This guest post is by Yang of ChilliSauce.co.uk.
Does your world only revolve around Facebook and Twitter? Now it’s time to move on: in case you haven’t heard, Pinterest is the new rising star of social media!
Pinterest was developed in December 2009 as a closed beta that was released within a restricted group of individuals. After it opened registration to everyone in 2010, the Pinterest boom began. On August 16, 2011, Time magazine named Pinterest among the “50 Best Websites of 2011”.
Pinterest has dominated the headlines in Mashable, TechCrunch, VentureBeat and many other websites. The world seems to be going Pintereset crazy.
The Pinterest home page
So what is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a visual social network. Every time you come across pretty or eye-catching images online, you can “pin” them to your Pinterest bulletin board, where you can share and organize them into various categories.
For example, if I see a pretty wedding dress, I will pin it to my “wedding ideas” board, which is full of images of my favorite wedding-related ideas gathered from various websites.
Pinterest boards
Image 2: Pinterest Boards
Shareaholic compiled a Referral Traffic Rrport that looks into various social media platforms, such as Facebook, Youtube, and so forth. Their findings, based on aggregated data from more than 200,000 publishers that reach more than 260 million unique monthly visitors, show that Pinterest has driven more referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube combined!
Shareaholic Referral Traffic Report
So what are you waiting for? Let’s start mapping out Pinterest strategies for your site!
How can you use Pinterest on your blog?
To get started, you need to register for your own Pinterest account.
Take some time to fill out your bio, as this is a great opportunity to introduce yourself or your business to the masses of Pinterest users. Then you are ready to start pinning!
A good place to start is by following other popular pinners and “re-pinning” their images onto your board. Browse through the categories on the network that interest you (see image below), such as “Art, Design, DIY & Craft” and so forth. When you find an image you like, you can pin it to your boards.
Pinterest has more than 30 categories
Bloggers can make use of these “clickthrough images” to attract more people to our blogs. Set up your bulletin boards and pin images from your site. Then, when other users click on an image, they’re taken to your site, where that picture is located.
Take my favorite chocolate bars, for example: I saw this yummy Snickers bars under the “Food & Drink” category.
Clickable Snickers bars image
When I clicked on the image, it immediately led me to the How Sweet It Is website, where that image is hosted (see below).
The landing page of that clickable Snickers bars image
Scroll down and there’s the image, pinned to my Pinterest board
6 tips to kickstart your Pinterest campaign
1. Pin with discernment
Every time you pin or re-pin a picture, it shows up on the Pinterest community boards. Here, all the pinners can see your pins, which gives you exposure to the public. So pinning quality images from your site to your boards is a must.
But don’t spam the community boards with your pinned images. Remember that Pinterest is public and social; I’m sure you don’t want to brand yourself as a spam artist. In the following example, I just pinned a yummy Snickers bar and my pin immediately appeared on the whole community board.
Start pinning!
Your pins show up on the Pinterest community board
2. Pin quality images
Pinterest taps into people’s love of “visually sumptuous eye candy.” Therefore, when you’re blogging, try to attach interesting and high quality images to go with your articles.
If your pictures are not clear or look dull, then don’t waste your time on Pinterest. The whole point of the network is to use images as “bait” to attract more people to your blog. If your images don’t stand out in Pinterest, then people are not going to click through.
3. Track recent activity from your account
When you’re logged into Pinterest, the top-left column, labeled Recent Activity, shows who has re-pinned, liked, or commented on your pins. In social media platforms, social always comes first. So do these people a favor: browse their pin boards, and re-pin or comment on their images as well!
Being social and showing them your appreciation will help you become popular on Pinterest. I still get a little buzz every time I see people re-pin my image, and I always visit their boards and show them we share the same interests.
The Recent Activity column
4. Use watermarks
Try to add watermark with your blog’s URL to your original images. Then, no matter how many times your images have been pinned or re-pinned, readers can always see the image is originally from your site, which gives your blog maximum exposure.
Add a watermark to your images
5. Add catchy descriptions to your images
Try to craft catchy image descriptions that include key words or tags that are likely to be searched.
To make them more engaging, express yourself and your sense of humor here, to provoke a response from other pinners. Or simply ask a question as the description, such as “Who wouldn’t love a yummy donut like this?”
