How does Pinterest work?

How do I get on Pinterest?

Add the “Pin It” Button to your bookmarks bar.

It’s easy to install. Go to the page on Pinterest and drag the button into your bookmarks bar (it’s right at the top of the page in the blue box). Once it’s installed, whenever you come across something great to pin, simply click the “Pin It” button in your bookmarks bar and you’re set.

Use the “Pin It” bookmarklet.

Basically, if you see an image you want to pin, you simply click the bookmarklet in your bookmarks bar for quick posting.

Use keywords in your descriptions.

A lot of people leave inane descriptions (“Cute!”) on their pins. I’m guilty too. However, keyword-rich descriptions will help get pins and boards found more easily via search. Great for all of us!

Write your own summary description.

Don’t copy and paste the whole post, the whole recipe or all the instructions from the original post directly in your pin. Not only does it clutter the images with unnecessary text, it’s not good Pinterest manners. Plus, posts are copyrighted so pasting them in their entirety is copyright infringement.

Edit your pins.

If you need to edit a pin, hover over it and click on the “Edit” button that appears. If you need to find the pin first, hover over your name in the top right of your screen, click on the “Pins” link in the dropdown menu. This will show you all your pins listed by the most recent. If it’s an older pin, click on the “Boards” link while hovering over your name and then you can find your pin by topic.

Pin from the individual post, not the home page.

When you’re pinning from a website, make sure you are pinning from the individual post, not the home page. (To get to the individual post, click on the post title. If you can see comments at the bottom, it’s a sign you’re on the individual post.) There’s nothing more frustrating than clicking through a pin, only to realize the post with that image has long been pushed off the home page.

Be kind and play by the rules.

Know and understand the friendly guidelines Pinterest has put in place for its site. They created the site for us which we use for free. It’s good to follow the rules.

Add a price tag to a pin.

You can do this easily by adding a “$” or a “£” in your description. This works well, let’s say, if you are pinning from an Etsy shop or something similar.

Space out your pins instead of flooding the stream.

If you’re pinning a lot of stuff at once, you can overwhelm your followers. For example, if you’re researching black shoes and spend an hour pinning a gazillion pairs of black shoes to your “Rockin’ Black Shoes” board, anyone who follows you will just see a sea of black shoes in their stream. Instead, spread it out a bit.

Set a timer.

If you find yourself squandering your time on Pinterest (um, hello!), why not set a timer? Allow yourself a set number of minutes to browse and when the timer dings, you’re off to something else. This might also help with flooding the stream (above).

Organize your boards well.

If your boards are clean and organized, you’ll get more followers than if everything is hodge podge and there’s no rhyme or reason to your pinning. Vague board titles aren’t so helpful either.

Take the extra time to see if a pin is a good one.

Have you ever clicked through a pin only to discover that it leads nowhere? Frustrating, isn’t it? So, before you repin, make sure you check it out first. We gotta work together to weed out the dud pins. Speaking of dud pins…

Use “Like” as a pending place.

One of my readers said, “Sometimes when I don’t have time to ‘investigate’ a pin to see if it is a good one, I’ll just ‘Like’ it. Then I can go back to my likes when I have time and look into them a little further.” Great idea!

Follow individual boards to cut out the noise.

One of the nice things about Pinterest is that you can follow individual boards. You don’t have to follow a person and therefore, all of their boards (although you can do that too). To subscribe to individual boards, simply click on the name of any Pinterest user and you’ll see all their boards. If you follow the person, you’ll follow all their boards. Otherwise, just pick and choose the boards you want.

Find people and boards to follow by reverse rabbit trailing.

That is, when you see a pin or a board you like, click on the person it came from. Or click on the original source. I’ve found a lot of good boards to follow that way.

Categorize your pins.

This will make your pins more easily found and will potentially result in more people following you.

Don’t just be a repinner. Be a pioneer pinner.

In other words, don’t just repin what others have already pinned. Always be on the lookout for new pins that no one else has found. If you’re like me, you see a lot of the same pins come through. I pay attention, though, when I see something fresh and new. I’m much more likely to follow that person too.

Don’t forget the iPhone app to use Pinterest on the go.

Find them on the goodies page or in the app store*.

Personalize a board for your kids.

You might consider making a board especially for your kids so when you’re out and about and you need to kill some time, they can look at the things you’ve found especially for them. Supervise of course!

Automatically populate a pin description.

If you’re on a site and you want to pin something, you can highlight a portion of text before clicking the “Pin It” bookmarklet. The text you highlight will automatically populate your description. I like to add quotation marks when I quote directly and only do a small snippet. You always want people to be directed back to the original site for the main content.

