ProBlogger Challenge: Produce a Pinterest Persona

I battled a great deal initially when i first began controlling the Pinterest take into account Photography School.

I understood which i wanted to pay attention to visual curation, which I needed use a comprehensive summary of techniques and tools. There have been a lot of possible boards I possibly could create and that i didn’t understand what was the very best tactic or idea. Must I spin this subject off right into a separate board? Must I avoid creating this board altogether?

I Quickly accidentally happened across the idea of a Pinterest persona. My lady and myself are amateur photography enthusiasts and that i found myself asking whether I'd want to consider the information which i was pinning. Whether it didn’t appear relevant i quickly wouldn’t pin it. This saved me a lot time when creating choices and it has permitted the DPS brand to keep a really consistent focus.

It’s what today’s Challenge is about.

Image by SebastianDooris, licensed under Creative Commons

A Pinterest persona is only a description of the kind of person you're focusing on together with your Pinterest account. This is like the idea of your blog persona. The main difference is the fact that Pinterest customers possess a different degree of savvy and also you want different behavior from different groups.

Darren has formerly discussed creating readers profiles/personas to assist together with your blogging and recognized the numerous benefits:

It personalizes the blogging experience.It notifies my writing.It identifies possibilities.It may be useful for prospecting marketers.It identifies methods to interact with your audience.It'll identify possibilities to monetize your site.

I suggest that you simply take a look at it and find out the kind of profiles he produced for Photography School visitors. I modified these in my Pinterest Personas, and you may adapt them for yours, too.

Your persona description will include details about:

how people uncover your boardswhy they repin certain kinds of pinswhy they will use Pinterest in generalwhat inspires these to leave commentswhy that like a pin.

I suggest you wait a minimum of per month after beginning your Pinterest account before creating personas.

What developing a pinning persona, request what actions you would like individuals to take once they go to your Pinterest account.

Look at this article in the Social@Ogilvy blog. It will help you determine the way your customers vary from your blog’s profile. The writer suggests that you simply answer three key questions:

So how exactly does the individual behave in social networking?Who influences the customers in social networking?The way the customers build relationships the company or top quality content?

You are able to determine this by monitoring the kinds of people who presently communicate with your profile. You will observe different behaviors for various kinds of people. After that you can create profiles based on these.

If you notice their demands will vary than you thought these were. You may even observe that your Pinterest account isn’t presently meeting their demands. This really is fine—it’s a part of the standard Pinterest learning curve.

Your challenge would be to create 2 or 3 profiles based on the kinds of people who your Pinterest account is focusing on. These will not be occur stone—instead, they'll evolve while you find out more about your fans.

The next move would be to evaluate your Pinterest account and find out if you're meeting the requirements of these kinds of people. Be objective. If you are not serving these well, what else could you do in order to better focus on your fans? What changes will make for your Pinterest workflow to support them?

Have you got social personas that will help you together with your account? Are you currently getting any problem creating them? Tell me within the comments and I’ll observe how I will help you.

View the original article here

Do You Want a Pinterest Consultant? Interview with Jade Craven of dPS

When Pinterest was brand-spankin’-new, we heard exactly the same cry from lots of Problogger.internet visitors: “Not another social networking! That has here we are at all of this?!”

Who indeed? Each social networking differs, plus they all require slightly different approaches and abilities.

One potential solution for over a couple of writers would be to bring in help to assist develop and implement a Pinterest strategy. But where do Pinterest experts even originate from? Exactly what do they already know we don’t? Would they really generate a return around the investment you’re making into Pinterest?

We thought we’d go behind the curtain with Darren’s own Pinterest specialist, Jade Craven, to discover what Pinterest consultants do, and just how they are able to help writers.

Jade, we all know you have been instrumental in assisting Darren develop a Pinterest following for dPS (browse the dPS Pinterest account here). But Pinterest’s pretty new. What had you been doing before Pinterest hit the scene?

Jade Craven, Pinterest Professional

I had been only a normal person attempting to make it within the dunia ngeblog. I possibly could only work part-time because of illness, and so i was scraping by on whatever client work I possibly could get. I’d spend the relaxation of time learning around I possibly could and doing little experiments.

I had been an expert blogger. In operating within the marketing space and grew to become disillusioned with a few of the activities I saw. Now I am inclined to focus my research around the lifestyle- and ladies-orientated niches.