6. Speed up pinning with the Pin It button
Don’t forget to add a Pin It button to your bookmarks on Pinterest: go to About in the main navigation, and click Pin It Button. Then, drag the white button to your bookmarks bar.
Now, the next time you come across an awesome image, you can just click the Pin It bookmark, choose the picture that you want to add to your pin board, add an engaging and interesting description, then you’re done! Easy!
Add a Pin It button
Drag the Pin It button to your Bookmarks bar
Can’t wait to try it? It really is easy to get started! I look forward to your comments about your experience with Pinterest.
Yang manages the Chillisauce.co.uk website, who specialise in organising corporate events.
I’ve just started using Pinterest more actively with comments and likes (just like on other social sites) and I have noticed an uptick in traffic from Pinterest. Watermarks are a great idea even for using images on your blogs.
Impressive all-around coverage of Pinterest…Pinterest shows that there is always some space for new Social projects or new billion-dollar ideas if you choose the right time and right format for it!
Thank you Combson,
This is just basic things around Pinterest. Start pinning and don’t miss the boat =)
I didn’t see anything here about the copyright issues that have come up recently concerning Pinterest. Pinners should be aware that anything that they pin from other sites has the potential of infringing someone else’s copyright. Pininterest is trying to address this. They’ve changed some things in the last couple of days in their terms of use and other policies. They’ve also announced that at some point there will be an option for private pinboards.
I know that some people think that copyright is silly and that they should be able to use anything they find online. I’m not about to argue that point. There are however some photographers and artists looking into their legal options after finding some of their work used without permission on Pinterest,
Glad to see somebody brought up the copyright issue. The internet is changing the way copyright is going to be looked at in future. Yes, some image owners have been upset, but my take is, if a pinner (or anybody) sharing images I own as an artist, aren’t representing them as their own and/or are not profiting from sharing – then I am getting a lot of free exposure. Think of it in the reverse – there are online publications I would like to advertise in, and they charge for that. With the ease of sharing images online, as long as I watermark, I’m getting free advertising all over the place. I, personally, have clicked through numerous images I’ve seen on Pinterest boards and a few of those clicks have resulted in e-commerce exchanges.
Hi Judith,
Great points. Pinterest has changed its policies recently. I am totally with you in that Pinterest is a great place for us to gain great publicity and increase visibility to our websites. If we’ve got awesome stuff to offer, I’d say make use of various social media platforms to ‘show off’; and adding watermark is important to protect our work!
I’ve been using Pinterest for a short while now, and it’s certainly driving some additional traffic to my blog, wihch is a good thing. I think it’s important to note Pinterest’s terms and conditions however, which some might consider quite onerous – I’d certainly think twice if I was a professional photographer. Here’s the post from PRNewsWire which references the problematic sections: http://blog.prnewswire.com/2012/02/24/unpinned/
Yesterday I put a picture of peaberry coffee from my site and it was immediately repinned multiple times. Pinterest, for me, is the network that most resembles shopping. Because of that it’s probably going to be (even more) hugely successful.
Vey cool..I ha no idea that anything like this even existed. Thanks!
You are welcome! Every little helps =)
Yang,
This is a really nice and easy to follow post. I’ve written a few posts on Pinterest and am starting to have some good traction with it and I think your advice is right on. The images, captions and “pinning with discernment” are really important points. Thanks for writing!
Hi Tom,
Thanks for reading! I’m glad you liked it!
Nice article!
I have a question that I can’t seem to find the answer to:
Is it best to go with the default categories or at least similar titles vs coming up with your own? Does it affect how people find your boards? For example, instead of Favorite Products, would a board that is very specific work? I have a board on Cake Toppers, for example, and wonder if I should, instead, put those photos in a default or commonly used board, like Products I Love, etc.
Thoughts?
Hi Terry,
I have customized all my boards giving them various names, such as ‘Party Ideas’ or ‘Classic Venues I Love.’ Those default categories are just suggestions, so feel free to customize your boards by clicking the ‘Edit Board’ button =)
I’ve used pinterest to optimize my site and the result was amazing my site was jumped from #234 to #9 in few weeks time.
