5 Tips for Making Pinterest Work for You

I am not going to lie to ya...I love Pinterest.  I am serious.  It is my new Google!  Any time I have to look something up, I head over to Pinterest to see what others have pinned on that subject.  If I need an idea for a Cub Scout craft, I know I will find something there. In need of a recipe for dinner; you can find it there.  And let's just talk for a moment about how Pinterest can help your blog traffic!  Month after month my highest referral outside of search engines is Pinterest!  The best part is that people repin old pins and suddenly an archived blog post can take on a whole new life.

Since I started using Pinterest there are a few things I picked up that make it work really well for me.

1) PIN YOUR INTERESTS- One of the wonders of Pinterest is the way you can connect with people having similar interests as you. So pin away and people will find you!  Isn't that nice!  :)

2) JOIN GROUP BOARDS - Group boards can really be an amazing resource since you are with a group of people all pinning on a similar interest!  I have found some incredible pins through my group boards, and have find that the majority of repins for my posts come from my group boards.  If you haven't received an invitation to a group board yet, don't worry!  You can start your own!  

3) CREATE A BOARD FOR YOUR SITE - Having a board that is strictly posts from your blog or business is a wonderful way for people to follow you.  Make this board the first one on your page.

3) KEEP YOUR BOARDS ORGANIZED- Think of your boards as your online filing cabinet.  Make subcategories for items and alphabetize them to make them easier to find.  You can click on a board and drag it to move to a new position.  I also recently moved all of my group boards up to the top of my page.  I did this for two reasons.  First, I tend to forget which group boards I am in, and this makes it easy to find them and review the rules for that board.  Secondly, it makes it easy for others to see that you are a valuable pinner.  

4) OPTIMIZE PINS COMING FROM YOUR SITE - You can customize the pin description on images coming from your site.  I will be sharing how to do that next week.

Jenny at The NY Melrose Family suggests putting your twitter handle, hashtags and lots of keywords in your description.  

5) PIN OFTEN - The more you pin, the more action you get (isn't that true of all social media?).  There are whole schematics out there about what's the best time to pin...ain't nobody got time for that!  Play around and see what works for you.  I find early morning and late evening to be my best times to pin, but I pin all day (cause I luv it so) and generally have good activity all day.

Follow me on Pinterest!  :)