I additionally authored the Writers to look at list for Darren for 4 years and from time to time consulted with individuals on product launches. Essentially, I had been obsessive about word-of-mouth and curation, and was learning around I possibly could about this.

And just how did that actually work help you prepare to operate on Pinterest? What abilities must you take full advantage of this network?

Well, I’ve been carrying this out for 4 years. It resulted in I'd developed excellent research abilities and intuition, especially around the topic of content curation.

Curating content is among the most significant steps you can take like a blogger. There's so many details available which is super easy to obtain overcome.

This skill is essential if this involves Pinterest. The only real difference is you are curating content within the long-term via multiple boards, rather than curating content for any single blog publish or page.

I additionally find that it may take lots of research and experimentation to be aware what works best for different census. The majority of my research formerly had centered on how ecommerce sites can use Pinterest. My overall strategy took it's origin from a hunch, however the day-to-day choices derive from specific research and situation studies.

Right. Just how have you land employment like a Pinterest consultant, once the network’s so new?

It had been certainly one of individuals installments of finding yourself in the best place within the proper time. I had been employed by The Village Agency like a compensated intern. My employer, Justine Bloome, requested me to pay attention to Pinterest. She's pretty savvy coupled with a hunch it would remove.

She was speaking and covering Pinterest at that time, and so i had a few boards devoted to Pinterest. I many userful stuff here while building individuals boards, to the stage where I had been investing around ten extra delinquent hrs on Pinterest experimentation and researching the woking platform. It had been amazing to become reliable a lot.

Then, late this past year, Darren made a decision to place more effort into Pinterest for DPS. He released a tweet requesting suggestions on how to proceed and Justine, who is a great friend of his, put my title forward. I sent on the quote, we rapidly setup 20 boards being an experiment, also it skyrocketed after that.

Essentially, it had been a situation of and being prepared to work delinquent to be able to increase your desirable skillset and finding yourself in the best place in the proper time. Just one of individuals elements was something I possibly could control, and that's why I have faith that some writers should smartly work with free.

Great point! You can as well inform us what it's that you simply spend time doing as dPS’s Pinterest maven?

I've got a quite simple workflow. Let me curate all of the relevant articles that might be helpful to photography enthusiasts. I spent my first four several weeks pinning the archives in the top photography blogs. I’d perform a large amount of work on the top of the items I had been getting compensated to complete, since i wanted us with an account which was industry-leading.

This workflow has simplified to arranging one pin for each hour from Monday to Friday. I stick to the blogs in the search engines readers, and skim with the listing of updates. I ignore individuals which are only relevant for a while of your time. Basically see numerous articles on a single subject, I think about making another board with that subject.

The relaxation of time is spent monitoring competitors’ boards to see if there's anything I'm able to do in order to improve our strategy. I research new board ideas, especially ones that might be associated with product launches. I produced several new boards according to dPS’s latest portraits e-book.

Wow, there’s a lot into it. Are we able to take a step back as it were and request you that which you feel Pinterest needs to offer writers? It's very easy to state, well, Pinterest uses images, and that’s what causes it to be not the same as other systems, but other internet sites allow you to publish images. What’s different about Pinterest?

It shows how skilled you're at visual curation. Most types of curation involve information being spread everywhere. You might have an every week round-up publish, or perhaps an awesome Recommendations page.

People will need to try looking in a multitude of locations for your information, but Pinterest enables you to definitely collect it on this page. It enables you to definitely show how current with trends you're. The explanations you set to hooks riding time context—to discuss the reason why you think the look you pinned is pertinent.

Consider the take into account Inside Addict. I'll visit the Pinterest account within the blog because it’s a great deal simpler that i can uncover, curate and organize the pictures that they has pinned here rather than through her blog archives.

At its core, Pinterest is about social discovery. Sturdy using your internet sites to uncover something totally new. There's no conversation or networking—it’s pure entertainment. It’s like Youtube, you alone convey more inclination to produce and purchase stuff later.

So for the reason that situation, we’d expect the fundamental focuses of the Pinterest strategy could be not the same as other internet sites.

Yes, I’ve discovered that the main focus is totally different. Of all platforms, the main focus is community building and engagement. On Pinterest it's all about curation and social discovery.

So might be there particular niches or audiences the network’s suitable for?