The trick is we must got our website pinned and repinned by many people this is the hardest part. Most of pinterest users won’t doing repin when they aren’t like what we pinned.
I do simple thing to outsource it on fiverr and got my site pinned by more than 70 people, I don’t know how can he did it just search by typing pinterest on fiverr and you will find it.
As I know currently pinterest is best for SEO for these reason:
1. Once our website pinned it has 3 backlinks counts
2. Google interest in social media signal so it will not tagged as links farm
3. Currently pinterest links are dofollow even the image
4. Also support anchor text, it’s perfect for placing our keywords
Hi JamesC,
Yes, yes, totally agree! Google and other search engines are picking up the social share signals.
The thing is sometimes the links are not followed links, but you can always manually put the relevant link into the caption, which becomes a followed link.
This is interesting. And thank you for give us some tips on Pinterest and make it easier to use. ;)
I’ve been loving pinterest for like forever.
Oh, have you heard about http://www.pinfaves.com/ ?
It’s a fabulous site where you can submit your favorite pins and vote up the good ones and vote down the bad ones. :)
It worth the try ;)
Probably you would like it. :)
Really helpful, thanks. I’m loving Pinterest, but I’m concerned about copyright issues. Not for my own work, which I’m happy for others to share as it links to my blog (and if I’m not, then I won’t Pin it) but regarding interesting pins either on other people’s boards or things on the internet. Are we meant to contact the source of each photo/piece of art/cartoon and ask for permission to PIN, or is a credit enough?
Hi Johanna,
To be honest, Pinterest is also trying to address the copyright issue as it’s quite tricky. I liked your idea of giving credit to the source! As Pinterest is just like other social media platforms which are for sharing things with like-minded people, I’d say it shouldn’t be a problem to repin the things on other people’s boards. What do you think??
Because Pinterest is all about sharing, it would seem that it is set to succeed where other social media sites have failed. The highly visual nature of Pinterest would seem to lend itself to online marketing more than other social sites do at the moment, making it more useful to business than the other sites are too.
Thanks Yang, this article is really informative, I open pinterest before completely read this post :) I never think before that pinterest could be this simple and interesting.
Thank you Tiyo. I just play around on Pinterest, do a bit testing and I’d love to share all the useful tips with you all!
Great Pinterest tips. I’ve been using it fr a few month now, and not only is it highly effective as a traffic driver and engager, it is something else, as well. Pinterest is hands down one of the funest marketing strategies on the planet!
Sure, I love many other marketing endevours; I’m kind of funny that way. Pinterest, however is a blast to use, and while I’ve never been a huge social media participant, (except for Twitter) this one really got me.
I like the tips and very handy for bloggers. As it is a visual based method to drive traffic to your blog using it correctly can offer huge advantages.
I had the same question as Terry M. My blog/website is about trails, so I have lots of trail pictures to pin. But I’m curious whether I should put them in the generic categories already provided, even though they do not necessarily fit my topics exactly or is it best to add my own categories such as trails, bike trails, mountain bike trails, equestrian trails, running trails, etc.?
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for reading my post.
I have customized all my boards giving them various names, such as ‘Party Ideas’ or ‘Classic Venues I Love.’ Those default categories are just suggestions, so feel free to customize your boards by clicking the ‘Edit Board’ button =)
Keeping up with the ever-expanding universe of places you need to be active to reach an audience is mind-numbing. Do bloggers drink more than regular folks?
Thanks for this nice post…i frankly didn’t heard of Pinterest until i stumbled upon your Post!
Pinterest is really awesome ..and driving me crazzy..
Pinterest is positively addictive. Best of all, if you play your pins right, you’ll defintiely see an increase in traffic. Now I’m off to find the recipe you spotlighted. Looks delicious!
Haha Joi, same here, enjoy the Snickers ! It’s been my favourite sweet as well! I’ve been trawling Pinterest and pinning all kinds of recipe !
I have been reading a lot of blog articles about Pinterest and I think I like this article the best. The rest of the articles have shown how Pinterest has grown and that is a great blogging site but none have said how to use it effectively. This article is definitely a good starting point on how to use Pinterest in your favor.
This is perfect, just what I have been looking for. I have Pinterest account but have been struggling to see how it can be of any great benefit. I managed to get a few photos of my favourite beer on it and that was that.
