, be it a link or a funny picture, has long‐term value. On other social networks, new followers will rarely be interested in what you were posting a month ago. At best, they’ll review the last handful of updates. Even with Facebook’s new timeline feature, people usually don’t take the time to go super far into your past. Unless maybe you have a new girlfriend and she’s doing some snooping to find out if your ex is prettier than she is. But usually people don’t care about older content.

On Pinterest, however, people can—and probably will—get lost in your content for hours, no matter how old it is. Because boards are arranged by topic matter, new users can scroll through all of your pins. They might not click on everything, but they’ll check out and even share content you posted several months ago. It isn’t uncommon for a pin to see a new wave of shares months after the initial wave. All it takes is one popular user to share the content. That makes it “new” for his fans, and the ripples of sharing will start again. It’s a beautiful thing when you’re promoting links.

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In other words, Pinterest is one of the few social networks that isn’t set up in an 100% linear fashion. New matters, but the focus isn’t always on your newest content. Evergreen content has much longer legs on Pinterest than on other social networks. And best of all, you don’t have to do the work to constantly promote it. Once you initially pin something, you can just sit back and watch others discover your content. Conversion is the name of the game, no matter what your niche or what kind of People are more likely to click content you’re producing. ROI (return on through when you post something investment) matters. cool on Pinterest, opposed to when you post something cool on other social networks. The visual nature of the site makes it much easier to catch the eyes of fans, even in a busy stream of content. Interaction on a social network itself is great, but Pinterest shares are better than retweets or Facebook shares any day, simply because people are more willing to take the interaction all the way through to your home site.

That’s what it’s all about after all, right? How many followers you have on any social network doesn’t really matter if they aren’t also coming to your own site.

Monetization Potential

As long as you follow Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines and disclose affiliate links, there’s no reason you can’t pin these products (or your own products if you create informational items like ebooks or have a store in conjunction with your blog/podcast/video show). There’s actually a decent earning potential here for people who pin frequently and build a following on this network.

In early 2012, The Daily Dot published an interview profiling a so‐called Pinterest spammer who was said to be making obscene amounts of money on the site. That story has since been determined to be a hoax, but just because you aren’t going to go from rags to riches on Pinterest doesn’t mean there isn’t any monetary value to your pins.

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According to Mashable, most Pinterest users (71 percent) make between $25,000 and $75,000 annually. So while the average Pinterest user isn’t rich, he or she has a little spending money. You can promote your products to this market and make a little cash on the side. And as your following grows and becomes more likely to repin more often, you can potentially make even more money.

You can also use Pinterest to post coupons, which we’ll talk about later, as well as announcements about product launches and product sales.

Pinterest is outshining other networks in its ability to actually get the user to break out his or her wallet. So even if your referral traffic numbers from Pinterest are lower, you could make money with the traffic you do get from this site.

You can also use Pinterest to do product research. You can browse to find out what people are pinning, do some testing to find out what kind of content is most popular with your audience, and discover new ideas—all from fellow pinners.

Inspiration

Hopefully by now you’re convinced that Pinterest is worth your time, but how about one more reason to read the rest of this book anyway? Pinterest is an amazing source of inspiration. We’re not encouraging you to steal others’ ideas, but the site can help you size up competitors and see what’s cool in your niche that you may not know about. You can also get ideas for new content and overcome creative blocks.

More importantly, Pinterest pushes you to be better at whatever you’re doing. People on Pinterest share that they done projects around the home because they’ve seen others doing them on Pinterest or written blog posts because

Page 15 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest they’ve seen people publishing awesome content about interesting subjects. Even kitty cats are more inspired to be cute thanks to all the adorable kitty videos and images that get pinned.* Pinterest is motivation at its best.

*This is fact was verified by the author’s cat.

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Chapter Two: Pinterest 101 ‐ How to Get Started

On board with Pinterest? Excellent! This chapter is all about how you can get started with the site. It’s a lot of information to take in at once, but don’t get discouraged: this site is very user friendly.

Like we’ve discussed already, Pinterest is a visual way to share your favorite content. As you’ll remember, content is divided into categories called “boards” and every time you want to share content, you “pin” it to a board.

When you log in, you’ll see a homepage with recent activity on the left sidebar and pins from anyone you follow filling your main stream. Pins are arranged based on when they were last posted. Here’s a screenshot of my Pinterest profile homepage, as an example:

You can also use the navigation bar at the top to see pins from people you are not following. “Everything” will take you to a mish‐mosh of random pins from any of the network’s millions of users. If you hover over the everything link, though, you can look at pins that fit into a certain category.

There’s also a link to see just videos, a link to see pins that are currently popular, and a link to see anything that has been with a price (and is something you

Page 17 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest can purchase as a gift). This is especially helpful if you’re selling products in conjunction with your blog/podcast/videos or as an affiliate, since they’ll be listed here as long as you include a price in your description (more on that later).

Joining Pinterest

As of the writing of this ebook, you still need an invitation to join Pinterest. You can get an invitation in one of two ways:

 Request an invitation directly from Pinterest  Have a friend who is already a member send you an invitation via Facebook or email

You can expect to wait anywhere from a day to well over a week. A faster option is to have a friend invite you (send a tweet to @allison_boyer on Twitter for an invitation). This usually yields instant access.

Once you have your invite in hand, you can sign up. You can choose to log in via email, Facebook, or Twitter. You’ll first be asked to choose a screen name, and you should strongly consider using the same name you use on Twitter. This makes it really easy to remember and for people to find you. Consistent branding is

important! Before you get started pinning, fill out your Pinterest profile so people will know who you are. You should use the same image across all social networks (again, it’s about consistency). Your “about” section should give a few sentences. To make it easy, you can simply use the same information you use on Twitter. Of course, add your website, as well. It’s the simplest thing you can do to send traffic back to your site, and as of the writing of this ebook, that link is do‐follow, which is good news for your SEO efforts.

You should also link with Facebook and Twitter, which gives you the option to send your pin to either of these sites. While you definitely don’t want to overwhelm your stream either place with pins, linking your Pinterest profile allows you to connect with people on other sites, as well. When you link, little icons appear on your profile page. Other users can click on these icons to find you

Page 18 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest on Facebook and Twitter and follow you there. If you choose not to link, these profile icons do Don’t worry; whenever you not appear. pin something, you have the option of sending it to Facebook and/or Twitter as Creating Pinterest Boards well, but you don’t have to. You can decide on a pin-by- After signing up, it’s time to start pinning–and pin basis. to do that, you need to create boards. Pinterest is all about curating content using your boards which, as you’ll remember, are categories of the types of content you want to share. When you sign up, they give you some default boards, but you can delete them, rename them, and create new boards.

Boards can be created on the top right‐hand navigation menu under “Add.” When you pin something, you’ll see a list of all the boards you’ve already created or you can create a new board from this menu, too.

One of the biggest mistakes Pinterest newbies make is using just a single board named something like “Cool Stuff” or “Stuff I Love.” That’s great if you want to simply save a few links that you like, but the point of Pinterest (hah, point of Pinterest) is to categorize stuff you find so your followers can choose the categories they want to follow, based on their interests. Part of what makes

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Pinterest great is that you don’t have to see stuff that doesn’t interest you when you follow someone else.

For example, Kelby Carr has a ton of boards. You may love her craft projects board, but if you don’t have children, her kid‐related boards may not interest you. On Facebook or Twitter, you would just get a continuous stream of content from someone like Kelby, whether you’re interested in the topic or not, but on Pinterest you get to follow just the links that interest you. Rejoice!

So don’t create really general boards if you want people to follow you. Be specific with your board topics.

This has the added benefit of allowing you to post as much content as you want about any topic. On Twitter or Facebook, someone like Kelby might limit her links to kid‐related stuff because she doesn’t want to annoy her non‐parent friends, but on Pinterest, she can promote as much as she wants because only parents who are interested will be following her parenting boards.

Remember, you can always “split” a board into two smaller boards later (though this choice comes with a few downfalls which we’ll discuss in a moment). You can split by creating a second board, moving pins from the first board to the new board, and renaming the first board to reflect the new, smaller category.

For instance, let’s say that you have a “Recipes” board, and later decide that since you’re pinning so many recipes, you want to split the board into two different boards: Meals and Desserts. All you’d have to do is create a new board called “Meals,” move all the meal‐related recipes to that board (leaving the dessert pins), and rename the original recipe board “Desserts.”

Pins you move won’t reappear on your followers’ homepage, so you don’t have to worry about stream‐clogging. (Thumbs up on that decision, Pinterest. It would have been really annoying for moved pins to show up again.)

There are, however, some disadvantages to splitting:

 There is no way to bulk‐move pins. So you have to move each pin individually to categorize it on a different board. Depending on

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the number of pins you want to move, this can be time‐ consuming.  People only following the original board (not your overall profile) won’t see the second board you create, even though it will likely be relevant to them. Using our example, someone following your “Recipes” board probably is interested in both your “Meals” and your “Desserts” boards, but they’ll now only see “Desserts,” since that was the original “Recipes” board they followed.

So, if possible, think narrow topics from the start. This will allow you to avoid splitting and reorganizing later in the game.

Ideally, you want to have at least ten boards, which will create two rows of content on your profile and make it look populated. However, don’t add boards until you can fill them with at least five pins each. Otherwise, boards will show empty slots, which is not a good thing. You can’t see when someone last pinned something, so half‐empty or completely empty boards make it look like you don’t use your profile, and no one wants to follow an abandoned profile.

Focus on curating the best content possible with every board. People will take the time to browse Don’t be afraid to delete through what you’ve pinned in the past. This isn’t pins if you later decide like Twitter where your old links disappear they aren’t contributing quickly. Pinners follow boards when they like the to the overall board. majority of the content, so make every board great.

When naming a board, you want to take three things into consideration:

 Function: Will someone reading the name of the board be able to easily tell what kind of content you’ll be pinning? Be descriptive.  Personality: Is the name of the board funny, interesting, or otherwise intriguing? Use personality!  SEO: Will the title attract search engines? We’ll talk a little more about Pinterest SEO later in this ebook, but just think about the

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basics here. Using keywords will help you target users who are searching for those keywords in search engines.

The perfect board name is ideally these three factors combined, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices. The name should always function well (i.e., tell people what kind of content you’ll be pinning to the board), but sometimes you have to choose between personality and SEO. Since Pinterest is a social network above all, you should strongly consider choosing personality. Showing off your personality will encourage users to follow you, and that’s more important than the minute SEO benefits of keywords you might see—at least in most cases.

Pro Tip: When naming titles, keep in mind that if you make them long, only part will be visible on your profile page. So, try to keep titles short or at least identifiable by the first few words.

You also want to make sure you categorize your boards well. When you pin something using the bookmark tool, you have the option to create a new board simply by entering the name. However, if you do this, the board you create will not be categorized, so it won’t show up in Pinterest’s directory by category (remember the categories in the navigation bar we talked about earlier?) So, make sure you go back in and add a category. This is one of the most common mistakes people make.

Descriptions are important too, so make sure you go back in and add them to every board you create. Again, we’ll talk a little bit about the SEO of this later, but your description should simply be a sentence or two about the content you’re going to be pinning to the board.

One of the newest functions on Pinterest is your ability to choose a cover image for each board. By default, the cover image shown is your most recent pin, but you can—and should—change this so you can control the pinned image that represents your board. Some pins are just more visually attractive than others, and like a male peacock, this is a game of showing off your best look so people will want to follow you.

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You can change covers by going to your profile (just click on your name on the home page). From there, just hover on any board and an edit button will appear so you can change the cover. See below:

Even if you like the default cover, change it. Otherwise, it will change automatically whenever you pin something new to the board. So click on the “edit cover” button and choose the image that best represents what you like to pin to that board, even if you ultimately choose what you last pinned.

Don’t worry about repeating an image you see below the cover. When you confirm your change and refresh, that part will update automatically.

Group Pinterest Boards

In addition to all the information in the last section about board creation, you should also know about a special type of board you can create: the group board.

As the name implies, group boards are boards used by multiple pinners, called contributors. The group board process recently changed a bit. Previously, you could add anyone you were following to a group board, and as you can guess, this created some awkward situations. Imagine logging into Pinterest one day to find that an acquaintance added you to a group board with a topic that doesn’t interest you at all and her pins have been broadcasting to your followers ever

Page 23 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest since. Proper Pinterest etiquette was to ask someone before adding them, but that didn’t always happen. People took advantage of the system.

Now, Pinterest doesn’t allow you to auto‐add people to your group boards. You have to invite them. When you invite someone to participate by pinning to your group board, they’ll receive a notification email and there will be a note at the top of their profile page indicating that they can choose to be a new collaborator to your board. Here’s what it looks like:

So in this screenshot, you’re seeing Jessica Boyer’s Pinterest profile and all the board invites she has since she last logged in. As you can see, she can choose to accept or say no thanks. But no longer does anyone have the ability to just add her to a board.

Be careful about who you invite to collaborate with you on boards. As the board creator, you can kick them out, but you can’t edit or delete individual pins. You can only edit your own pins. Only collaborate with pinners you trust.

When you create a group board, your followers will see all of the pins placed on that board, even if they aren’t following the other collaborators. The opposite is not true. In other words, pins from your board won’t show up automatically for the people following other collaborators. So, if you’re working with people to create a group board, the person with the most followers should create the board.