It’s clearly suitable for images that demonstrate the finish consequence of a task. This really is skewed towards activities which are typically connected with women—cooking, crafts, and so forth. However it can equally affect males if you concentrate on the best niches.

I’ve discovered that the DPS audience is 50/50 male/female when it comes to who’s repining and interesting using the content.

If your user finds your site through Pinterest, can they expect your site to appear gorgeous? These customers are clearly visual people, the same is true a blogger have to finesse their blog design before starting a Pinterest strategy?

It's not expected that the blog must look gorgeous. However, if you work with Pinterest graphics then it's useful when the blog design is in conjuction with the image style.

Consider the style of Alex Beadon’s blog. She's exactly the same elements of design in her own header and sidebar. That type of focus on detail and consistency is is among the reasons I selected her among 2010 writers to look at.

With that said, people anticipate finding what they need within the description of the pinned image. If it's connect to your blog publish, they need an excellent blog publish. They'll expect another images for the reason that publish to become of the identical calibre, but mainly they're there for that content. With fashion, for instance, they either desire to be come to the shop in order to a website that describes how you can place the outfit together.

Design is, and will be, a fundamental part of the consumer experience. But it's more essential that individuals find precisely what they expect once they click a hyperlink on Pinterest.

Well, what you’ve stated here makes me question if Pinterest is really a possible addition for that solo blogger who’s controlling everything themselves. Can they be traction on the website? What tasks whenever they prioritize in creating a Pinterest presence?

It's possible for that solo blogger. Its not necessary to take a position just as much time into relationship marketing. It’s just fundamental curation.

The primary factor these writers should prioritize is developing a persona that reflects the Pinterest customers they would like to attract. Produce a rough document setting out who the prospective user is really as an individual, and what you would like these to think and do once they go to your Pinterest page.

This enables you to decide whether it’s worth trading in another social platform and just how enough time you need to commit to it. Editor’s note: Jade will tell them about us more concerning how to do that later within the week.

The 2nd factor they ought to prioritize is making their brand page look pretty. Organize your boards and concentrate on selecting beautiful images because the cover. That's what will persuade folks to hang in there.

And when it comes to everyday living and interaction, what exactly are your preferred tools for focusing on Pinterest?

I've two favourite tools. I'm battling to locate one affordable solution that does everything—Problogger visitors may know. Right now I'm using two tools: Pingraphy and PinLeague.

Pingraphy may be the tool I personally use for arranging. It’s not so intuitive but it's free and easy to use when you get used to it. It's my job to schedule the hooks for that week in a couple of periods, therefore it doesn’t hinder my other work.

Pinleague is definitely an statistics solution. It's release to some certain point, but is fairly comprehensive. It informs you by what boards are popular, what hooks are popular, and who your brand advocates are. You may also observe how much earnings Pinterest is producing for you personally once you integrate it with Google Statistics. It’s really helpful that will help you tweak your strategy.

I did previously make choices by by hand watching changes with time but Pinleague causes it to be a lot simpler. This means I recieve to take more time experimentation and researching rather than attempting to figure everything out myself.

Wow, great advice. Thanks a lot for the time, Jade. We actually thank you for experience.

Thank you for getting me.

Look out for many inside advice from Jade on ProBlogger later within the week.

View the original article here

What Progress Perhaps You Have Made on Pinterest? [Discussion]

Now has provided us an opportunity to take a look at Pinterest from the couple of different angles.

If you have not had an opportunity to enter into Pinterest, Hopefully our Complete Help guide to Pinterest got you inspired to setup a free account and begin pinning. If it didn’t, EcoKaren’s story of Pinterest success should have convinced you from the tugging energy from the network.

Our look behind the curtain of Pinterest practice with Jade, my very own Pinterest consultant, hopefully gave you a little of understanding of the methods discover more concerning the platform—or hire a company who already does! Her expert consultancy on creating Pinterest Personas will help you are taking the first steps toward setting a Pinterest technique for your site.

Today, we’re interested to listen to your tales. Perhaps you have old a Pinterest take into account your site? Should you  have, how’s it going? How's it going controlling it, and what types of answers are you getting? Tell us of the successes—and another stuff!—in your comments ought to.

If you are not in Pinterest, we’d like to hear why don't you. One thing you do not feel your audience uses the network, or perhaps is the issue time constraints—or another thing entirely? Can there be anybody among our visitors who uses Pinterest personally, although not for his or her blog? I’d like to know what you think, too.