Use Pinterest to drive traffic.

If you don’t yet have your own little space online (like a blog or website), I highly encourage you to get one. Everyone. Why? Because as things become more and more digital, this will be one of the primary ways we connect. Think of it as one place that you can call “home” online from which you can organize and centralize all your other online activities.
How does Pinterest benefit us? Assuming people use it as it’s intended, your images can be pinned and anyone who clicks on them will be taken to your site.

Pin your own stuff.

Just like other social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest is a great place to promote your own stuff. Having said that…

Don’t only pin your own stuff.

Pin your own stuff, yes, but pin others’ stuff a lot more. Pick a ratio. Like, for every one pin of your own, pin ten that aren’t.

Find out how many times something has been pinned.

When I come across an older post, I often use Get Your Site’s Pinterest Pin Count to check how many times something has been pinned. If it’s already been pinned thousands of times, I often move on and try to find something more original. Of course, you can also use the tool to find out how much your own stuff has been pinned too.

If you come across an image that’s yours but doesn’t link back to your site…

Contact the Pinterest user who pinned your image and ask them kindly to edit the pin. Be friendly and offer a link to the pin to make it easier for them.

Consider creating a board for your own stuff.

If you do pin your own stuff, it might be nice to organize them on a “My Stuff” board or otherwise indicate that they are your own.

Include your Pinterest follower counts in your media kit and business cards.

Just as you would include your Facebook and Twitter follower numbers, your Pinterest numbers provide PR and advertising folks another glance at the influence you have.

Use Pinterest for topics that don’t fit into your blog niche.

After blogging a while, a lot of bloggers want to branch out from their main niche. If you are someone with varying tastes, encourage your readers to follow a particular board on Pinterest for “more on that subject.”

Find out what of yours has been pinned.

Type this into your browser (replacing “yourdomain.com”): http://pinterest.com/source/yourdomain.com

Create keyword-rich board titles and board descriptions.

Just as you should make your pin descriptions full of relevant keywords for better searching, do the same for your board titles and descriptions (instead of vague or cutesy). To edit your boards, simply click on your name in the top right and then click the “Edit” button underneath the board you want to change.

Include your domain in your Profile

While it’s not possible to add a clickable link in your profile (at this point anyway), you can still include your domain name for reference and association with your site like I did in mine here (follow me while you’re there?).

Link your site to your profile

You can make a clickable icon appear in your profile if you include your web address in your Settings. This will put a globe icon directly underneath your bio. Again, see what I mean here.

Use images in your posts

I’m not a photographer (plus I’m lazy) so sometimes I post without any images. Of course Pinterest is all about images. Your posts are much more likely to get pinned if there are images in them. Obvious, right?

Go back through your posts and add or improve images

Now’s the time to go back through your old posts and add images if there aren’t any already, or upgrade if they could use improvement.

Don’t use Pinterest images to make your posts look pretty.

Assume all images are copyrighted. If you see an image you’d like to use on Pinterest, ask the owner for permission. They might just grant it, you’ll be making a connection and you won’t be violating copyright.

Use text in your images.

Images with text in them are more pin-worthy. (The Nester really broke this concept down quite a bit too.)

Be particular about your images.

If you’re like me and don’t do the image thing very well, less is more. Some bloggers can include a dozen images in a post and they are spectacular. If I did that, I’d spend about 20 days writing one post. For the rest of us, take the extra time to find really excellent images.

Link your Pinterest account to Facebook and Twitter.

You can do this in Settings. When logged in, get to “Settings” by hovering over your name in the top right corner and select “Settings” from the dropdown menu. (Dave Taylor wrote a detailed tutorial called How Can I Have Pinterest Updates Appear on Facebook?)

Use Pinterest to get your creative juices flowing.

If you need some post ideas, do a search on Pinterest with relevant key words from your niche. Note which pins have a lot of repins and/or comments. These are hot topics. Find your own unique angle and write on the topics people are already interested in.

Capitalize on the seasons

If there’s one thing people pin, it’s seasonal stuff like recipes, crafts, decorating ideas, gift ideas, etc. Use an editorial calendar to plan ahead. Write blog posts that coincide with the seasons. Post them early so that they can be pinned and get a little traction before the holiday passes.

Make your site sticky!

If you notice a lot of traffic coming to a particular post from Pinterest, think of ways to optimize that post for Pinterest users. Find ways to make it better and more importantly, get them to stay on your site a while. For example, if they’re coming from Pinterest to your Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie recipe, add links to your Chocolate Peanut Butter ice cream and Chocolate Peanut Butter Squares too.