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For all collaborators, the board will show up on their profiles, giving users the option to follow it. However, when someone clicks the “follow” button to follow a person’s entire profile, it will not automatically follow the group board unless the person is the creator. This is not yet a widely known fact among Pinterest users, so unfortunately, a lot of pinners might miss out on your group content.

Still, the group board changes are good. Collaborating with other people on Pinterest can definitely help you reach new pinners, but by sending invites and limiting who sees the content, Pinterest has drawn the focus away from people who just want to self‐promote and spam. Instead, it’s about building a high‐ quality group board that people really want to visit.

Group boards, when well‐managed, can be a brilliant way to sharing the pinning love. Here are a few reasons you might want to pin with other people:

 You want to pin to keep in touch. You and your family members may want to pin stuff that reminds you of one another.

 You want to create a board with varied options. This Conference Chic board from our friends at Type‐A Parent, for example, is filled with pins from some of the most fashionable members of the Type‐A community. If only one person managed this board, only one style would be represented.

 You want to allow certain fans of your blog, podcast, etc. to share pins with your followers. If you have a large following, it could be part of the prize for being reader of the month, for example, to allow the winner to promote a pin whenever they want for a set amount of time.

 You want to collaborate with others in your niche. This way a board always stays active. A good example of bloggers doing this is the Kid Bloggers Network Activities & Crafts Board.

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 You want to run a Pinterest contest and need to give others the ability to pin to your board (more on this later).

 You want to create a board with expert advice, even if you are not an expert yourself. For example, on the BlogWorld Pinterest account, we created niche blogging boards in areas like food blogging and travel blogging. Connecting with bloggers in these niches can create a great resource board for everyone, even if no one on the BlogWorld staff about these specific topics.

 You run a blog with several people. Creating group boards allows everyone to pin items to the blog’s account and their personal accounts at the same time, rather than having to pin stuff twice. This also allows everyone to pin to the blog’s account, even if you want only one person to have overall control of this account (which is common if you are the sole owner of a blog, but have hired several contributors).

 You want to collaborate with others on a group project. Keep in mind that Pinterest boards are public, so don’t share private information. But for sharing ideas for something like a wedding (like this), a group board can be a great tool.

Before you make the decision to create a group board with others, set down some ground rules about what will and will not be pinned to this board. Remember, pins from your fellow board members will be seen by your followers. So, you may want to have rules about self‐promotion (how much is too much?) and pin frequency (to prevent stream clogging for your followers). Depending on the board topic, you might also want to discuss cursing and other racy content.

If you’re a collaborator on someone else’s board, make sure the rules are clear so you aren’t kicked out of the group.

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Time to Start Pinning!

So the big question is this: Now that you know how to use Pinterest, what should you pin?

It’s not an easy question to answer, since everyone uses this site differently and people are discovering new, creative uses for Pinterest every, single day. We’re going to be going over more “what to pin” tips in the next few chapters, but let’s get you started with your initial ten boards. Here’s a recommendation:

1. A board about one of your general hobbies/interests, like cooking or fashion. You can relate it to your niche, but the point here is to show a little personality. For example, on the BlogWorld Pinterest profile, we have a board about coffee. 2. A board about a different general hobby/interest. 3. A board about a very specific hobby/interest, which gives people something to remember you by. For example, Jay Baer has a board about tequila. 4. A board about the books you are reading/recommend. You can relate this to your niche or just pin all sorts of books you’ve enjoyed. 5. A board promoting the content you create (videos, blog posts, podcasts…whatever). For example, this is board called “Favorite Blog Posts I’ve Written.” 6. A board promoting the same type of content, but created by others in your niche. 7. A board that’s informational about your niche (most commonly used to share infographics, tools, and the like – things that don’t fit into board #6). A good example of an infographics board is here (by Michelle McGraw). 8. A board where you can promote products related to your niche. (If you choose to use affiliate links, make sure you note this in the board’s description.) Here’s an example of a board with products. 9. A board for quotes (either general inspirational quotes or inspiration quotes specific to your niche). Nikki Katz has a really great board with writing posts here.

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10. A board for useful information that you personally would like to save for later. (Hey, this is a network for sharing ideas after all. It doesn’t have to be completely about content marketing!)

If you’re taking more of a business approach than a personal approach (remember, if you monetize your content, you are a business, even if you have a more personable approach to branding), you might want to deviate from this list a bit. For example, although most of our staff members have personal accounts as well, we have a main BlogWorld account as a business, which doesn’t follow this list exactly. But we still show personality. That’s important.

You absolutely can—and probably should—have more than ten boards, but the list above at least gets you started.

Remember, empty boards are bad, so don’t create them until you’re ready to pin. The best general rule is to not add a board until you’re prepared to have it populated with at least five pins within 48 hours. There are definitely exceptions to this rule, but a bunch of empty boards is bad.

Before we go on, let’s talk about why you should have at least five boards (one through four above, and also number ten) that are about you and not about your content.

Pinterest is not about links and content marketing and SEO and all of these other wonderfully useful things we talk about in the new media world.

Sure, promotion can be part of it, but first and foremost, Pinterest is about curating content. It’s about sharing the stuff you like with other people and enjoying the stuff they pin in return.

If all you have is a bunch of boards about your own content, you’re going to look a lot like spam; the same way people get turned off by someone who only tweets out their own links on Twitter. This is a network to enjoy beyond the parameters of self‐promotion, and part of that enjoyment is showing your personality. Yes, even if you’re representing your blog or podcast as a business instead of being an individual, you still need to show your “brand personality.”

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Mini Case Study: Sandra Foyt – Albany Kid

A great example of a blogger with a great approach to Pinterest is Sandra Foyt, who runs the travel blog Albany Kid. Sandra’s Pinterest account is titled “Sandra Foyt @Albany Kid,” so while this is a personal account, she has deeply associated herself with her blog from the start.

Most of Sandra’s pins are about travel, since that’s the topic her blog covers. The categories are separated out really well, covering topics like road trips, food travel, and family travel. But she also shows a little personality, too! She has a “Bucket List” board for the things she wants to do in life, a “Dream Abodes” board for cool houses she comes across, a “This is Fashion” board for crazy outfits she sees, and more.

There’s no question that Sandra is a travel blogger, but she understands the concept that you can promote yourself and your blog on Pinterest while also deviating from your primary topic, at least a little. Her personality shines through, while she still represents her blog well.

You should strongly consider creating a board that is specifically for your content, like noted above. That way you can promote to your little heart’s content and anyone who doesn’t like your promotion can just unfollow that board without unfollowing all of your boards or feeling like you’re a spammer. But—and this is important— having some “double duty” boards, where you both promote your own highly‐relevant content and the content of others makes a lot of sense.

As you’ll notice on the BlogWorld Pinterest profile, for example, we have some boards that heavily promote our own event. However, we also have resource boards covering topics like SEO, analytics, podcasting, community, and branding. These are boards where we sometimes pin our own blog content, but more often, we pin content from our community or repin cool content we see that relates to that board’s topic. It’s about self‐promotion mixed with promotion of other interesting content we find online to make the best user resource board possible.

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Beyond that, you should be encouraged to—gasp—actually use Pinterest for its intended purpose: to find and share visual content that you enjoy. This ebook is focusing on the useful aspect of Pinterest to promote your work, but you’re going to get the most out of it if you actually sit back and just enjoy using the platform!

How to Pin

Pinning something is pretty easy, and if you’ve used Pinterest at all, you’ve probably already figured it out! The Pin It button is extremely useful for pinning items quickly whenever you’re online, rather than having to log into Pinterest each time you come across something interesting or otherwise pin‐worthy. Pinterest makes this available with a very simple tutorial here. That way, as you’re The link at left also has surfing the web, you can pin anything you information on mobile come across (as long as there is a visual pinning for smartphone element and the site hasn’t chosen to block users, as well as a button Pinterest). Alternatively, you can copy the you can use to add a “pin URL, go back to your Pinterest profile, and it” button to your own site click “Add” in the navigation bar to add a new pin. That’s a lot of hassle though; it’s for others to use. easier just to use the button.

When you pin something, you’ll see a drop down menu of all of your boards, as well as an option at the very bottom to create a new board. The default board chosen will be whichever board was home to the last image you pinned, so make sure you change this if necessary.

You’ll also see a description box, where you can post up to 500 characters about whatever you’re pinning. You want your pin descriptions to actually be descriptive. Remember, search engines can’t see pictures. They only read text. Think of it this way. When a user searches Pinterest via their search bar, your pin won’t come up for whatever they’re searching if your description (which is essentially a caption to the picture) is “Haha” or “great information.” Be more descriptive than that and include keywords when you can. (We’ll talk more about SEO later.)

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Pro tip: if you text on the page before you hit the Pin It button, whatever text you highlighted will automatically show up in the description box. It’s a great time‐saver.

You need to follow a person You can also ping people, alerting them when before you can tag them you’re pinning something from their site or that is highly relevant to their interests. Like with using the @ symbol. In the Facebook, just use the @ symbol and start typing past, they had to be the name. The person should pop up and you following you too, but that can select them to include in the description. is no longer the case.

Don’t be afraid to alert people when you’re pinning something they’ve written or something you think would interest them. This feature isn’t being widely used, but people who are pinged usually check out the pin and often repin or follow that person. Don’t obnoxiously tag people on posts you’re trying to promote, but definitely share when relevant.

When you pin something, and this is super important, make sure that you’re on the permalink, not on the site’s homepage (or a page in the archives if you’re pinning from a blog). When you pin something, you can choose any picture that’s on the page you’re currently visiting, including a home page or an archive page. The image pinned will be linked to the URL. Tomorrow, that image may no longer be on the homepage, but the pin will still link to the homepage URL. So make sure that whenever you’re pinning anything, the link is to a permanent page, not something that will change. It’s frustrating for other pinners when they can’t find the cool content you promoted.

Need a refresher course on permalinks? Check out this post.

You can also upload your own pins directly from your computer. The process is pretty much the same, but instead of linking, it will just be uploaded as an image. As a content creator, you should upload your pictures to your own site or to a site like and then pin it there instead of uploading directly to Pinterest. This makes it more beneficial in terms of traffic.

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If you do choose to upload directly, go back into the pin via the “edit” button and add a link to your own site so people can find more from you. Just hover on the pin and an edit button will show up:

Otherwise, as the pin gets passed from person to person, it can easily get lost that you’re the original pinner. With a link attached, at least you get credit!

Can You Pin Anything?

Yes! Well, almost. Pinterest does not allow adult content. There’s certainly some gray area with that one, but you can rest assured that you aren’t going to see porn when you browse Pinterest. And whether you like x‐rated content or not, I think we can all agree that it would be bad for a network like this to be taken over by porn.

You have to follow laws, which should come as no surprise, so don’t pin illegal gambling content, prescription medication ads, or anything like that. It’s basic common sense.

A newer rule is that you can’t pin self‐harm content. actually started this movement by banning self‐harm content after an onslaught of pro‐anorexia content started showing up on their network. Pinterest followed suite. Is this a good thing? There are pros and cons. Here’s an op‐ed piece from the BlogWorld blog around the time they decided to ban this content. The take‐away lesson is

Page 32 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest that it is important to stay up‐to‐date with Pitnerest’s TOS so you can always ensure you are pinning content allowed on the network.

Finding People to Follow

Pinterest, like Twitter and Google+, isn’t just about updating so you can get people to follow you. It’s also about following other people whose content you enjoy. And if you follow the right people, you’ll also have lots of stuff to repin, which makes it easier to fill your boards with content. So how do you find people to follow? Here’s what I recommend (with the TL;DR version in bold)

First, Pinterest has a few built‐in systems to help you find friends. Start by clicking on your name in the upper right‐hand navigation bar and choose “find friends” (note: you’ll also see a link to invite friends if you want to send email or Facebook invites to anyone you know who is not yet using Pinterest). When you click on “find friends” you can search for friends via Facebook or Gmail to see a list of people you know who are already on Pinterest.

If you are looking for someone specific, you can also Google that person’s name and the word Pinterest. I’ve found that often, people use the same Pinterest user name that they use on Twitter, but searching on Google is usually the fastest way to find someone if they aren’t already a Facebook friend or Gmail contact.

On your homepage, above your recent activity, Pinterest also makes suggestions on whom to follow, which seems to be based on your Facebook and Twitter friends at this point. If you refresh, new names will pop up, so you can find people that way as well. If someone you don’t want to follow keeps appearing, just click the little x that appears by their name when you hover over their picture and they won’t appear again.

Another great method for finding people to follow is to browse pins by category (click on “everything” and then simply pick the category that interests you). When

Page 33 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest you see an interesting pin, don’t just repin it. Click through to see the user’s entire board and their profile. Often, you can find interesting people this way.

You can also search for a specific term using the search box on Pinterest to find users with similar interests. Following pinners via search is a great way to find people with very specific interests that aren’t super common in the general category area, such as gluten‐free cooking (which is often lost among other recipes) or Star Wars (which is often lost among other geek stuff).

People who repin and like your content may be others you want to follow. You don’t have to follow back everyone, but if someone finds your pins interesting, chances are that you have similar taste and will find their pins interesting as well. So pay attention to the people who are interested in your content.

Many bloggers are adding Pinterest icons to their blog’s sidebar with their other social media profile links, which is something you should do if you have a blog of your own. Find people to follow by looking for a Pinterest icon the next time you’re visiting your favorite blogs.