So let’s get speaking. How’s Pinterest assisting you as writers? Let’s learn about it!

View the original article here

Heavyweight Help: The Entire Help guide to Getting Began on Pinterest

Do you lie in bed at night dreaming of getting a link from some high-profile blog like ProBlogger that would send you thousands of visitors and give your blog the exposure you need to take it to the next level?

I’d rather have Pinterest.

Image by hydropeek, licensed under Creative Commons

Don’t get me wrong: I’d love to have Darren share a link with his audience to one of my photography marketing posts. However, the reality is that you’ll get far more traffic, exposure, and income from Pinterest, regardless of your niche.

I believe that blogs in any niche, not just DIY crafty blogs, are missing out on huge amounts of traffic and exposure if they are ignoring Pinterest. If you want to see your blog grow in leaps and bounds in 2013, you’ve got to pay attention to Pinterest.

Pinterest has been a huge part of the reason that my 22-month old blog that shares business and marketing tips for photographers has grown large enough and profitable enough to have replaced our entire household income.

One post alone, which was intentionally optimized for Pinterest, has been shared over 11,500 times and made over five figures of income in the last 6 months alone. I’ll tell you more about it and why it was so successful in a moment, so keep reading.

Because I want to make sure that you fully understand the power of Pinterest, I’m going to start with the very basics before digging into the good stuff that will get you the blog success you’re looking for.

Honestly, if you’re short on time and don’t want to join another social network, you don’t have to have a profile and can simply read about how to make your blog more likely to be pinned. However, at least read through the basics and info about using Pinterest accounts so that you have a better understanding of what’s going on and how to apply that to your blog.

Here’s what I’m going to cover:

What is Pinterest?Why care about Pinterest?Basics of using PinterestStrategies for using your Pinterest accountGet your pins maximum exposureGet more traffic to your blog using PinterestPinterest tools for bloggers

So let’s dive right in.

Pinterest is a visual bookmarking site with a strong sharing structure.

People “pin” photos or videos with links back to their original sources onto “boards” and a “description” that shows under neat the photo or video. These pins are then shown on the main Pinterest page, from newest to oldest, to all of the followers of that person.

If someone sees a pin that they think is interesting, they can hover over the image and choose to “repin” it directly to one of their boards, or they can “like” it or “comment” on it.

When videos are pinned, they can be viewed from right within Pinterest. It’s a great way to grow your YouTube presence and get more viewers.

Pinterest users are mostly women, who trust it more than Facebook or Twitter, although there are a growing number of men on the site.

Pinterest is a place where people dwell on the life they’ve always longed for and where they collect inspiring or useful morsels of information that make their life better. They plan their weddings, imagine their dream homes, long for their ideal wardrobe and collect snippets of inspiration that encourage them to be a better person. A person’s Pinterest boards are a collection of what they they wish they were, so it can be a very powerful place to market your business.

Pinterest can bring a lot of traffic to your blog, which you can then convert into subscribers and buyers. It drives more traffic than Google+, Linkedin, and YouTube combined, more traffic than Twitter, and Pinterest drives more sales than Facebook.

The thing that seems to set Pinterest apart from Facebook or Twitter is that there’s less conversation going on to get in the way of sharing links. Yes, you can leave comments and tag people on pins, but the focus is much greater on sharing, making this the perfect platform for your posts to go viral.

Pinterest is a great place to strengthen your brand, and can be used for an “about me” board or if you have several staff or bloggers, you can pin a photo of each person with a description and a link to learn more about them on an About us page on your blog. Create boards that would appeal to your ideal readers and they’ll feel a stronger affinity towards your blog.

It’s easy to promote your products, do market research, and provide resources to your current community. It’s even a great place to find ideas of things to blog about, particularly if you’re in the craft, DIY, food, or fashion niches (although any niche could find ideas on Pinterest).

Now that you’ve heard about all the benefits of Pinterest, let’s dive into the mechanics of how to use it.

Pinterest allows you to create either a personal account or a business account. While they work the same way, you’ll have to decide which one fits your situation best.

You’ll start by setting up your profile. Add an image and description of yourself or your blog and link to your various sites. You can put a URL in the description, but it will display as text and not as an actual link unless you verify your website through Pinterest.