It seems that I must have been doing things wrong. I think it’ll be interesting to see how the copyright issues are solved though.
I’ve been on Pinterest for a while and I have heard all the buzz about using it as a campaign tool. Most of this talk I dismissed as people going after the shiny new toy. I never thought that there might actually be some real ROI here. Thanks for your post. It has made me reconsider.
I’m looking forward to an “Add to Pinterest” button to allow my readers to repin my blog content.
As I understand it, we’re waiting on an Pinterest API ?
Alyzande,
Check out #6, Pinterest has a Pin It button, similar to Facebook/Twitter Like/Share button, that allows you to share your images and links them to page/post being shared.
Hi Alyzande,
I suppose you mean adding a ‘Pin It” button, just like FB and Twitter button, for your blog post??
It’s easy…there are many plugins for Pinterest, just go to your wordpress ‘add plugins’ and search for ‘pinterest’ and you’ll find some…choose one and then install it, done! =)
This is so far the best post I’ve read on Pinterest. I think I may even hope to understand the process. :)
Question. What about copyrights on images? If someone else has posted an image that we pin and it is not known to us that that person did not have copyright privileges, then are we liable for using it too?
Hi Sinea,
Thanks for your question! It’s a good point, but to be honest, it’s still a ‘wait and see’. Let’s see how Pinterest is going to solve this.
I’ve been using pinterest for a while and recently added a ‘pin it’ button on one of blogs and have been receiving some decent traffic – also a fun site to use and play with
Adding the watermark to each picture is a neat idea and one that didn’t initially hit me. This is a good tip for those who create original work. Not all images I use are mine; however, I can see this as an option for those images I do create/take.
Thanks for sharing!
Yes. We run a website about funny picutres and rage comics, and created a Watermark bar for each image.
At the bottom of each image, we added a 40 pixel high bar of same length as the image. We post our sligan on each image – “Forever funny at lolvirgin.com”.
Check out: pinterest.com/lolvirgin to see how we do it.
Love it Harman.
I’ve noticed that men don’t “get” Pinterest as much as women I’ve met and talked about it to. Maybe this will change when more people start to see how it can be used. I have a design studio, and we have a lot of images, so it’s nice to share these in a visual way that’s quick and easy to access. Lately, I’ve been getting into illustration and my most popular board is called, simply, “Line.”
My Pinterest is: pinterest.com/tilu
Men don’t understand because of difference in perception.
Best way to explain Pinterest to a man is using the exampke of cars. Just say if they like to show their friends a collection of their favorite Ferraris, Pinterest is the site for it.
Good point Harman!
Great post for Pinterest newbies.
I’d like to add there’s waiting period to get approved if you sign up on your own (I had to wait over 2 weeks).
It can be really frustrating to wait for approval, therefore it’s best to ask your friend to send you an invite.
I’m using Pinterest with a bit of a different twist. I consider the boards to be “resources” for my readers . . . and I even added it on my menu (a page with an explanation, since many people aren’t yet familiar with it) and then a listing of all my boards. Some of the boards are largely items from my site, but others are simply other good resources from other sites. These are usually things that I’ve discovered and think are great, but don’t really fall into my niche (my site is cooking aboard a family cruising boat; many of the resources are great info for people living aboard a boat, but aren’t cooking related).
In addition to adding it on my menu, I’ve added PinIt buttons on posts, a “Follow Me” button on the sidebar, a rotating list of three boards on the sidebar (with a link to a page explaining what Pinterest is) AND I’ve added a Pinterest tab on my blog’s Facebook page (Facebook is having problems with the tab image and it changes every few hours — it’s SUPPOSED to be the Pinterest logo, but usually isn’t).
Overall, I’d say that about two-thirds of what I pin is from my site, one-third from others. It’s a great way to thank other sites who might be supporting you — we all have those “friend” sites. Pin a few things of theirs and drive some traffic their way! It sounds counterintuitive, but this actually builds traffic as your “friend” sites tend to give you more links and mentions, and your readers come to you for info on where to go for related things that aren’t quite in your niche.