You should also follow the popular people in your niche if they are on Pinterest, even if Keep in mind that the people in you’re not necessarily fans of their work. After your niche who are popular in all, they’re probably not pinning just their Pinterest might be very own content. different from the people in your niche popular on other Not only do popular pinners have great pins social networks. relevant to your interest in many cases, but if you like, repin, and comment on their content, they might follow you back (and repin your stuff which equates to lots of hits). Even if they don’t, their followers will see your activity and might follow you back.

So, in summary:

 Follow people using Pinterest’s connect options.  Google names with the word “Pinterest” to find specific people.  Check out Pinterest’s suggestions on your home page.

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 Follow people who originally pinned content you find interesting.  Search for topics that interest you and follow pinners also interested in those topics.  Follow people who follow you.  Follow your favorite bloggers.  Follow popular pinners in your niche.

Just like on Twitter, it makes sense to follow people who interest you. If you don’t, others who are looking at your profile and see a low following number might think twice about following you. It makes you seem like a selfish pinner only interested in spreading your own content, not seeing what anyone else has to pin.

Following Boards Versus Profiles

Like we’ve discussed already, one of the great things about Pinterest is that you can choose to follow individual boards instead of entire profiles if you want. People have a variety of interests, so you won’t always be interested in all of their boards. That’s okay! On Pinterest, it’s perfectly polite to simply follow the boards that interest you. But, before you go board‐following happy and decide not to follow anyone’s full profile, there are a few things you need to know about follows.

First of all, the number reflected on your profile is the number of profiles you’re following. If you follow only a single board, not a person’s entire profile, it doesn’t count. The same is true of your follower number. That is the total number of people who have chosen to follow your entire profile, rather than following just a handful of your boards. That’s why your boards might have a much higher follower count than your total number of profile followers.

Why does this matter? Well, it doesn’t. At least, it doesn’t matter much.

It’s better to have a user follow some of your boards rather than not follow you at all because you post too much that they personally find uninteresting. However, when you’re reviewing your stats, don’t forget to look at individual board totals, not just your overall total. Also, keep in mind that if you’re only following boards, not people, your following number might be really low and make people wary of following you when they come across your profile.

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This is BlogWorld speaker Simon Salt’s profile. Let’s say you have mostly different interests, so you choose to only follow a few of his boards (thought keep in mind this means you won’t be able to @ tag him). You can change your mind at any time and follow his entire profile by clicking the button indicated below:

This is speaker Kirsten Wright’s profile. Let’s say you have more in common with her, so you follow her entire profile, which will automatically follow every board. You can also click the “unfollow” button on any board you don’t want to follow, which will change that button to read “follow” like in the picture below.

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There’s another reason you might want to consider following a person’s full profile. And this is something most people don’t consider, but it’s very important to understand:

Let’s say you find your friend Jane’s profile. Jane has 20 boards, half of which you want to follow and the other half of which don’t interest you. You have one of two options:

1. Click “follow” on the individual boards you like 2. Click “follow” on Jane’s entire profile, but go back and manually unfollow the boards that don’t interest you.

The result it almost the same: you’re following ten of Jane’s boards.

However, if you follow Jane’s entire profile, you’re also signing on to follow any future boards Jane creates. So, if a month from now Jane decides to create a board about cats, you’ll automatically see that board in your stream along with the other ten boards you previously followed.

If, on the other hand, you choose to only follow the ten boards you like, but not the Jane’s overall profile, you’ll never see any future boards she creates. (Unless you manually review her profile and decide to follow more boards, and really, who has time for that?)

Following a person’s full profile also gives you the ability to tag them in the pin description, which is something you can’t do if you’re only following that person’s individual boards of interest.

So, if you like more than one or two of a person’s boards, follow their entire profile and just unfollow any boards that don’t interest you, rather than the other way around.

That way, you won’t miss out if the person splits boards or adds new ones. It can be a little annoying if new stuff you don’t like suddenly shows up in your stream, but it only takes a second to click the board’s unfollow button if it’s something that doesn’t interest you. That’s a much better option than not knowing the person created a new board in the first place.

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Like and Comments

We’ve been going over a lot about board creation and pinning, but Pinterest also has two other functions you might want to check out, as well: likes and comments. In this respect, Pinterest is a lot like Facebook. When you see someone pin something new, that’s like a status update on Facebook. Repinning is like sharing, while liking and commenting work the same as they do on Facebook.

The main difference is that Facebook is less about content curating and more about being social. So, on Facebook, you’ll probably like a person’s status update much more often than you’ll share their content on your own stream. On Pinterest, the opposite is true. If you enjoy something, you should repin it so your own audience can see it too.

And so you can find it again later. If you see something wonderful and forget to repin it, you can spend frenzied hours looking for it later. Losing pins is TRAGIC.

However, just because repinning usually makes me sense, that doesn’t mean that the never comes in handy. Here are a few situations when it might make sense to like instead of repin:

 The content doesn’t fit on any of your boards, nor does the topic warrant creating a new board.  The pin is something the user personally uploaded (like a picture of their baby or a craft project they completed) and you want to show support for whatever they created, even if you don’t think a repin is justified.  You’ve been pinning a lot of stuff and are afraid to clog the streams of your followers. Like it so you can allow the content you’ve just pinned to shine and pin this new content later when you can’t find anything new to pin, since scheduling pins isn’t currently possible.

If something is extra special, you can also like it and repin it! And yell WOO HOO while you do it. If you don’t work at home, you might have to the WOO

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HOO instead of shouting it. Otherwise, your boss will totally know when you’re pinning at work. Now that’s a pro tip if there ever was one.

Comments are a whole other ballgame. Right now, comments are not heavily used (at least, in comparison to comments on Facebook and Google+), so you have the opportunity to stand out by leaving a comment (which is great for getting people to follow you back). The same rules apply as leaving a comment on a blog post or on Facebook or Google+:

 Be respectful of the pinner and the other commenters.  Add something of value with your comment rather than just saying “great pin.”  Don’t be self‐promotional with your comments.

In addition, you’ll also get a notice whenever a new comment is left on a pin you commented on, which allows you to easily keep up with discussions. Because Pinterest is so quick‐moving, discussions usually die down pretty quickly, but they can also pick back up again weeks or even months later when someone new is exploring the pinner’s board and decides to jump into the conversation.

Pro tip: If you have free time, you can comment on pins that are listed in the “popular” category in the navigation bar. These are pins that are interesting to users and have typically been liked, repined, and commented on a lot. Commenting on one of these pins puts your name out there for others to see, so the hope is that your comment will lead them back to your profile and you’ll get new followers. Make sure your comments are valuable, though, not just bait.

Pins Versus Repins

Just to clarify, a pin is when you add something you find someone on the Internet to one of your boards, while a repin is when you add something to one of your own boards after seeing someone else pin it to one of their boards first.

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On Pinterest, repinning others’ content is great. When you see content you like, repin it to share with your own followers, adding your own description or even keeping the original pinner’s description if it makes sense. But don’t fall into the trap of only repinning content. Also take the time to add new pins.

The problem with only repinning is that whatever content you’re sharing is already It is not bad etiquette to on Pinterest, so many of your followers have reuse a description someone likely already seen the pin from someone else wrote, as long as that else. This isn’t always the case of course, but description doesn’t imply that pins spread quickly. Remember, this is still a the pinned content is yours. relatively small network.

Pinning new content, on the other hand, makes you the epicenter of any ripples that start. Not everything you pin will become popular, of course. However, when put side‐by‐side, content as an original pin will usually do better than the same content repined from someone else.

Why does this matter? Well, repins and likes are how you reach new audiences. When your followers share your content, their followers also see it, and so forth. Some of those repinners will check who originally pinned the content: you.

One pinner we spoke with who regularly pinned new, cool content reported getting about 10 followers for every 100 repins. So, about 10 percent. It depends on the content itself and the category. For example, humorous content is more likely to get repined, but lead to fewer followers. Others might have different experiences; this isn’t some kind of scientifically‐proven statistic.

But in any case, the point is, don’t forget to pin original content, not just repin. You’ll get more followers that way, and the more followers you have, the more people who will see original content you pin from your own site (and, with any luck, click your pins, explore the rest of your content, and become longtime fans).

Pro Tip: One of the best ways to find original content to pin is to start with content that you’ve repinned. Don’t just click the repin button when you see

Page 40 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest something cool, actually click through to the site where it came from and explore. Chances are good that you’ll find other really cool stuff to pin, and that way you can be the first in your community to pin the content.

Even More Pinterest User Tips

As you use Pinterest, you’ll get into a groove, finding what works for you. Keep in mind that, like most networks, Pinterest is constantly making changes. As I’m writing this, Pinterest introduced the ability to change board default pictures. So, as you use Pinterest, you’ll come up with great tips of your own, but here are a few more to get you started:

 Space out your pins. Nothing can be a bigger turn‐off than logging on and seeing someone dominate your stream. Sure, some people only have time to pin things a few times a week. But if at all possible, space out your pinning activity so that you’re always near the top of your followers’ home screens, but without completely overtaking their stream.

 Pin to multiple boards throughout the day. Remember, some of your followers may only be following certain boards, rather than your entire profile. Give all of your boards a moment to shine, instead of favoring one board over another. You want to reach as many people as possible with your pinned content.

 If you can’t space out your pins, at least pin to multiple boards. Pinning in ten different categories instead of ten pins in one category is much preferred, since your followers still getting a variety of different kinds of content. People don’t mind stream‐ clogging as much if you’re pinning lots of different stuff.

 Click through to actually read (or at least skim) pins. Sometimes, what you think you are pinning isn’t actually what the link leads to on the other end. Click before you share.

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 Add prices with the dollar sign ($). You may have noticed a little tag in the corner of some pins showing a price. If you use a dollar sign with an amount in the description, that tag in the corner will automatically appear. The biggest advantage to this is that when you include a price, that item will also show up in the gifts section on Pinterest, under the appropriate category.

As you use Pinterest, you’ll get a feel for how you like to use it. Everyone uses Pinterest a little differently. Remember, it takes time to learn a new platform. Give it some time before getting frustrated and giving up.

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Chapter Three: Advanced Pinterest for Content Promotion

Pinterest is a great user experience, but you’re probably not reading this ebook because you want to be a better content consumer. You’re here because you want to be a better marketer. The good news is, as you may have already noticed, Pinterest is awesome for content marketing—and awesome isn’t a word to throw around casually.

Now it’s time for some advanced strategy. Serious faces, everyone.

It’s All About the Pictures

Without great visual content to share, your content doesn’t have much of a chance on Pinterest. This isn’t like Twitter where a great headline will get people’s interest. You have to give people pictures to pin. And, depending on your industry and your current practices, that might be hard for you without a little rethinking about the way you include pictures with your content.

Start by analyzing your niche. Do images work hand‐in‐hand with your content? We’re not talking about your personal practices. A lot of people get a little lazy when it comes to adding pictures to blog posts. But what’s the standard in your niche? Do people generally use a lot of pictures? In any basic how‐to niche (food, crafts, etc.), this is often the case. That’s why those topics are so widely spread on Pinterest.

If pictures are a huge part of your niche, half the battle is already done. The other half is making sure that your own content is up to snuff. Simply put, you need a money shot.

In film terms, the money shot is the scene that often takes a disproportionate amount of time and money to shoot, but is essential to the success of the film. It’s that moment in a film where viewers feel like the price of the ticket was justified. Money shots are those big movie moments that you remember forever, like the scene where Luke Skywalker loses his hand in Star Wars or Leonardo DiCaprio shouts “I’m the King of the World” in Titanic.

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You need to use pictures that serve as money shots for your blog posts or other digital content in order to gain traction on Pinterest. You want readers to need to share because they’re so enticing. It’s that shot of freshly baked rolls with melting butter when you post a bread recipe. It’s that adorable shot of your daughter covered in finger paints on your parenting blog. It’s that shot of your finished product when you post a tutorial. Stock photography certainly doesn’t give you a money shot (in most cases).

And not every picture you take yourself is a money shot, either. These pictures have to be special; they have to make you want to click through to see the amazing website they came from. In other words, these pictures have to be evangelists for your content.

The concept of a “money shot” picture is The only way Pinterest will lead pretty easy to implement on sites that are to traffic is if you have strong already inherently visual. But on other sites, pictures enticing users to not this is not as easy. For example, if you blog only share, but also click through about social media and write a list of the to your website. “Top Ten Tips for Using Twitter,” there’s nothing physical to photograph, other than maybe a screen shot of you using Twitter. And that’s not exactly a money shot. Or if you’re a virtual assistant and sell services instead of products, there’s nothing to really photograph other than yourself.

That doesn’t mean you can’t be successful on Pinterest. On the contrary, if you work in one of these niches, you can be super successful because others aren’t using the network. Less competition means more opportunity for you! Creating a “money shot” picture that’s eagerly pinned is easier than you might think.

The first step is to find a picture that makes sense for your post. It can be one of those dreaded stock photography images, as long as you’re making sure to use Creative Commons pictures that allow users to alter the image. Fair use photography can be found at a number of sites, include SXC.hu, Flickr, and Wikipedia. Again, make sure you check the licensing of any photo you want to use to ensure you’re giving attribution properly and to ensure that the owner allows people to create derivative works.

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The second step? Add some text. In most cases, your headline works just fine, but remember, the focus here is on the picture. So if your headline is too long, alter it. You want the text you use to convey information and entice readers, which is why you should use your blog post/podcast/video title—you should already be creating headlines that attract clicks.