You’ll also be selecting a username that will be part of your Pinterest URL, so you may choose to use specific keywords here for better SEO if you’re setting it up for your business instead of as your name.

Right under your visible profile, you’ll see a menu with your stats and where you can choose to view your boards, pins, or likes or view the information behind the stats. By clicking on “Followers” you can see the people who are following you and decide if you’d like to follow them back or not. You can also edit your profile or change the order of your boards using the middle button.

This displays your various boards. This is the default view that people see when they visit your profile, so it’s important that you put the boards you most want them to see first. As most of my readers are photographers, I put some of the boards I’ve created as resources for them first and foremost. You can also hover over the board cover and edit it to be a different pin as the large image, otherwise it defaults to the most recently pinned image for that board. You can also reposition the image if you so desire.

There’s also the option to create collaborative boards, where you can invite other people to pin on that board as well. You’ll see this option when you’re setting up individual boards.

In addition, you can create three private boards that you share with people. These boards will not show up for other people when they view your profile, and the pins will not show up in your feed. You can share this with other people who will be able to add to the board. You can change a private board to a public board, but once a board has become public it can no longer be made private. Public boards cannot be made private.

This menu is where you can manually add pins and learn more about Pinterest and the tools they offer. If you select the menu with your name, you have links to your boards, pins, and likes and you also can find and invite friends to join Pinterest. There’s also a link to goodies here that lets you install a Pin it button on your browser’s bookmark bar that lets you pin any image and YouTube videos that you see online while browsing.

By clicking on the Pinterest logo, you’ll be taken to the main page, which is much like the newsfeed on Facebook.

This is where you’ll see pins from the people you are following. Pins are shown from newest (top) to oldest (bottom), and there’s no algorithm for how pins are ranked. They simply appear based on time.

From here, you can repin the pins you see onto your boards, or you can like the pins or comment on them.

You can also use the links at the top under the Pinterest logo to show everything being pinned at the moment (or everything in a certain category), only videos, popular pins, and gifts by price.

To add a price tag to your pins, simply put the price in the description.

You can tag people in your posts by adding the “@” before their name. You must be following at least one of their boards to tag them, however.

Finally, there’s much discussion online about how using the hashtag before words will help you show up better in the search rankings when people search on Pinterest. However, this is not true in most of the searches I have done.

Using the # before a word only creates a link to a search for that word or for other pins also tagged with that specific hashtag. So if you use “#food” in your description, it takes you to the search results for “food” or “#food” and doesn’t rank you better in general.

The best way to use your Pinterest account is to share lots of content that complements your own content. Yes, you can share your own stuff, but make sure there’s lots of helpful things from other people there as well. It’s one of the best ways to get loyal followers who love your pins.

So, what kinds of things should you pin? How do you make the most of your Pinterest account?

My audience is mainly photographers, so I have several posing boards and boards with business advice (both from my blog and from others’ blogs).

For my wedding photography clients, I pin lots of wedding inspiration ideas: decorations, venue ideas, DIY wedding projects, cakes, rings, you name it. The possibilities are endless.

A great way to find good content for your boards is to use the search from within Pinterest to find popular pins of a certain topic and simply repin them to your own boards. Super simple and fast.

If you’re a graphic designer, create a collaborative board where both you and your client can pin inspiration. If you sell real estate, create boards with home listings for specific clients that fit what they’re looking for in a home.

Post images of things you sell and link back to your sales page. Add the price to the description using currency symbols to have it show up in the corner.

Create a coupon or sales board where you list current promotions for your audience to see.

Go through your blog archives and create pins of your favorite content within a certain category. Then promote this board on your blog. Not only will you get extra traffic, you’ll get people digging into your archives and reading some of your best content.

Have people search your blog for specific posts and images and pin them to a board. Then, leave a link to that board somewhere in order for the pinners to be entered into a contest. Or, have them search through your own boards and repin your own pins.

Since I’m a photographer, Pinterest is a great way for me to showcase other wedding vendors and tag them in the pins so that they can see the images of the products they provide.

Promoting other vendors or bloggers in your field is a great way to get their attention and start building relationships.

Ask your readers to volunteer to create a board on a specific topic with pins from around the web. It will build loyalty to your brand and help readers identify more strongly with your business.

Have writer’s block? Search Pinterest to see what popular things in your niche are being pinned. If you’re a designer, check out popular designs in your field. Note what other pinners in your field are doing, and see what kinds of boards get them the most followers.

