This week’s guest poster is Kerry , from the My Love Bumps (you can catch her as @thelovebump on Twitter). Kerry has put together a terrific guide to Pinterest, with a fab step by step guide to getting started, and get it right.
Kerry says…
Pinterest… So what’s all the hype?
As a self-confessed PinAddict, I could sit here typing all day and night about Pinterest. It’s one of my favourite sites and I am hugely passionate about all that it has to offer us as bloggers, women, men, parents & even as business owners.
So, what is it?
Pinterest is an image based, online pinboard. It’s fun, it’s beautiful, it makes your heart SING when you catch a glimpse of your collection of boards…
But, how can we as bloggers use this fun tool to send traffic to our blogs? Is it worth all the hype? Does it take up too much time?
I’ve compiled this snazzy list of Tips and Tricks for you as a ‘snapshot’ as to what the heck it’s all about. Enjoy!
Tips & Tricks: Pinterest for Bloggers
1) Set your Username as your Blog name – try to keep this uniform across all of your social media networks. For example, these are my profiles:
http://www.pinterest.com/thelovebump
http://www.mylovebumps.blogspot.co.uk (working on this one!)
http://www.facebook.com/thelovebump
http://www.twitter.com/thelovebump
(he he , you see what I did there? Erm… Now you can totally follow me all over the interwebs too!)
Also, make sure that you fill out the ‘About Me’ description in your profile – this information shows up beneath your photograph and gives other users a brief description of you. I personally only follow people who have interesting bio’s that appeal and apply to me and my life.
2) Connect your account with your Facebook & Twitter accounts – not only will you gain more followers, but you will also see icons underneath your profile picture that allow people to follow you on these social sites too.
3) Although highly addictive – do not spend all day browsing around this website of loveliness! Don’t grow to hate the time it sucks from you. I set myself a 15 minute alarm, or recently I have been using the ‘Pin 5, Pin1’ attitude… (What is this and Why do I want to know? Read on…)
4) ‘Pin 5, Pin 1’ – I use this strategy for two reasons.
Firstly, I like to keep my content varied…. Last Halloween, I think I saw the same pumpkin cupcakes repinned around 3000 times… I wish I was exaggerating. Give your followers some variety! With the Pin 5, Pin 1 approach, go ahead and Pin 5 items from the boards you follow. Then, hop over to your blog, or to another website that you love and want to share, and create a pin directly from the pin-pointed page of this site. Getting technical? Let me explain:
Install the ‘Pin It’ button into your bookmarks bar (this is SO quick and easy) Click here to give it a go: http://pinterest.com/about/goodies/
ENSURE that when you pin something, you pin directly from the URL… otherwise your followers will have to search your site to find exactly what you meant to pin. For example…over on my blog I pinned a YouTube video of myself… drinking wine… Instead of pinning my home page, I made sure that the EXACT post URL was pinned. Like this…
http://mylovebumps.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/video-in-which-i-do-not-wish-to-be.html
This is especially important when pinning original content, to ensure credit is given to the original author/artist/photographer. The Pin 5, Pin1 system is great for me, as it keeps me from wiling away literal HOURS browsing through the site, but still keeps my boards fresh and updated, and offers something which is possibly new, that your followers have not had a visual overload on!
5) Can you pin yourself (Can I just sit and pin every post from my own blog)?
Yes, you can. Although I wouldn’t advise to over-promote it… people are put off by an overload of info from one blog, particularly your own. You don’t want to be ‘that boring chick at the party who only talks about herself’ haha! Perhaps set up a system with a few other bloggers whereby you agree to pin a post from each others blogs, say…. Once a week? This works REALLY well.
6) Keep your board descriptions simple, clear and full of great content
How do I keep great content??! My MOST popular board by far is my ‘From my Childhood’ board… I was a child of the 80’s/90’s, and we had some pretty cool toys back then. So, I decided to do a Google image search for ‘Top 80’s toys’ and pinned my heart away…(making sure the content I was pinning was from an original source and given due credit of course) Within hours I had literally hundreds of Repins on just one thing. THIS particular item being the most popular with nearly 1200 Repins to date…
https://pinterest.com/pin/68719877449/
About Sally
Sally Whittle is founder of the Tots100, Foodies100, BlogSummit and the MAD Blog Awards. When she's not working, she can be found blogging at Who's the Mummy, or having fun with her 7 year old daughter, Flea.