If you’ve never really thought of the power of headlines before, here are some great resources:

 All You Need To know About Good Headline Creation that Work  Blog Content Tip – Titles are Everything  Everything You Need To Know About Writing Blog Headlines  Headline v. Content: Does the Carpet Match the Drapes?  Secrets to Writing Good Headlines Guaranteed to Increase Traffic  The Sexy Art of Writing Headlines that Kill  Writing Website Content Headlines

In addition, Brian Clark at Copyblogger has an 11‐part series called How to Write Magnetic Headlines that you should check out.

Make the text look professional (and readable) by adding a drop shadow, highlights, and if necessary using photo‐editing software like Photoshop. Looks matter. I know your content might be great, but that alone won’t help you get shares and clicks on Pinterest. You need to present a pretty package.

At left is an example of an image that was created for a BlogWorld blog post. It took about five minutes to create, but is much more conducive to pinning than just a stock image.

Even if you don’t have a photo editing program, you can quickly and easily add text to pictures with PicFont.com.

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These images can take on lots of different looks. Here are a few pins to check out to get some ideas for your own pictures:

 No Sew Headbands pin  April Shower Wreaths pin  Copy Cat Recipe: Dominos Cinna Sticks pin  Practical Photography Tips for Beginners pin  100 Reasons You Should Work Out Today pin  10 Tips for Small Business Pinners pin  Garden Tips for Basil pin  How to Make Hardboiled Eggs in the Oven pin

Something you should also consider is adding a very small line of text that we’re going to call the “link watermark.” You’ve seen watermarks on pictures before, right? Well, this is the same concept, but with an added bonus of linking back to your original content. Here’s how to do it:

 Copy the permalink to your content.  Use a link shortener like bit.ly to create a smaller version of the URL. You should go a step further and create a custom link that includes your site name and the topic. So, one of our blog posts might be bit.ly/blogworld‐facebook (that’s not a real link, but it’s an example that could be used for a post about Facebook.)  Open your image in Photoshop or another picture editing program.  Paste the shortened link as a text element and then make it as small as possible while still being readable. Change the color to something that is readable, but non‐intrusive (you don’t want it to take away from the look of the image.

That’s it! Save and you’re done.

Why should you link watermarkg your pictures? Well, on Pinterest, it’s easy for people to pin incorrectly. Let’s say you write a great guest post about Facebook for the BlogWorld blog. It will show up on the BlogWorld homepage until other, more recent content bumps it to an archived page. If the person reading the post

Page 46 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest is on the homepage and pins from there, someone clicking that pin a month later will go to the BlogWorld homepage—and the Facebook post won’t be there anymore. People who aren’t familiar with new media publishing don’t always understand the concept of permalinks.

So a link watermark helps with this problem. It’s super frustrating for the end user to click on a pin and not see the content they want, and sometimes that frustration is misplaced and directed at you, the website owner, rather than the person who pinned incorrectly. A link watermark allows them to find your content even if the pin wasn’t right.

And, of course, it also prevents people from stealing your content, which is a plus!

Pro Tip: Don’t use the shortened link when you pin your image; use the original permalink. Otherwise, the pin won’t be recorded as your website. When a user clicks on your pin, below the image, it has a list of other pins from the same site. You want this list to be other pins from your site, not other pins that have been uploaded with bit.ly (or whatever link shortener you use).

Here’s a great tip that you might find handy if you’re repinning content and find that pins are incorrect (and the picture isn’t link watermarked):

Did you know there’s actually a way to hunt down an image’s source via Google?

Credit goes to The Graphics Fairy for this trick!

1. Open the image in question in one window. (Alternatively, save the image to your computer.) 2. Open Google image search in a second window. 3. Drag and drop the image to the search bar until the words "Drop Image Here" appear.

That’s it! Google will then search for the image, and send you back its best guess. This isn’t a perfect science, and if the image has been posted several places, you might have trouble determining the original source. It’s better than nothing, though!

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When creating pictures that you hope are pinned, keep in mind that the maximum width a photo may be is 554 pixels wide. Anything larger will be resized automatically. Pinterest does not limit the height of an image, but keep in mind that the repin button is at the top. Longer images may be interesting, but if you go longer than 5000 pixels, the user will have to scroll and is less likely to scroll back up to the top to repin.

It’s All About the Pictures, Part Two

The above picture‐creation tips might be all you need to get started, but you can also take your picture creation to the next level by creating super‐mega‐awesome money shots!

That’s a technical term.

Super‐mega‐awesome money shots can otherwise be called “title images.” They take longer to create, but can really help take images to another level. If you already work in a niche that’s represented well on Pinterest, this can help you stand out above others.

Think of a title image as an outline for everything your post will provide. Use a photo editing program to combine several images into a collage of sorts, add some text, and use it to begin your post. These images are highly pinnable. Here are a few examples of title images:

1. Chickabug posts awesome pictures, but lots of Do It Yourself (DIY) blogs have great pictures. What the owner Heather does on many posts, though, is post title images that combine several photos into one. Just scroll down the Chickabug blog homepage to see examples.

2. A Beautiful Mess is also a DIY blog that creates great title images. Blogger Elsie Larson creates images that show several shots of the steps of her Beautiful Mess tutorials, which is a great way to entice users to click through to your site to read more.

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3. Sew4Home posts great title images that often show the finished products from several angles or being used in several ways. On their blog, almost every post has a title image.

Using title images isn’t the only advanced picture technique you can use to get more shares (and thus more traffic) with Pinterest. Another great choice is to use your text to create images, also known as infographics. As you can imagine, infographics are great for Pinterest since they are eye‐catching and interesting.

Turning your content into infographics doesn’t have to be hard if you have basic photo editing skills. You don’t need to get fancy; including some charts and graphs is a great start. However, keep in mind that the best infographics, like the best content, is both interesting and informative. Hiring a graphic designer to help you create some cool infographics might be an option you want to explore, especially if you’ve already done the research and they just need to find a way to make it into a creative image.

There is a downside to infographics, however. They include all of your content, like a complete blog post. So, there’s not as much need for a Pinterest user to click through and see the rest of your content. They might anyway, to see if your blog also has other cool stuff, but this isn’t always the case. So use infographics, but don’t rely solely on infographics to create a presence on Pinterest.

Creating Content Channels

We’ve already talked a bit about adding boards in an earlier section of this book, but beyond the boards you create, you can also market your content by creating content channels. Think of content channels as categories, but all related to your niche’s readers, rather than the categories related to your niche.

The purpose of content channels is not to separate your content the same way you would on a blog (in most cases), but rather to appeal to different markets. Narrowing your boards makes it easier to appeal to very specific types of people in your audience. Thus, it is easier to achieve your content goals.

After all, traffic is nice, but that’s probably not the overall goal of your content creation unless your sole monetization strategy is to boost stats so you attract

Page 49 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest more advertisers. Most people, however, want to sell affiliate products or their own products, get hired as consultants, get people signed up to a mailing list, etc. Even if you aren’t trying to make money with your blog, but rather hoping to spread a message, content channels make sense. That way you can appeal to as many people as possible without watering down your message.

Let me give you some examples of how to create content channels with Pinterest boards, not just categories.

Let’s say Sally runs a food blog. Her blog has lots of different recipes and cooking tips, and she’s already got some great images that are perfect for pinning. She signs up for Pinterest and begins creating boards surrounding her own hobbies and relating to her niches. Of course, though, Sally also wants to promote her own blog posts.

Now, Sally can definitely pin all of her posts to a board called “My Recipes” or something similar, but it makes a lot more sense to break down her content. Sally can decide to split up the recipes based on type (appetizers, entrees, desserts, etc.), but another option—and perhaps a better option—is to create content channels based on her audience.

For example, let’s say your dad is diabetic. Around the holidays, when you’re cooking with family in mind, you may need to look for sugar‐free recipes. Sally can create a channel just for sugar‐free recipes, which may interest anyone who’s diabetic or who needs to prepare something for someone who is. This is a better option than creating boards strictly by category because otherwise, the content you want as a sugar‐free cook would be spread across appetizers, entrees, and all of the other boards Sally created. She could also create boards for vegan recipes or chocolate lovers. When you think about your content this way, creating boards that have as little overlap as possible, it is easier for people to follow your pins.

Here’s another example: Let’s say Mike runs an automotive podcast, where he talks about trade news. Now, he can separate his boards into categories like Ford, Dodge, etc. However, other than die‐hard fans of one automotive brand over another, there’s going to be a lot of overlap (and also a lot of information in each category that doesn’t appeal to everyone since someone who drives Ford trucks probably doesn’t care as much about Ford luxury sports cars). Instead, Mike

Page 50 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest should start thinking about content channels that target a specific part of his audience. For example, maybe he creates a board about car restoration. Or maybe he has a board about muscle cars.

In other words, content channels are about figuring out how your target audience naturally separates themselves into tribes or cliques, not about the different sub‐topics in your niche. You want everyone who comes to your Pinterest profile to browse your list of boards, see one of them, and think, “Ah! This is the board that was made for me.”

You can still have a board for desserts or a board for Ford if that makes sense for you. But think about the best way to separate content before you go board‐ creation crazy!

Mini Case Study: Vicki Horton

Whether she knows it or not, someone who has done a fantastic job creating content channels is stylist/interior designer Vicki Horton. She has tons of boards, but rather than splitting them up only into categories like “bedrooms” and “bathrooms” like many designers do, she has boards based on colors, styles, and more. She still has the traditional boards by room (and other typical categories), but she also has boards such as:

 Brick  French Style  Muted Colors  Modern Design  Purple and Orange

It makes sense, because her followers can still choose to follow boards with kitchen designs or kids’ room ideas, but they can also instead choose boards that fit an overall style.

Vicki isn’t a blogger or podcaster, but she’s creating content channels all the same. It’s definitely a lesson on how to create great channels for your content.

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Creating content channels doesn’t have to be an overnight process. It might take some time for you to figure out how your users want to follow your content. Continue making boards as you find new ways to connect with groups of your fans to find that sweet shot.

Video Pins

We talk about Pinterest primarily in terms of the images we can pin, but this site also allows users to pin videos, and believe it or not, people are not heavily using this feature. This is great news for video content producers, but even if you’re a podcaster or blogger you can benefit from the ability to pin videos.

Here’s where you can find video content on Pinterest:

The great thing about pinning videos is that users don’t even need to leave the site to play them, which means they don’t have to be as “committed.” If users have to click through to YouTube (or wherever) to play videos, they probably wouldn’t take the time. That’s why embedding your videos on a blog is a great option, and why Pinterest “embedded” videos can help you successfully market your content too.

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Videos also have the potential to show up in two of Pinterest’s categories – the category for the board where you pin the video and the overall video category. Woo hoo! Isn’t it great when whatever you do has duel purposes.

Videos don’t have the immediate payoff that images have, since you have to actually play and watch them. In other words, it’s a time commitment for the user. So, in order to entice people to watch, here are a few tips:

 Don’t have a board solely for videos (unless that makes sense for your content channels for some reason). Instead, occasionally post videos on all of your boards.  Do make sure the image portrayed is enticing. You should be doing this anyway for YouTube (or whatever service you use to share videos).  Do pin direct from Youtube if you have a robust channel there. Otherwise, post the video on your blog and pin from there, linking to your post in the description.  Don’t pin only your own videos. Like with text content, you should be pinning and repinning from a variety of sources.  Do be enticing with the caption you use. You don’t have the opportunity to add text to the picture like you do with images, so that caption has to be great.

If you’ve never created videos before, don’t worry. It’s not hard to get started. You don’t need more than a webcam or flipcam and mic to get started. Want some more video creation tips? Here are a few places to find them:

 The Seven Deadly Sins of YouTube  The Benefits of Creating Talking Head Videos for Your Blog  Livestreaming Video Is A Powerful Tool, 10 Lessons to Help You Get It Right  How You Look Video Blogging  Beginners Guide on How to Video Blog on a Budget  Vlogging: Video Blogging Interview with Amy Schmittauer  The Best Tools for Creating Video Content  5 Common Misconceptions to Ignore for Video Content  How to Produce Video Interviews for Your Blog

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You can see even more resources on the edition of Brilliant Bloggers we did on the BlogWorld blog about creating video content.

Even if you don’t want to create your own videos, be pro‐active about repinning them. You can even search just videos, which makes it easy to find that out‐of‐ the‐box content. Pinterest is about being eye‐catching, and a video among pictures definitely stands out.

Content with a High Repin Value

Some content is highly repinnable (yes, that’s a totally made‐up word) while other content is not, no matter how good it might be or how long you spent making a beautiful title image. Sadly, the best content for Pinterest might not be super related to your niche. But that’s okay! You can still take advantage of the pinnableness (okay, that one is made‐up too) if you’re smart about things.

What’s popular right now? Well, one way to find out is to head to PinFaves to see what users there are voting up and down currently. This site is kind of like Digg for pins. You can, of course, also check out Pinterest’s “popular” category.

So now that you know the specific pins are most interesting to users, let’s go over the types of repinnable content you should be posting or repinning often.

• Seasonal material

People really get into the holiday spirit on Pinterest, and that doesn’t just mean December holidays. Every holiday is very popular on Pinterest, from Halloween and Easter to Valentine’s Day and Mardi Gras. Rarely do you find a month without a holiday, so there is always something you can be pinning.

If you work in a creative how‐to niche, like crafting, finding the link between your topic about the holidays is pretty easy. People will repin how to make Christmas ornaments or how to fold paper flowers for Mother’s Day all day long. Even if you don’t want to create holiday‐specific posts, even seasonal pins are popular, so you can stick to how‐to pins revolving around Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer.