Have a board of reviews of various products that your audience would find helpful. If you sell your own product, collect reviews about it on a board as well.

Much like the review board, except that you can put an image of the product up with the testimonial in the description. Bonus points for tagging the testimonial writer in your description. This is also a great place to put client success stories.

If you offer a free resource in exchange for signing up to your list, Pinterest can be a great way to get more exposure. People love free things and tend to repin them like crazy if they’re really great resources.

Create a board showing the behind-the-scenes workings of your business and give people the feeling that they’re an insider if they follow your board.

Pin images from a live event to encourage people to follow you and bring more exposure to your event.

If you teach workshops or do online webinars, create a board with supplemental content and resources on it for your attendees to explore.

Follow several of your readers to learn more about their interests and what appeals to them. It’s a great way to see what they really dream of and long for in life and business.

Now that you’ve got all these awesome ideas to implement, here’s a few extra tips to make sure that your pins get maximum exposure.

According to Pinerly, the best times to post on Pinterest are between 2pm-4pm EST and again from 8pm-1am EST.

Always write good descriptions. Use words that people might search for in the search bar to make your pin or board more likely to be found.

Use calls to action in descriptions to help encourage people to do what you want them to do. Want them to repin or comment? Want them to click through to the post? Ask them to. One call to action per pin is best.

To encourage engagement on your pins and increase the chance of them becoming popular, ask questions and tag people using the @ symbol to help get more comments.

You can put links inside the descriptions, but remember that these links are no-follow links.

Unlike Facebook, people are more likely to repin than to comment on a pin. Leaving comments on pins is a great way to stick out, gain exposure, and gain followers. Thoughtful comments on other peoples’ pins can go a long way, especially if you also tag someone else in it and get them engaged as well.

Getting lots of comments, repins, and likes quickly is the best way to get a pin to show up on the Popular tab of the main page and show up higher in the Pinterest search results, so you want to do everything you can to encourage interaction with your pins.

Make sure that all your pins go back to the original source of the image and not to a Google images page or to a blog homepage that will be updated and no longer relevant once the image falls below the most recent content.

When you create your boards, give them good descriptions and categorize them for the highest chance of getting extra exposure to them.

Pinterest automatically integrates with Facebook and Twitter, so get more exposure for your pins by also sharing them on Facebook and Twitter.

So how do you get people to start pinning your content so that you can get a piece of this traffic that you’ve heard so much about? Here are several things you can do to encourage people to pin your stuff.

Pinterest is all about images. No image = no one pins your stuff. I know that it’s annoying to have to take the extra time to add images, but if you want Pinterest traffic, you have to do it.

I have found that Dreamstime has a decent selection of free commercial-use stock images that you can use, and you can always scour Flickr and other sites for images that have a Creative Commons usage license attached to them. I’ve found that these sites take a lot longer to sort through and often throw up low-quality images.

Beautiful, eye-catching images that are bright and appeal to emotions tend to do better than other images. Many of the popular pins are simply cute animals, particularly puppies.

Adding text to your images can increase engagement several times over. I personally like to add the name of my blog title to my image to encourage people to click through and see what it’s about. This both increases engagement and helps you to attract people who will click through to read the content. I suggest using Adobe Photoshop Elements or Gimp (which is a free download) to put text on your images.

Simple text-only quotes also work extremely well. Short words with few syllables and simple and understandable quotes do best.

This mini-tutorial image that summarizes a longer more-detailed post about how to shoot Christmas tree lights has been pinned over 35,000 times in less than two months and incorporates images, text, and valuable content that gets shared like crazy on Pinterest. This is an example of why I believe Pinterest is more valuable than a single link share from a big blog.

Image used with permission

Still want more ideas about how to make sharable images for Pinterest? See this three-step guide to creating Pinterest-friendly graphics for your blog.

If you’ve updated to WordPress 3.4 or higher, you can now put links in your captions. Use the Pin it button creator to get the link you need to insert a Pin it button into your captions.

There are also Pinterest plugins that will do this for you automatically. I’ll list some of them in the tools section below.

By sending people to your landing pages, you’ll help retain some of the traffic you get from Pinterest—and you can guide them through your sales or content funnel. This tends to help retain readers more effectively than through traffic to random pages that may not convert readers to followers as easily.