If you want to see my Pinterest “home” (remember my blog is all about cruising on a family boat; I don’t mix any personal stuff in): http://pinterest.com/TheBoatGalley
Here’s the Resources page I put on the blog: http://theboatgalley.com/resources/
And here’s the FB page with the tab . . .even though the tab doesn’t look right. I also post on FB page when I add a new board (you have to do this manually, since you can only link a personal FB account), but I don’t announce everything I pin. http://facebook.com/TheBoatGalley
I’m averaging about 10% of my traffic via Pinterest — higher than anything other than Google, Facebook and direct/email links. Some days it hits close to 15%.
Wow, that’s a really nifty way to use pinterest. I’m going to bookmark those links and go through them when I get a chance. On one of my older sites, I got a lot of pinterest traffic, I hope to replicate it with my new women’s advice blog.
Hi Carolyn,
oh wow, thanks for your detailed tips. I forgot to mention that we can also link Pinterest with Facebook!
The “no-pin” meta tag Pinterest is relying on just doesn’t cut it. Rather, Pinterest, Facebook, Tumblr et al should designate some simple tagging structure similar to robots meta and robots.txt – for example, calling it “do-share.” If I love the publicity, I can add a “do-share /” to my robots.txt file and be done. Or “do-share /public/iimages” would allow just the images in that directory to be pinned or tumbled. In addition, add a meta tag to the robots meta – “do-share.” And finally, add to the x-robots header standard to recognize “do-share” response headers.
Don’t take my stuff unless I say its okay.
I want to ban all new social media sites. How much time for “socializing” do I have every day! ;)
Good post for Pinterest newbies. now i can understand wich is “the magic” behind the hype…
I still haven’t managed to figure out Pinterest. I go on there, I re-Pin, I Pin from my blog, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten and I know I need to go further. Thanks for the guidelines.
Kimberly
Thanks Kimberly!
It just takes time to figure out how to engage with your audience first and then make the most of it for our own sites ;)
Its been three weeks I started to use this tool and I already love it. Sharing all my infographics, and cooking recipes that I love. Its and awesome network. Thanks for the wonderful tips.
I already started using Pinterest. I just loved it.
Just wanted to say if anyone wants me to send them a Pinterest invite, just let me know and I’d love to do that so that you guys don’t have to wait too long.
I signed up for Pinterest the other week and thought it was going to take a long time. When my wife registered it took weeks.. but for me it was less than 24 hrs before they let me in ;)
I love Pinterest, but what do you do when you don’t do craftsy blogs – or blogs with stunning photos. How do you still ensure that you get pinned?
Hi Melanie, I see what you mean. I run another site which is basically all about corporate venues and events…could be boring sometimes. What I’ve been doing is that I always publish articles with some high quality pictures from my shutterstock account and then pin them onto my pinterest boards, such as ‘classic venues i love’. Hope that helps!
Is that okay though – the shutterstock images are copyright shutterstock and therefore you’d need their permission to pin them?
It’s all a bit tricky, but I thought unless the image is yours or you have express permission, you technically should not be pinning that image to Pinterest?
Another point that Andy raises below is the importance of pinning from the original source. It’s frustrating when you have created something and it is pinned from the site of someone else who’s used your photo. All your traffic goes to the other site!
I’m happy with folks pinning my pictures, and it’s brought me some great traffic. Unfortunately there are a lot of people who don’t take the time to pin from the original source which is a pity.
Hi Kirsty,
I think as long as we don’t take images from other people’s sites claiming to be our own, we should be okay. We all need to give full credit to the images that we embed on our own site.
For shutterstock images… basically we purchase those images from shutterstock, so we have the right to use the images for our blog posts and then pin them onto the pin boards.
Venkat ,
Yes,I am agree with you I have already used this Pinterest and it is very helpfull.Ilike it most.
I have a couple of questions. First I use Pinterest for inspiration. I create sweet scapes (dessert tables) and I LOVE this product. I use it everyday. I have created boards for inspiration. However I need to start boards to showcase my business. For my board names, should I use my company name as the title and then use subtitles for my categories? I really need to separate my inspirations from my business or should I start up another account?
Next question, can you pin from a gallery on a website? and also will that link follow when you pin it to your board? I am confused about that part. I know you can do it from your blog.