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Some examples of great seasonal pins that became extremely popular include:

 Santa Hat Brownies pin  Valentine’s Day Breakfast pin  Peeps Sushi pin

Finding a seasonal tie‐in may be harder for some niches than others, but it can be done! For example, if you blog about social media, you might write a post called “How to Spring Clean Your Twitter Account” or if you have a podcast about technology, you could talk about the “Ten Best Holiday Gifts for Techies in Your Life.” Think outside the box, and you can find seasonal content to create (and then, pin).

• Humor

If you create something funny, people want to share it. You know that awesome feeling you get when you think of a witty comeback or crack a joke off the cuff? Yeah, it’s pretty amazing to make your friends laugh. When you hear someone else tell a joke, though, being the first to share it with your friends allows you to be a part of this good feeling. You didn’t create the joke, but you passed it along, so you subconsciously feel a sense of ownership. Think it’s not true? Imaging that you told your friend the funniest joke you know and then later overheard them telling it to a bunch of their friends, but saying they heard it from someone else. Bet it would take a lot of willpower to not storm over and correct them! (This is a secret from Jordan Cooper, comedian extraordinaire.)

So why is this important to you?

Well, Pinterest is a social network, so it allows you to share visual jokes quickly and with all of your friends. When people stumble upon pins that make them laugh, they inherently want to share it with their friends. Funny content takes off on Pinterest like wildfire because people want that good feeling of being the first to share a joke with their friends, even if they didn’t create the joke.

The goal is to create an image itself that is funny, which can be easier said than done (but isn’t impossible). However, even sharing others’ humorous pins can be advantageous. Like we emphasized earlier in this book, you want people to like

Page 55 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest you, and humor is definitely a way to build those online “friendships” with your fans and followers.

Some examples of great humor pins that became extremely popular:

 Running pin  Imitating Child pin  Proof of Global Warming pin

You can have a catch‐all board for humor if you love to pin funny stuff. Another option is to have a targeted humor board. Instead of a general funny board, you could only pin/repin posts that are funny and related to your niche. There are a lot of people in the social media world, for example, who have boards that are purely for social media‐related comics, memes, etc. It works the same way with other niches, too.

• Inspirational Quotes

Who doesn’t love a motivational quote or saying to get them through the day? On Pinterest, quotes are hot, especially if they’re inspirational (or funny, of course), so you can benefit from having a quotes board and pinning to it regularly.

You can deal with this in one of two ways.

First, you can have a simple general quotes board where you pin and repin any text‐based imagine you find interested. Even better, though, is to have a targeted board where all the quotes relate back to your niche, the same way you could have a humor board with jokes related to your niche. Some examples of great quote pins that became extremely popular:

 Will Smith Quote pin  Promise Quote pin  Less You Have Quote pin

You should seriously consider checking out Pin a Quote (we’re not affiliated with this company in any way, but definitely recommend the service they provide). Pin a Quote allows you to drag a button to your toolbar, just like the regular Pin It

Page 56 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest button. With Pin a Quote, however, any text you want can be highlighted and made into an image. This is a great solution when you want to pin something from your own site or someone else’s site, but there no image with the content.

You can also shell out the extra money (only $1.99) to get the pro version, which gives you more formatting options. It is well worth the cost to pick up the pro version if you pin quotes quite regularly, especially if you want to pin links to sites that don’t always have good pictures.

You can also pin quotes from Pinstamatic (also not affiliated with this company). You don’t have as many options as you do with Pin a Quote (especially the pro version), but it is a quick way to pin text.

The downside is that you have to copy the text you want to pin, go to the Pinstamatic website, paste, and pin. Then you have to go back in an edit the pin’s URL to point to the right place. However, what Pinstamatic does give you is the ability to easily pin other cool stuff too. On this site, you can also pin sticky note messages, dates, locations, Twitter profiles, Spotify songs, and even entire websites.

• Trending Topics

If you use Twitter (and you should be using Twitter), you probably already know about the trending topics feature. This list shows what people on Twitter are talking about the most on any given day. Trending topics are located here:

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Whatever is a trending topic is what people want to talk about at the moment, so they’re more likely to repin it. You can touch on trending topics in a few different ways:

1. Use the trending topic as inspiration to create a blog post or other content on your site, and then pin it. 2. Repin others’ pins that are related to this trending topic to a board that makes sense, even if it isn’t related closely to your niche (or create a special board called “news that interest me” or something like that). 3. Pin a fair‐use picture relating to the topic (Wikipedia’s Commons is a great place to find pictures) and use the caption section to start a conversation, inviting your followers to comment as well.

Some examples of great trending topic pins that became extremely popular:

 Hunger Games Humor pin  The Avengers Lego pin  Walking Dead pin

If you’re able to quickly post something relating to the trending topic to your blog and pin it, that’s great–but if not, don’t get discouraged. Just repin something someone else pinned. Driving traffic with individual pins is only part of the battle. You also want to simply be interesting so that more people follow your boards.

• Before and After Shots

People love a good before and after tale, so try to incorporate these types of pins. If you produce make‐up tutorials on YouTube, pin a before and after image of a model who used one of your techniques. If you run a food blog, do a before and after shot of an old recipe you transformed into something more exciting.

Make sure your caption is exciting and encourages people to click through to your content. For example, your caption might read, “Turn boring spaghetti and meatballs into a fancy finger food appetizer for your next party. Click the picture to find out more.” Pin an image of regular spaghetti and your version side‐by‐side

Page 58 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest and people will be enticed (as long as your end product looks delicious, of course—remember the money shot information we already covered earlier in this ebook).

Some examples of great before/after shot pins that became extremely popular:

 Cell Phone Holder pin  Nail Art pin  Oreo Pops pin

Another before/after version, as I mentioned when talking about picture creation, is to show several images of a process combined into one large image.

Step‐by‐step images are always well‐received, but make sure there is still incentive to click through to the rest of your content. Don’t give away everything in the picture.

What’s Your Call to Action?

With digital content, we often talk about a call to action, or CTA. The “action” is what we want people to do after experiencing our content. The “call” is you encouraging them to do said action.

For example, at the end of a video, you might ask people to subscribe to your channel or at the end of an email newsletter, you might ask people to click on a link to read more on your blog or buy a product.

In short, human beings need to be told what to do. If you don’t provide this CTA, most of your fans won’t take any kind of action after experiencing your content. They’ll simply go on with their day. The same is true on Pinterest. You’ll get more clicks if you actually tell people you want them to click, as crazy as it sounds. It should be implied, but it’s not.

Luckily, you have the ability to write a caption that

Page 59 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest includes a CTA. Captions, which are called descriptions on Pinterest, give you 500 characters to talk to your followers, so use that space, especially when you pin stuff from your own site. Write your description and then tell them to click through to your site to learn more about the topic, view product prices, whatever. Include a link (yes, even if your pin is linked to the same place). If you do, you’ll get more click‐throughs on every pin.

You can edit a pin to add a description like so:

Alternatively, you can add a description when you pin or repin content by simply adding text or altering the text added by the pinner before you.

Keep in mind that when people repin your content, they might delete your description and create their own. Might is the key word in this sentence. Many don’t, simply because they are too lazy, or they just add their own comments at the end, but leave your original description.

This is great news, since it means that your CTA will be in place when their followers see it too.

Pinterest Exclusive Coupons

Who doesn’t love free stuff? One of the ways you can promote your content is to create coupon images to share on Pinterest. This is actually a Facebook tip Syed Balkhi gave during BlogWorld LA 2011, but can be adapted for Pinterest.

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Simply create coupon codes for anything you’re selling (ebooks, digital courses, webinars, consulting, etc.) and alert followers to this code with an image via Pinterest.

Mini Case Study: OoHey

Some companies focus solely on coupons/blogs, and these companies are starting to use Pinterest more and more. What they’re doing can help the rest of us learn to create coupons on our own Pinterest profiles.

One example of a company doing a great job with offering coupons on Pinterest is OoHey. Here’s what’s great about OoHey’s profile on Pinterest:

 They have their coupons separated by category.  Their coupons are all printable.  Many of their coupons also include codes for people who want to order online.  Their coupons look like coupons, so there’s no “tricking” the reader into thinking that they’re going to click to get product information or blog content. They know they’re going to a sales page.  Their coupons are eye‐catching, using colors and images, not just text.

As of the writing of this ebook, OoHey has 1,316 followers and most of their boards have over 3,000 followers in total. Suffice to say, people like their coupons.

Of course, this is a business we’re looking at here, but don’t be afraid to take the things OoHey and other companies are doing on Pinterest and adapt them to fit your content creation needs.

If you’re going to post coupons regularly, create a separate board for this content rather than mixing the coupons in with other pins. Some people just aren’t into that kind of thing and too many coupons can be a real turn off, causing them to

Page 61 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest unfollow. So, pin coupons on your own board where people who are interested can follow and people who aren’t can unfollow while still seeing your other content. (And yes, adding the occasional coupon to your other boards is fine too, as long as you aren’t doing so in high volumes.)

Don’t sell products of your own? That doesn’t mean you can’t have a When posting affiliate coupons and coupon board. Become an affiliate products for sale from Pinterest, keep (Amazon and Share a Sale have good in mind that pins from a personal programs, but there are tons of account are repinned at the same rate others out there) and watch when no matter if they have a price companies offer relevant products associated with them or not. However, on sale. Create a coupon banner (or from a branded account (for example, use one they provide), and pin it running the account as My Awesome using your affiliate code (make sure Blog instead of Jane Smith) pins to disclose the affiliate relationship, without prices get pinned twice as of course). often as those with prices. (Source: Mashable) Running Contests on Pinterest

Pinterest is perfect for running contests for your community, and although we’re going to talk about community and brand building more in the next chapter, we’ll include information about running contests now, since this is also a really great way to drive traffic.

You can run contests in several ways. Right now, Pinterest has no official rules against running contests the way Facebook does, but this could change in the future, especially as more and more brands begin to use this platform. So before using any of these ideas, check with Pinterest’s Terms of Service to make sure you aren’t breaking any rules.

And depending on your prize, you may also want to consult with a lawyer to make sure your contest or giveaway is legal based on where you live. We’re not lawyers, so only use the following advice for ideas and do your own research regarding content legality.

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• Pin It To Win It

The first and most simple way to run a contest on Pinterest is to require your fans to pin a certain picture/URL in order to be in a drawing to win a prize. It’s pretty easy to record entries, since Pinterest allows you to see what has been pinned from your site and by whom. Or, to make it even easier, you can pin the image first and require users to repin it, since you can also see who has repined your original pin.

This type of contest has two benefits. First, it’s quick and easy to set up and run this contest. Second, you get to control what you want pinners to promote, whether that is one of your products or a piece of your content. The downfall is that while you might get a ton of pins, those pins don’t always have a high click‐ through rate.

• Pin Something to Win

Another Pinterest contest you can run is one requiring fans to pin anything on your site to win a specified prize. Like a Pin It To Win It contest, this is quick and easy to run since you can easily see what’s pinned from your site. Another advantage is that pins are more genuine, so click‐through rates will likely be higher. In other words, when you allow people to pin the content they want to pin, rather than content they have to pin, they are able to better choose content that makes sense for their boards and is more likely to connect with their followers.

The downside, though, is that while your contest is going on people are (hopefully) pinning your content anyway. So, it makes it hard to determine which pins are entries and which pins are just because people like your content. In addition, the hope is that every pin will lead to repins, often by people who are not aware of your contest—and while that is good, does that count as an entry?

Another potential problem is people pinning several posts if you allow multiple entries. While getting a lot of shares is great, it also makes these users look like a spammer to their followers; that isn’t good considering it’s your content that is spamming them.

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So, while a Pin Something contest has a lot of potential, make sure you think things through before charging ahead with this idea.

• Board Creation Scavenger Hunt

Another option for a Pinterest contest is to require users to go on a virtual scavenger hunt and create a board to display their finds. This can be a fun activity for your fans, and it also gets them looking around your site and promoting a lot of varied content. You can also control the pin rate this way, though keep in mind that the longer a contest like this runs, the more likely people are to forget about it.

So what is a Board Creation Scavenger Hunt? Let’s say you have a blog about cats. You could require users to create a board called something like “Crazy Fun Pinterest Scavenger Hunt” (or you call it your blog’s name or something else; the point is that everyone calls their board the same thing). Then, require them to pin the following items over the course of a week:

 Day One: Their favorite post from your blog  Day Two: A funny picture of their own cat  Day Three: One of the items from your online cat‐themed store  Day Four: A post from your blog’s “Funny Cat Videos” category  Day Five: A post from your blog’s “Cat Health” category  Day Six: A repin from one of your boards (specify which board if you want to focus on them pinning certain items)  Day Seven: Your blog’s homepage, with a caption that reflects what they like most about your site

Allow contestants to jump in at any time, and keep the contest open for a few extra days to allow late pinners to catch up. From there, create a Google form (easy to do, instructions here) and ask everyone to submit their name, email address, and link to their Pinterest board.

The downside to this contest is that it takes a lot longer to run. But, on the plus side, you get a lot of pins and repins, and you get to control the content. The list of requirements above is just an example. You can get creative and require users to pin episodes of your podcast, videos on your YouTube channel, and more. You

Page 64 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest can also run it much longer or give out the full list right away. You can even create a very long list and allow entrants to choose their favorite 10 (or whatever number you want to require).