If you’ve got statistics to share, infographics are very popular on Pinterest. Infogr.am is a great free tool for making your own infographics that look amazing.

If you are a photographer or graphic designer, add a watermark to any images you post on your site. This way, people will know the source of the image even if a pinner doesn’t link directly to the place you’ve posted it on your website.

If you do not want people to pin content from your website at all, you can add the following code to the header section of your site. It prevents people from pinning images from your site:

pinterest" content="nopin">

You can put this on specific pages or posts or apply it to your entire site. While this will protect your images, you’ll lose out on huge potential for traffic and exposure if you do, so I do not recommend it.

Adding Pin it buttons to your posts makes it easy for readers to pin your content. You can use the free Pin it button creator to make each button individually, or use one of the plugins listed below to add it automatically—and make things easier on yourself.

Get your own “Follow me on Pinterest” button in the Goodies section of Pinterest. Put this in your sidebar, on your about page, and anywhere else you’d like to invite people to follow you. Here’s what one of them looks like:

You can also grab the URLs from your boards and link to them directly so that people can follow the boards that are most relevant to them.

Here’s a list of various Pinterest tools that you may find helpful.

Pin Count: See the pin count for a specific page or post on your blog. Just enter your URL.See recent pins from your site: Want to see what people are pinning from your site in general? Go to www.Pinterest.com/source/yourdomain.com/ to see. For example, to see what people are pinning on ProBlogger you’d type in http://pinterest.com/source/problogger.net It doesn’t show you everything, but it will show you several recent pins if they exist.Pinerly: Track your pins to see which perform the best and which of your boards and pins are most popular. The Pinerly Blog is also one of my favorite places to get information about what works best on Pinterest.PinReach: This service gives you a Pinterest influence score similar to an Alexa ranking for your blog, as well as showing you most popular pins, your most influential followers, and other interesting information such as currently trending pins and users.DIY Pinterest Analytics: If you’re super-geeky (like me) or want a very detailed way of tracking the ROI of your Pinterest campaigns, this three-part series will give you a great method for tracking the effectiveness of your pins. It’s not for the faint of heart when it comes to statistics! Most useful to people in corporate social media managing roles where you have to justify the usefulness of Pinterest to your business.Pinterest “Pin It” Button Plugin: This is a free WordPress plugin that lets you select the default image and description to be displayed or let people select their own image. Lots of options that make this a great choice for bloggers. This is the plugin that I found works best on my marketing blog for photographers.Pinterest WordPress Plugin by Tofurious: This Premium WordPress plugin automatically adds a Pin it button under every image in your posts and gives you the option to exclude specific images. It allows you to create a custom Pin it button (good for matching your current branding and creating direct calls to action) and allows you to insert a button at the top or bottom of posts as desired. It’s recommended for photographers, designers, food bloggers, DIY bloggers, and anyone with image-heavy content. Current price: $25.Pretty Pinterest Pins Plugin: This one’s a free WordPress plugin that allows you to display your most recent pins in your sidebar as large pins. Can be filtered to only show pins from a certain category, and gives you the option to add a Follow Me button as well.Pinterest RSS Widget Plugin: This free WordPress plugin allows you to display your most recent pins in your sidebar as small icons arranged in a grid. They can be filtered to show only pins from a certain category.Wisestamp: Add a Follow me on Pinterest link, and links to other social media accounts at the end of your emails with this free tool.Infogr.am: This service lets you create really great-looking infographics with ease, and is free.Share as Image: Pin any quote as an image using this tool. There’s a simple free version, or a premium version for $6.99. It’s not necessary if you have photoshop or any other program that lets you create an image from text, but it’s handy and easy to use if you don’t have that capability.Pinterest RSS Feed Direct Links: You can follow any Pinterest user using the following link: http://pinterest.com/jamiemswanson/feed.rss where you’d substitute jamiemswanson for the username you’d want to follow. You can also follow specific boards using the following URL (where you’d replace jamiemswanson with the username and blogging-resources for the board name you want to follow): http://pinterest.com/jamiemswanson/blogging-resources.rss

If you’re nerdy enough (and I say that in a loving way!) you could get creative with how you display pins on your site using the RSS feeds, but it’s easier to use one of the plugins above to do that for you if you’re not too picky.

Yes. Yes it does.

Remember the post I mentioned earlier that has been pinned over 11,500 times and has made me over five figures of income alone on my young blog? Here’s exactly what happened.