Yes in order to make sure you get credit you need to watermark ALL of your work/photos in all social media. It is very common in the cake decorating industry for people to steal photos off of blogs, galleries & facebook and for them to represent your work as theirs. One cake decorator in Chicago found her photos on a website in Dubai!
Great & informative article!
Jo-Ann
Hi Jo, thanks for your questions! As you can see from the post, I used my company’s name ‘Corporate Venues UK’ as I signed in via my company’s twitter account. Personally I don’t think the boards name matter that much, as long as your pins are great, people are still gonna repin them.
The best business conversations on social media lies in the middle between ‘being personal’ and ‘being professional’. I don’t see why you can’t use Pinterest for both: your personal inspiration and business promotion.
The pinned links are not always followed links, so you need to include your target link in the caption/picture description, then it becomes a followed link.
Hope that helps! Let me know what you think =)
Pinterest is really a great social website. I have started using it for a couple of months now. But just to let you know that Pinterest is not open to the public as you mentioned in the post but still requires invitation. I know once you request an account they let you in maximum 2 days.
Pinterest is a great social website and very helpful.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that Pinterest users tend to prefer images from the most original source possible. So, even if you’ve taken a Creative Commons / copyright free image from (say) Flickr and put it on your site, if you “Pin” that you will often be called out.
The idea, then, is you need to create original images/photos to stand out. This can be more of a challenge for tech/product blogs where we often use PR shots that everyone is using. However, it’s worth thinking creatively, and possibly even could trigger some new types of article that are built with both Pinterest and regular readers in mind.
Pinterest is amazing with referral traffic.. that’s for sure! I have a website that gets a ton of traffic from Pinterest. I think its easier for those who are in the ‘wedding’, ‘travel’ or ‘food’ niches to get a lot of referral traffic vs someone whose blogging about marketing or something that isn’t picture heavy.
The big change is not really the time you spend on Pinterest, but how you look at your entire social platform. Now more then ever it is important to have a visual element to every blog post.
this is very gud article for me bcoz i understand what is pinterest. thank’s problogger for help me
I really don’t like that pinterest also posts the pins and comment to my FB, I then go back and remove them from the timeline … annoying.
Also, is there anyway I can move pictures around on there? If I put additional things up but want to keep the same one at the top for that board, is there a way to do it?
Hi Doc Nyto,
Unfortunately for now, we can only move around/ rearrange the boards, but not the pins on each specific boards. We could drop them an email and say ‘it would be much better if we can rearrange the pins as well!’
Since I started using Pinterest, my blog traffic dramatically increased. Since last week, everytime I pin something from my blog (or other sources), the pins do not appear in the general pinterest feeds. I’ve been looking for answers online for days now but didn’t find anything. My pins do appear on my boards & in the “Pinners you follow” section, but only my followers can see them there, not everybody else just logging into a specific categorie on Pinterest!!!
Anybody knows what is going on???
I’ve even opened a new Pinterest account to see if it would work, I’ve also tried uploading pictures from my computer and adding a link to my blog, with no luck, MY PINS ARE NOT APPEARING IN THE PINTEREST CATEGORIE FEEDS!
Hi Isabella,
Yeah, I’ve noticed it as well! Pinterest has changed a few things recently. Regarding these changes, we need to grow our own boards and get more followers in Pinterest community. Don’t be panic as Pinterest is still of good value to generate traffic to your site. One type of pins that has great viral potential is Instructographics (a vertical representation of creative ideas or steps that guides the users to make it themselves). I had a look at your site which is very nice and interesting; you could produce some instructographics about, say, ‘how to workout your muffin top’…just some more visual things about your blog posts that have the potential to go viral. Hope that helps.
Dear all,
This is a Pinterest update: now you can set your pin board cover! Also in reply to Doc Nyto, here is your answer! Keep well everyone!
Great tip on adding watermark to your images – or at least your web addy.
And the point you make about using Pinterest to let others know you share their interests is pivotal. It’s all about connecting with likeminded people, then introducing things that bring value, and discovering things that bring value to you. Woo hoo! Ok. Now back to pinning!
I Was Totally Confused About pintrest !!
But After Reading This Post, I Just Realized What i was missing..
Any Ways Thanks For This Awesome Post !!