At the end of the contest, something cool you can do is create a board on your own Pinterest profile of all the entry boards. You can even allow people to vote on their favorites by repinning or liking (though this does add another layer of complexity to your contest.

Ordinarily, you can’t create a board of boards (or a board of profiles for that matter) the same way you’d pin other stuff. Go ahead and try! We’ve got a workaround for you, though.

Unless Pinterest changes this functionality in the future, When you try to hit the bookmarklet “pin” button, you’ll just receive the message: “The bookmarklet is installed! Now you can click your Pin It button to pin images as you browse sites around the web.”

But here’s how you can get around this:

1. Copy the url of the board or profile you want to pin. 2. Right click and save the person’s profile picture to your computer or save a screenshot. 3. Click “Add” in the navigation bar and choose to upload a pin. 4. Upload the image you saved with whatever description you want. 5. On the next screen that pops up, hit the edit button. 6. Paste the url you copied earlier into the link slot. 7. Save.

When you view your pin again, you should see that you’ve successfully pinned a Pinterest board or profile.

• Pinterest Storyboard

Another cool Pinterest contest, especially for events, is to ask pinners to create a storyboard filled with pins. For example, let’s say you’re a mommy blogger. You could ask participants to create a board that shows the “story” of the birth of

Page 65 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest their first child. This could start with a wedding picture, have pictures of a growing belly throughout, include links to books and articles that helped the proud parents prepare, and end with a picture of the happy family after birth.

Or, as another example, let’s say you run a party planning blog. You could ask pinners to plan and throw their own party and create a board of the process, which could start with a picture of the invitations sent and include pins of the favors, food, decorations, and finally, guests having fun at the party.

If you go the Pinterest storyboard route for a contest, make sure you specify how many pins the board needs to have. You might also want to specify that users must pin at least one thing from your site (like your best post about pregnancy or a DIY party idea you published). It’s a good idea to create a sample board of your own, since many people are new to Pinterest and may not understand what you require in terms of a “storyboard.”

• Board Collaboration

Another Pinterest contest you can consider is what we’ll call the “Board Collaboration” contest. The first thing you need to do is generate a list of all of your fans who want to participate (again, a Google form is great for this).

From there, add all of the participants to a board and ask them to pin content around a certain topic. You could do it scavenger hunt style, asking them to pin certain stuff every day, or you simply allow them to pin on the board whatever they find interesting (always relating to whatever overall topic you choose, though). Limit how often they can pin to that board (once a day or five times a day or whatever) and name the person who gets the most pins (or likes or comments) on a single post as the winner after a set amount of time.

This is a strong community‐building option, though the downside is that it isn’t as good for promoting your content (though you can require users to promote some of your content if that makes sense for your Pinterest contest).

The other downside is that people have to join at the beginning, and unless you’re willing to constantly field requests to join, it leaves some of your community

Page 66 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest members out in the cold. Of course, you can run a contest like this regularly (say, once a month) so people know it is coming and can participate next time.

These examples just scratch the surface of the possibility for Pinterest contests. Social Fresh has a great article that goes more in depth with examples that you should check out. And remember, always check Pinterest’s TOS before running a contest.

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Chapter Four: Building Your Brand and Community with Pinterest

Pinterest isn't just about driving traffic to your content. Yes, traffic is great, but this is also a network that makes it really easy to build your brand. We already talked a bit about how Pinterest can make you a more approachable, personable brand, but in this section, we're going to talk about ways you can amp up that effort, using Pinterest to create a community around you and your message.

Some people mistakenly believe that building a brand is just for companies. Not so. If you work online as a blogger, podcaster, Web TV producer, photographer, or other kind of content creator, you can benefit from brand building.

Again, it's about people feeling like the two of you have a personal connection. e If you're working online to build a fan base: you want people to know, like, and trust you. When they do, they'll not only be devoted fans of your work, but they'll also recommend you to their friends.

I know there’s a lot of different ways of defining your content. Some bloggers, podcasters, and video creators consider themselves businesses, while others do not, even if they make a little money online. Still others consider their online content a piece of a bigger business. How you define yourself doesn’t matter in this case, though. Pinterest can be used for branding by anyone.

Introduce Your Team

If you work on one blog/podcast/video series with several people, consider creating a board just for your team. If other team members have personal Pinterest accounts, you can even invite them to be collaborators, adding pins to the board too (just make sure everyone knows exactly what the board is for). Start by introducing your team, pinning a picture of each that links back to their bio page. If you're a larger team, you can also pin by department; whatever makes sense to you. Then, to keep the board updated, take some team pictures whenever you have a special event, like a company holiday party or a team training day. The purpose is to show company culture. The added benefit is that you're also showing your employees that you appreciate them.

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Here’s an example of a very simple pin you could upload as a bio. You could also add a longer description to help with SEO, and if you were truly going to create this pin, you would also add a bio link in the description:

Remember, you can upload your own pins without including a link to your homepage or a bio page on your website. But with brand building, remember that traffic isn't your main goal. Your main goal is simply to help followers feel more connected with your team.

Even if this board doesn't get updated often, it's still great to have it. On Pinterest, people will look through all your boards when they land on your profile page, and because pin time stamps don’t smack you in the face like they do on many blogs, it doesn't matter how long ago you created and updated that board.

Is your "team" just you? No problem. You can still have this kind of board.

Instead of posting team pictures, since you It might seem a little obviously don't have them, create a board that is your virtual portfolio/resume. Pin a egotistical, but having a board picture with a link to your about page. Pin about yourself is a huge help to examples of your best projects if you are a people who are new to your service provider. Pin testimonials from others brand and trying to figure out in your industry by creating quote images who you are and what you do. and pinning back to those people's websites.

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Pin site announcements when you have them. Pin special pictures to wish people happy holidays.

Daily Find Board

People are wired to love schedules. Of course, not everyone likes having to stick to a plan. Some people are more free‐spirited. But typically it's comforting when things happen on a regular basis. We're creatures of habit.

On Pinterest, you can tap into this basic human nature and create a "daily find" board in a topic area that makes sense for your niche. For example, let's say you run a blog about parenting. You could create a daily find board filled with toy sales and deals you find online. Or, say you have a tech podcast. You could do a daily find board filled with unusual or funny tech finds. Be creative.

The point of a daily find board, though, is to choose a topic that you can update daily at a set time. So maybe you post a toy coupon every day at noon or a funny tech story every day at 9 A.M. You want people to look forward to your posts, the same way people look forward to watching their favorite TV show every week. And always be smart about your description–saying something like, “if you want more (insert whatever content you pinned here) visit me at my site” with a link.

One cool version of a daily find board is to do what we can call a “list board”. List boards are finite and typically include both pins from your own site and pins from others. You pin once a day until you reach your target number, at which time the board can be retired (but is still relevant, since anyone visiting your profile will see it).

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An example? Let’s say you have a sports blog. You could create a board called “The 100 Greatest Football Players of All Time” and start counting them down. Pin profiles you’ve create on your own blog, images from content on other blogs, or even videos. Once you hit number one, create a post on your own blog with the entire list and pin that post with a link as the final pin of the board.

Here are some examples of cool ideas pinners had for list boards:

 100 Sunrises  25 Songs, 25 Days  40 Projects in 40 Days  30 Before 30  A Shoe A Day

Pro tip: Creating boards that have a clear end is great, but before you shelve it to collect dust on your profile, invite followers to follow your profile or another closely related and continuously updated board on your profile. Create an image that represents your profile (or a single board), upload the pin with a caption that says you’ve reached the end of the list, and they’ll no longer see pins from you unless they’re following your full profile or another board. Add the url to your profile or board with a link as described in the contest section of this book, where we’ve detailed how to pin boards/profiles on Pinterest.

Project Progression

Another way to connect with your fans is to create a board that shows progression on a project. For example, let's say you're writing a book about camping. You can post pictures as you visit campgrounds to do research, as well as pictures from when you send off the finished draft, get the first copy, see your book for sale at a store for the first time, etc. People like to go on that journey with you, and it also helps them anticipate the final "event” (in this case, the sale of a book). Whatever your project, keep your fans updated.

Each project progression pin should go back to your website in some way (or your Amazon page if you have a product available for pre‐order or your post about the project if you have something explaining what you're doing, etc.). In other words,

Page 71 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest you don't have to upload pictures on your website to pin them; you can upload them to Pinterest directly. But if you do that, link back to your own site so people can find out more about your project.

Create Conversations on Pinterest

One of Pinterest’s most underused features is the ability for people to comment on pins. Repins are common; comments, not so much. Maybe it’s the lack of controversy, since pins tend to be more focused on how‐to information than opinions. But in any case, just because people aren’t using Pinterest’s comment feature to the best of its ability (yet) doesn’t mean you can’t get some conversation flowing.

The best way to do this is to pin content with the sole purpose of starting conversation. Answering the question you pose or weighing in with an opinion should be your CTA (call to action–what we discussed earlier in this book when talking about promoting content).

This works best in two ways.

• The Repin Conversation

First, you can create conversation when you repin content from others. Repins can help you build your brand. But, let’s face it, they don’t have much traffic value for your home site. You’re sending people Commenting on others’ blogs is to others’ sites. So instead, think about how important too, but if you want you can keep the conversation on your your followers to join in, Pinterest account instead, where you are especially with thoughts your the moderator, rather than moving it to a opinion, repinning and asking for site where other people are in charge. comments may be a better option. The simplest way to do this is with a CTA in the caption of the pin. State your opinion or experiences relating to the pin and then ask your followers to do the same with a comment. If you don’t ask them to chime in, they might repin, but few people will

Page 72 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest offer up a comment of their own, or if they do comment, it will be directly on the site you pinned, not on Pinterest.

In terms of comments, always be aware of what you’re saying and ask yourself, “Will this reflect well on my brand?” It’s easy to get upset if it’s something you care about, but if you have a meltdown on any social network, Pinterest included, it won’t win you fans. Respect yourself by walking away from comment drama and trolls.

• Conversation to Create Content

The other way to create conversation on Pinterest is to think of a topic or question you have that lends itself well to conversation and ask it in the form of a quote image (or with an eye‐catching image and the question itself in the caption section). Again, it’s about a strong CTA; you have to ask them to answer or reply.

You can then use the responses to create your own content (blog post, video, whatever) and pin that as well, tagging the people who originally commented on your pin. If this is your plan, before you pin the new content, comment on the old pin, noting that you’ve created content from everyone’s responses and will tag them if they are following you. (Remember, people need to be following you in order for you to tag.)

The reason you should create conversation with the above two methods when repinning, but not use the same CTA on other pins of your own content, is that conversation on Pinterest shouldn’t be your top priority all the time. When you pin your own content, your CTA should probably be to click through and talk about the topic on your own site, not on Pinterest.

Any social media profile is just that: a profile, not a home base that belongs to you.* When possible take the conversation home. Your blog or site trumps any social media profile.

* Total nerd points if you just had a strong urge to make an “all your base are belong to us” joke.

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Promote Where You’ve Been Featured

This is a great idea from BlogWorld & New Media Expo’s editor Amber Avines, who noticed a board from Kelly Lieberman called “Honorable Mentions.” On this board, Kelly (who is the founder of #PinChat) pins articles, posts, etc. that mention her or #PinChat.

Here’s what her board looks like:

It might feel a little weird to toot your own horn at first, but keep two things in mind:

1. Readers, listeners, and fans want to see social proof. If you can’t show that others like your work, why should anyone else? Don’t be too humble or shy to share your achievements and good press. 2. Followers who don’t want to see pins about you can simply unfollow that board.

So, definitely consider creating a board for mentions of you and your blog or company. You can also pin guest posts to this board (or create a separate board for guest posts if you do a lot of them). Even though you might not update these boards every day or even every month, remember that newcomers to your profile will often take the time to browse through older boards.

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Community Member Feature Board

When you support your community, they’ll support you in return. It’s about making your fans feel special, and you can do this pretty easily on Pinterest with a community member feature board.

Every month (or week or even day), pick a member of your community to feature. Simply upload a picture with a link back to their site or a social media profile (whatever makes sense). Add a caption that says why the person is the featured community member of the month and invite others to comment if they know the person.

Until the next person is picked (or for the duration of the person’s reign on your community member feature board), link to this person’s content when possible. Each caption should note the person’s name and that they are your community member of the month.

Here’s an example of a community board in action:

This company, Vocalpoint, features one of their community members every week on their own site, and they also pin each blogger to this Pinterest board. Bloggers and podcasters can do this just as easily as a company can. It’s a way to thank loyalty even if you don’t have the money for a fruit basket.

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You wouldn’t even have to do an on‐site feature if a community feature board doesn’t fit into your site’s mission. You could just do the Pinterest board.

You can even create a badge for that person to put on their blog if they have one, linking back to your community member feature board (or your own site). People love to add badges to their blogs and social media profiles, showing off where they’ve been featured.

In any case, don’t forget to email or use the @ function to alert anyone chosen to be featured.

The Facebook – Pinterest Link

You likely already have a Facebook fan page to connect with users who like your brand and content. Many Facebook users also already have their Facebook and Pinterest profiles linked, so they can post content to both sites at once.

As of the writing of this ebook, however, you can’t pin directly from Facebook. It can be annoying if you see something cool on Facebook and want to share it on Pinterest, since you have to go to the trouble of finding the original source.

You can’t change this Facebook/Pinterest policy, but you can use an app called Pinvolve to link the two on your own Facebook page. (Shout out to Sarah Perez at TechCrunch for writing a post about this app.)

Pinvolve allows fans of your page to share content you’ve uploaded on Facebook to Pinterest. In fact, it makes your entire Facebook page look like Pinterest when users click on that tab. If you upload a lot of your own pictures, this is a great option to consider. There’s a free version, as well as a premium version that allows you to get rid of Pinvolve’s advertising—something well worth the money if you’re a serious Facebook user.

Pinvolve is still pretty new, but here are a few examples of Facebook pages using this app:

 The Dallas Mavericks  George Takei

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 Aston Martin  The Girl Effect  Neatorama

We also use this app on the BlogWorld & New Media Expo Facebook page.

Note that Pinvolve’s pinning feature doesn’t show up when fan sees your image in his or her stream. It only shows up if they’re visiting your page on Facebook and go to the Pinvolve tab. So make sure to remind people it’s there.

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Chapter Five: The Pinterest Search Engine Game

We’ve already alluded to the fact that your activity on Pinterest can be beneficial for search; hope you didn’t think we were going to leave you to your devices to figure this out yourself. Just do us a favor and take everything in this chapter with a grain of salt—mostly because by the time you’re reading this, this advice could be slightly out of date. The information is correct today, as of the writing of this ebook, but not only is Pinterest continuously changing, but so are search engines. There’s also been speculation that Google could consider buying Pinterest someday, and if that happens, how you can use Pinterest for search engine optimization will likely change drastically.

So in other words, here’s the best Pinterest SEO information possible, but this is just a start.

On‐Site Search

Before you start thinking about ways you can use Pinterest to boost you content’s search engine rankings on your own site, it’s important to realize that Pinterest is a search engine in and of itself. Therefore, your pins should be optimized for users searching on this site.

When someone searches a term on Pinterest, they can see pins, boards, and users relating to whatever keyword phrase they typed. So, you want to make sure your pins, boards, and are all optimized.

• Pin Optimization for Local Search

Think logically about how a search engine works. Pinterest tries to hunt down keywords based on what the user typed into the search bar. Like any search engine, it can’t “see” pictures. So here are a few things you should do with every pin:

 Add a caption that includes keywords, alerting people to what the pin is about. DO NOT make your caption something like “haha” or

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“so true” or “this is great” unless you don’t care about being found in search. No one is searching for “haha.”  When you’re the one doing the uploading, make sure the picture file is named well before you add the pin.  Use on Pinterest in the caption the same way you would use hashtags on Twitter to talk about a specific topic. When users click on a , your pin will pop up if you’ve used the same hashtag.

Like with any search engine optimization advice, don’t sacrifice the quality of your pins and their captions just to game the system.

• Board Optimization for Local Search

When users search, they also can choose to only see results for boards that fit the term they’ve typed into the search bar, rather than pins. You want your boards to appear when relevant.

The best way to do this is to: 1) make sure your board is named with keywords in mind (you want to be original and eye‐catching, but use keywords when possible) and 2) write a really great description for each board.

Your description shouldn’t be so keyword‐ packed that it doesn’t help any reader trying to Humans first; search determine what your board is about. But using engines second. keywords can help you appear in search when you otherwise might not.

• Profile Optimization for Local Search

Optimizing your profile is pretty easy. Use your name and include your site’s name in your “about” section, if relevant, so that people searching specifically for you can find you when using Pinterest’s local search tool. Beyond that, think of your “about” section the same way you think about your board descriptions. You want to be unique and easy to understand, but a few keywords don’t hurt!

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Also, make sure on the edit screen of your profile, the “Hide your Pinterest profile from search engines” setting is turned OFF. You want people to be able to Google you all day long.

Pinterest and Search Engines

Pinterest is not going to be a miracle worker for you on search engines, since most of the links back to your site will not be do‐follow (i.e., search engines won’t consider them advantageous to your results). But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t optimize Pinterest at all.

Start by making sure you add your website link to your Pinterest profile when you set it up. This link is do‐follow (as of the writing of this ebook), and while one link won’t suddenly give you ultimate search engine power, every little bit helps.

An icon linking to your site will appear here:

Some of the same tips we’ve already given you will help in terms of search engines like Google, just as they will in local search. Upload pictures that are well named. Use keywords in your captions. Name your boards well. But here are a few more tips:

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 You have 500 characters to use in your descriptions (captions). Use them. Maybe not for every pin, but when you upload your own pins or pin directly from your own site, make your descriptions keyword‐rich.  Currently (and this could change), links in your description are do‐ follow, even if the pin’s link itself is not. So, add your link whenever you pin your own content. (This also makes people more likely to click the link, so it’s a double whammy tip. Woo hoo!)  Don’t be afraid to link to pins like you would link to posts on your own site.  If your other social media profiles are already optimized, cross‐ promoting with Pinterest will only help.  Make sure the file name of any photo you upload is named well. When a picture has keywords in the file name, it’s better for SEO than a bunch of random letters and numbers.

Pinterest profiles, boards, pins, and images are already showing up more and more regularly on search engines, and many companies (especially Google) are beginning to more heavily value social media recommendations. So even if this isn’t the answer to your search problems, that’s not to say it won’t be in the future.

Here are some places where you can find more advice and opinions on Pinterest and search engine optimization:

 How To Use Pinterest For Local SEO  Why Pinterest Is NOT Your SEO Miracle Worker  10 Tips for Pinterest Search Engine Optimization  7 Pinterest SEO Ideas to Take Your Blog to Next Level  Pinterest SEO: use Pinterest to improve rankings

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Chapter Six: Pinterest Statistics and Monitoring

Up until now, we’ve been detailing lots of ways to use Pinterest for your benefit, but at the core, it was still about using Pinterest. And that’s the fun part. What isn’t quite as fun, at least for most people, is analyzing your stats and monitoring how well you’re doing with this network.

It may not be fun, but without Find Out What Are People Pinning stats monitoring, it’s hard to successfully market content You can only replicate success if you first on Pinterest. understand what is successful. With Pinterest, you want to know what people are pinning most often, as well as how this is translating to traffic for your content. Sometimes stuff that gets a ton of repins actually doesn’t lead to much traffic (or at least, not much high‐quality) traffic.

On Pinterest, you can see what’s been pinned from your site in one of two ways:

1. Click on a pin from your site. Scroll down to see the “pinned from…” section. Click on this and you’ll see all pins that lead back to your site. 2. Go to http://pinterest.com/source/YOURWEBSITE.com, replacing YOURWEBSITE.com with your website’s actual URL.

Pretty easy, right?

Unfortunately, from there, Pinterest doesn’t really have a way of allowing you to do more than visually see what people have pinned from your site recently. So the best you can do is scroll down this page and get a representation of what content has been most popular.

Take special notice to see which content has generated comments and likes, as well. This can give you an indication of what kind of content will help users strike up a conversation in the future.

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Your Own Analytics

Of course, you don’t have to rely on Pinterest for your analytics. You can also track stats using your own analytics. Even if you aren’t an obsessive stats checker, here are three quick tips:

 When a specific pin sends a ton of traffic your way, take notice. This usually means one of two things: 1) the original pin was super popular and got repinned a ton or 2) the person who pinned your content has a massive following. Sometimes, both are true. Either way, you should get connected with the pinner (if it wasn’t you or someone you’re following already.  Whenever you see a pin send a lot of traffic your way, consider thanking the pinner with a comment. You don’t have to do this every time, but it is a nice gesture and the person will be more likely to follow you if they aren’t following you already.  Don’t just look at what pinned content is bringing in the most traffic; also look at the bounce rate for this traffic. (You can learn more about bounce rate here.) If your pins are creating bouncy traffic, it might be a good indication that your images are misleading (i.e., people expect a specific kind of content and are disappointed when they get to your site, so they leave quickly).

If you use Google Analytics to measure your traffic (and you should, especially if you’re a blogger), creating a custom report to view just Pinterest traffic might be helpful for you, especially as your content is pinned more and more often. If you’re not currently diving deep into your site stats and don’t know how to do this (or why it can help you), check out this Mashable tutorial by Jim Gianoglio.

If you’re selling products (your own or affiliate products), look into using a link tracking service (LinkTrackr is good, but there are lots of options out there). This allows you to create custom links to track your pinning efforts all the way to conversion. Conversion is super important if you want to track any kind of goal. It doesn’t matter how many people are viewing your content if they aren’t completing your call to action (e.g. buying a product, signing up for your mailing list, checking out a certain link, etc).

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Note, however, that using a link tracking service will only track traffic from your own pins or from repins of your pin that leave your custom link in place, not pins others add to Pinterest. But it is helpful, especially if you want to track conversion of pins to other sites where you’re an affiliate rather than just conversion on your own site.

*Gasp* Blocking Pinterest

Okay, we’ve published an entire ebook about Pinterest, so as you can guess, we’re not in favor of blocking Pinterest users from pinning your content. It’s a horrible idea, actually, unless maybe you run a blog or website purely about photography or artwork. But even then, it’s much better to allow pinners to share your content.

In any case, should you want to block Pinterest, you can do so pretty easily by simply adding the following line of code to your header:

If you do that, anyone attempting to pin an image from your site will get an error message and be unable to pin. At least, unable to pin easily. They can still pin your content from a Google image search or save your image and upload it as their own pin, with or without a link back to your site. If that happens (and you’re lucky enough to catch it), you should report the pin. Pinterest is pretty good at removing images that aren’t properly attributed or pinned.

Here’s something from the BlogWorld blog about blocking Pinterest:

Should You Block Pinterest On Your Blog? Original post: http://www.blogworld.com/2012/02/21/should‐you‐block‐pinterest‐on‐your‐ blog/

Pinterest recently released a new bit of code that you can add to your website which will block anyone who tries to pin your posts. It’s pretty simple. You just add a line of code to your header/footer and would‐be pinners will receive a message when they attempt to pin anything from your site that says the site doesn’t allow pinning. Hear that? It’s the sound of Pinterest haters everywhere rejoicing.

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But whether you use this social network or not, is blocking Pinterest a good idea? In my opinion, no.

At least, not for most bloggers. There are a few exceptions:

 If your blog is photography‐based, with posts containing little content beside your pictures, it might make sense to block Pinterest.  If your blog is about showcasing your artwork and, again, contains little written content, it might make sense to block Pinterest.  If you hate traffic, it might make sense to block Pinterest.

Okay, I think the last point probably doesn’t apply to anyone here. But, the first two certainly might.

Pinterest has been getting heat lately because the platform basically makes it easy to repost any picture you find online. Pinterest does abide by Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) rules and will remove pins when asked to do so by anyone who owns the picture in question, but this new opt‐out code will make it even easier for bloggers to just say no to Pinterest.

Only, why would you want to?

I’m not arguing that artists and photographers should share their work for free. I believe everyone deserves to get paid for the work they do. However, Pinterest isn’t about stealing your work to use for some kind of personal gain. It’s about sharing your work so that others can find it. Curation is the theme here. Pinners are trying to help drive traffic to your site, not hoping to get away with not paying you for your work.

When someone steals a picture from Google images and publishes it on their blog without buying it (or crediting it properly/getting your permission if that’s what is required by the license), they’re using your work in a way that robs you of the money or traffic you’re supposed to get as the picture’s creator. They’re doing so because they don’t want to spend the money to pay you for your time. It’s the same as copy/pasting my words and posting them on your own blog without permission—it’s wrong.

For example, let’s say that I am blogging about cake. Mmmm cake. Instead of taking a picture of a cake myself, buying a picture of a cake, or finding a free image to use, I steal a picture of cake you took for your own blog. It’s wrong. I’m using that picture for my own gain because I’m too lazy/cheap to do the right thing. You get no benefit.

Pinners, however, aren’t using your pictures without permission for their own gain. They don’t own their pin boards any more than we own our Facebook profiles. They’re using your picture as a preview in order to encourage others to be fans of the posts you create. It’s a recommendation, the same way it would be for someone to share a link on Twitter or Facebook. Pinterest just happens to create visual links, like a little preview of your site to encourage people to click‐through.

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And because most people are visual learners, I think as Pinterest grows, this could lead to more traffic for any visual‐based site (food, crafts, fashion, etc) than any social media site where just links are shared. Think about it. You’re more likely to be interested in a recipe if there’s a picture of the finished product to entice you, right? Allowing pinners the ability to pin your posts can lead to a LOT more traffic than places where people just share the title/URL.

Of course, like with every social media site, some users are jerks. They pin pictures without linking to the original source. They copy/paste the entire blog post into the description so people aren’t encouraged to click‐through to your blog. They change the pin URL to lead to their own site. They download your pictures and then upload them as if they own them.

But these users are a VERY SMALL percentage of users, at least in my experience. Don’t let a few bad apples ruin the bunch for you. Pinterest is working to make the platform better (for example, there are plans to limit the characters in a description to avoid copying and pasting the entire post). You should definitely contact Pinterest if some users are pinning your work incorrectly, but don’t give the middle finger to the entire platform! You’ll be missing out on the potential for lots of new traffic if you do.

Now, like I said, the opt‐out code could make sense for some people. If your website or blog is all about your artwork (photography or otherwise), it might make sense for you to say “thanks, but no thanks.” Personally, I would want as many people as possible sharing previews of my work, but I can also understand how you’d want to limit the way people share. For the typical blogger, though, blocking Pinterest just doesn’t make sense in my opinion. This platform is such a cool new traffic source, and unlike some other recent networks *cough* Google+ *cough* it seems to have attracted the attention of the general public, not just people who blog and use social media. For most people, blocking Pinterest is cutting off your nose to spite your face. Before you make this decision, I recommend you at least spend a few weeks giving the network a try first‐hand.

If you do choose to ban Pinterest, I recommend writing a post on your blog explaining why. Make sure you have compelling reasons; don’t just ban Pinterest without thinking about it because you’ll be missing out on what could potentially be a lot of traffic to your content.

Third Party Analytics

To round off this chapter on analytics, let’s talk about some third‐party analytics tools. There aren’t many options out there yet in part because Pinterest is still such a newly‐popular network and in part because Pinterest’s API is currently unavailable. As we see more and more people using Pinterest, it’s likely that more analytics options will become available and that analytics companies will add more options.

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PinPuff, however, is a good place to start. This site is kind of Klout‐y for lack of a better description. This site gives you an overall score (average score is 32 and anything above 40 is considered good), as well as a “reach” score, an “activity” score, and a “virality” score. Unfortunately, PinPuff is still pretty new, so what these scores actually mean isn’t super clear, but we have to assume:

• Reach score is based on how many people follow you and whether or not they interact with your content. • Activity score is based on how active you are on Pinterest. • Virality score is based on how likely your pins are to be repinned.

This site also gives you the “value” of your pins, which can help brands decide whether or not they want to work with you as a content creator. So if you’re looking for sponsors, this could be very helpful for you.

What’s helpful is that they link to up to 20 of your boards and show you how many followers, pins, repins, and likes each board has. This is useful so you can easily and quickly see which boards are most popular.

Right now, PinPuff is pretty new, so it’s still a bit lacking refinement. It’s an analytics service to watch, though, especially if you’re a blogger who wants to work with brands.

Unrelated to analytics, but still pretty cool: PinPuff also allows you to see influential users by category. So if you’re looking for new people to follow, this is a great service to use.

Along with PinPuff, you should also consider checking out PinReach, which offers a lot more options for tracking your Pinterest activity. (Shout out to The Creative Paige for listing this site when talking about Pinterest tools.) Like PinPuff, it gives you a score; average score is 29. But PinPuff tools go far beyond the tools offered by PinPuff.

When you log into PinReach, you’ll be on the Analytics tab by default. On this tab, there’s a graph at the top of your profile similar to what you see on Klout, which is great for tracking your score. Beneath that, you’ll see a graph tracking your five most popular pins, as well as a graph with your most popular boards.

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You have the option to download and print these graphs, which is super helpful if you want to include them in a press kit or show progress to a client or boss. People Like Klout, PinPuff and PinReach like to see ROI and social proof. are useful and fun to watch, but

don’t get too obsessed with There are also tabs for your boards and tracking your score. Spend more pins, which show the most popular of each, time actually using Pinterest along with statistics. This is useful since it than you do getting wrapped up allows you to quickly see what’s popular. in stats tracking. The fourth tab, although not involved with stats tracking, is pretty interesting—it’s a list of the people following you who are most popular on Pinterest. You might not even realize that some of these people are following you. Definitely make an effort to follow back and interact with these pinners, since they typically have large, influential audiences—and also pin great stuff, of course (but don’t make Pinterest friends only because you think they can help you).

Like PinPuff, PinReach is still relatively new, but it’s off to a good start. As we see this siteroll out new tools and increase the value of current tools, this will be a very important way to measure your Pinterest efforts.

Lastly, let’s talk about Pinerly. This is a wonderful third‐party Pinterest tool, although the site has definitely had some setbacks in dealing with Pinterest’s API.

Currently, Pinerly is in beta testing, with an initial small group of testers. However, the chatter on Twitter indicates that more and more people are getting access every week. So definitely sign up soon so you get access ASAP too.

Pinerly’s “Pinalytics” allow you to track “campaigns” you create. Basically, this is when you pin from their site and progress on these pins is tracked over time as a campaign. What’s most valuable about this is that Pinerly tracks how many eyeballs you’ve reached in total (based on how you were repinned), as well as how many people actually clicked on your pin to check out the content (very valuable to know).

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Pinerly has also shows your best‐performing boards like PinReach, which is of course very helpful, and the company has some bold plans for the future including a Pinerly button so you can create campaigns more easily and the ability to schedule pins. CEO Rick Kats sat down with BlogWorld for an Interview, which was recently published on the BlogWorld blog:

Track Your Pins and Drive More Pinterest Traffic with Pinerly: Interview with CEO Rick Kats Original post: http://www.blogworld.com/2012/04/20/track‐your‐pins‐and‐drive‐more‐traffic‐ with‐pinterest‐pinerly‐interview‐with‐ceo‐rick‐kats/

Pinterest is one of the most addicting networks out there (I swear I don’t have it open in a second window as I’m writing this post…), but while it functions well for hobby pinners, it doesn’t give content creators many options for tracking Pinterest marketing efforts. Enter Pinerly. This Pinterest analytics and marketing site received 36,000 signups within one week of launching and, so far, its 500 beta testers (of which I am one) have created over 1,000 campaigns to track pin performance.

Pinterest is an AMAZING marketing tool for digital content creators (and we’ll actually be releasing a free ebook covering that topic soon–stay tuned). Pinerly is part of that equation, at least in my opinion. So I sat down with Pinerly’s Rick Kats to talk more about this site and how it can help pinners build a bigger following on Pinterest, drive more traffic back to their content, and more.

Allison: For people who don’t know, tell us a little about yourself and Pinerly.

Rick: My name is Rick Kats, CEO of Pinerly. Pinerly is an analytics dashboard for online visual content sharing platforms – starting with Pinterest. We provide tools to allow users to post content and easily compare the virality, reach, and engagement of each campaign. Designed with the simplicity to make it “just work,” Pinerly allows brands, bloggers, marketers, sellers, and agencies to focus more on their customers/content while optimizing their posts to increase on their returns.

How did you come up with the idea for Pinerly?

The inspiration behind Pinerly came about when we were using Pinterest to market our old business (www.setnight.com) and noticed that our traffic increase by 30%. We really loved Pinterest from day 1 and enjoyed how friendly the demographic that uses it really is. Although it was a lot of fun, our biggest pain was trying to measure the amount of traffic brought to us from certain pins (ROI—or return on our time). This is the fundamental reason why we started Pinerly. There is a nice phrase that we saw some time ago “if you cannot measure it, then it’s just a hobby.” We believe that it’s completely true and are creating the tool that we wished we had for ourselves when trying to get more exposure to our brand.

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I think the “Pinalytics” section is extremely helpful for online content creators who want to see how well their links are doing. I love how it shows your total reach, based on others who have also pinned it. Can you talk to me a little about how the Pinalytics section works and how content creators can best use it?

The campaign and pinalytics is certainly one of the most compelling features on Pinerly. What we allow you to do is easily measure click‐throughs, re‐pins, and likes on a pin that is pinned through Pinerly. In a similar process to Pinterest, you select an image or input a URL to fetch the images, add a description, add a destination URL and then post the pin onto Pinterest. Once you do this, you are able to easily compare the campaigns against each other and see which work better and try to understand why. Although this may seem like a simple concept, there is a lot that we (and other brands) have learned about our posts and now do more of to optimize on our postings. We talk about some of these things here. There is certainly a lot to be understood in terms of times, descriptions, images and boards to find out what converts best and why.

My First Pinalytics Campaign

The ability to schedule pins is something I think a lot of pinners want, especially people who are using Pinterest to market their content. When will this feature be available?

For the scheduling feature, we are completely dependent on the release of the Pinterest API— ability for third party services to post data to Pinterest. As soon as Pinterest publicly releases its API we will be able to flip the switch and enable this feature.

One of the most important things about Pinterest is to disperse the pins over time. So instead of just pinning everything at once, it would be great to have a way to spread content throughout the day so that even when you are away from the computer, pins that you may have found earlier in the morning will be posted to keep your followers engaged.

We hope that this will allow many avid pinners do all of their pinning in one time and concentrate more on the things that matter (spend time engaging with their followers, customers, users, or even with their family =) )

I also noticed in a recent email you sent out, you mentioned a Pinerly button. What can you tell us about it? Will this be similar to the current Pin It button that a lot of people already use?

Yes! But even more exciting, it’ll be a “Pinerly It” button that will now allow you to pin things at the same ease as the Pin It button and will tie directly into your pinalytics so that you can basically create campaigns on the fly. We’ll also be tying in other cool features like the scheduling into this as well.

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Currently, Pinerly is not open to the public, but you do allow people to get access sooner by promoting it to their friends. You’ve come under fire for asking people to promote in order to move up on the waiting list. What is your response to those critics?

I think it’s really easy to forget that there are real people behind Pinerly and that sometimes there are things that you really just can’t expect. We wrote a full response with all of our thoughts here: http://not99.posterous.com/all‐cards‐on‐the‐table.

What else can we expect from Pinerly in the future?

We’ve really got some really really exciting things in the works (and I’m not just saying that =) )

1) Pinerly Bookmarklet: Discussed above.

2) Scheduling: Also discussed above!

3) Multiple Accounts: Ability to manage multiple Pinterest accounts through Pinerly. The idea is to provide a seamless way to control multiple business accounts or personal accounts simultaneously and easily switch between them to making posting content even easier.

We’ve also got things like monitoring, campaign analysis and recommendations, and a lot more coming… so stay tuned!

PinPuff, PinReach, and Pinerly are just the start. With Pinterest’s growth, it’s likely that we’ll see many more companies developing Pinterest tools, especially to help with analytics. The point is, don’t neglect using third parties to study your Pinterest activity. Few people enjoy pouring over stats, but if you’re using Pinterest as a marketing tool, stats are invaluable for helping you increase your return on investment. Yes, the dreaded ROI. Sure, talking about ROI stinks, but it’s necessary if you’re running an online business, even if that business is a blog.

A final analytics tool to mention is ZoomSphere. It encompasses lots of social media sites, not just Pinterest, and can be set up in many different ways depending on your needs, so we’re not going to go into much detail here, but you should definitely check out this analytics option.

ZoomSphere isn’t necessarily about tracking your own pins, but rather about tracking the activity of other pinners, which can be helpful if you’re looking to become a leader in your niche (and who among us isn’t?). Play around with the setting and take some time to learn how this tool works—how you should best use it depends largely on both your niche and your personal content goals, but no

Page 91 The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing on Pinterest matter what, the main draw of this tool is that you can understand why some people are more popular than others.

Don’t become obsessed with what other people in your niche are doing, but also don’t completely neglect looking at this information. When you know who the top pinners are and can track their activity, you can learn through their successes and failures. Do some case studies for personal use to make your own Pinterest efforts stronger.

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A Final Thought: So, Is Pinterest Right For Your Content?

Hopefully, if you’ve made it this far, you’ve come to realize that the answer to that question should be an emphatic, “Yes!” Nearly every digital content creator and business owner out there can benefit from the use of Pinterest. And as this site grows, it’s going to be important that you have a presence there.

Remember, online, half of the battle is controlling the message. Social networks like Pinterest have made it possible for people to tell the world what they do or do not like about you. When you’re part of the conversation, you might not be able to stop someone from complaining or otherwise spreading negativity about your site, but you can respond.

So even if you’re not quite ready to dive into Pinterest yet, at least check out what others are pinning from your site. Follow your audience wherever they are—even brand new networks like Pinterest. Understand how and why they’re using Pinterest to share your content. That way, when you are ready to start using Pinterest to promote your content, you’ll be prepared to do it correctly.

Pinterest is still growing and evolving. It will be interesting to see how it changes over time, especially as content creators and brands begin to more readily use this platform as a promotional tool. It’s important to follow the Pinterest blog so you’re always aware of new rules and other changes they make to help their users. This is a company that listens to their users and isn’t afraid to make changes to improve the user experience.

Like with anything, there’s a learning curve to Pinterest and you have to put in some time before you’ll start seeing results. But don’t get discouraged! If you put in that initial investment of time, you have the opportunity to see massive results.

So here’s a challenge to you: Try out Pinterest for three months. Use it every day. Implement the tips we’ve covered in this guide. Explore, learn, and share. If, at the end of those three months, Pinterest is simply not sending any traffic to your site or helping you build your brand/community, you can walk away.

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But at least give it the good old college try. If you give it a chance, Pinterest may surprise you, even if you think this social network is not right for your content or brand.

And just as a final disclaimer: We take no responsibility for the future Pinterest addiction of anyone who reads this eBook. Hmm, we probably should have put that at the beginning, huh?

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About the Author

Allison Boyer is BlogWorld & New Media Expo’s Community Outreach Coordination, blog features editor, and unofficial VP of shenanigans. She’s currently developing a brand new site with her mother (Sharon) and sister (Jessica) called The PinterTest Kitchen, which will feature the three Boyers attempting to recreate some of Pinterest’s most popular pinned items in their home kitchens—and pinning all of their results, good or bad..

In the past, Allison has worked as a freelancer and consultant for new media companies including Job Monkey, b5media, Consumer Media Network, 451 Press, Binge Gamer, and Unreel Media. She has been featured on BlogCastFM, the E‐Junkie blog, and a number of other new media blogs. You can read Allison’s personal ramblings about the blogging world at Blog Zombies.

Allison lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with her very fat cat, Godiva, who seems to always find her way into whatever Allison is writing. Find her (Allison, not the cat) on Pinterest and on Twitter to connect.

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About BlogWorld & New Media Expo

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