The pinned post explains why I switched from delivering images to clients on DVDs to Flash Drives. That’s not super exciting, but it’s a solid post that explains my decision and addresses several hesitations that I know people have about switching over. It also contains an affiliate link to the company where I purchase my flash drives.

One of the hesitations I knew photographers would have was how to package them before sending them to their clients. So I took a few photos of my packaging to use as images in the post.

I used a few images in the post, but created a separate image that was tall, contained them all, and had the name of my post at the bottom of it. Tall images get more space in the Pinterest page, and the text told people that this was more than just images of packaging for flash drives.

I used the Pinterest “Pin It” Button plugin setting that let me select a custom default image (the tall Pinterest-optimized image I’d created) that people would pin when they clicked the Pin it button, instead of using the single images that were found in the post. While not everyone used those buttons to pin, many people did.

The image spread like wildfire on Pinterest. I got my highest day of traffic ever the day that post went live, and it came primarily from Pinterest.

Not only that, but the network continues to get me an average of over 300 pageviews per day—months later without any extra promotion from me. It’s almost entirely because of Pinterest pins. This results in constant income month after month simply from the extended exposure.

A link from a high-profile blog might get you a huge spike in traffic for a week or so, but I’ve never seen a link bring the long-term traffic that Pinterest can bring.

I want to hear your stories. Have you tried Pinterest, or are you still hesitating? If you’ve taken the plunge, which posts on your blog have received the most exposure from Pinterest? Why do you think they’ve been so successful? What hasn’t worked for you at all? Tell me about it below in the comments and let’s really dig in and share with each other.

But first, take a few seconds to pin this post and give ProBlogger a bit of a Pinterest boost. Let’s make 2013 the year of Pinterest for bloggers!

Contributing author Jamie M Swanson writes meaty posts about online marketing for photographers with easy-to-understand steps for totally rocking your business over at The Modern Tog. She is a Wisconsin Wedding Photographer who dreams of owning lots of land where her family can run and play and she can garden to her heart’s content.

View the original article here

How My Old Blog Publish Got 500, 000 Pinterest Sights [Example]

There’s enough detailed information online on the internet, including ProBlogger, regarding how to maximize Pinterest to obtain traffic to your website. Between lessons regarding how to optimize Pinterest in your social networking online marketing strategy, Darren’s own try Pinterest, how you can create Pinterest-worthy graphics, and just how to operate a Pinterest contest, you will find some good tips available.

However I desired to share my very own personal expertise how a classic publish on ecokaren received almost 500, 000 pageviews—50% of-time page sights around the post—just from Pinterest. On the way, I’ll share some suggestions (plus some of my greatest pet peeves) which you can use for better a Pinterest experience.

Image by unknown digital photographer, licensed under Creative Commons

This extremely pinned publish from ecokaren—which received over 490,000 pageviews and was pinned a lot more than 129,000 times—is about … how you can clean a washer.

Woah, did that is correct? 129,000 hooks and 490,000 pageviews?

Yup. You read that properly.

And also the publish is all about washing a washer?

Yup. Again, you read that properly.

I had been shocked too if this old publish began receiving crazy traffic without my trying, let alone it's from the recently not-shrinkwrapped social networking site known as Pinterest. One person’s pin from the publish was repinned over 1400 occasions and it has a lot more than 300 likes. I ought to buy her a glass or two! Or possibly send her my homemade laundry soap.

Now, the publish wasn't your typical pin-worthy publish. It didn't have huggable furry creatures, no smart quotes, no cute babies nor tasty gourmet food. Nor made it happen have trendy ensemble recommendations for a fashionista or bare-chested Ryan Gosling aspirant.

Rather, it were built with a couple of small, individual photos of moldy interior of the washer and just how it cared for it had been cleaned. Not pretty whatsoever, as you can tell here.

Just how did a dull, three-years old publish get pinned a lot of occasions, to the stage it now continuously brings traffic from Pinterest? How did I make pinning sexy? (No, sex is not related to it.)

Listed here are my unwritten (now written!) rules on pinning and getting visitors or traffic to your website.

It’s a no-brainer, right? But it is true. I pin or repin nearly every day, even when it’s only one pin. It's usually easier to pin original posts than simply repin what other medication is pinning but in either case, I’m participating in Pinterest daily.

So when will i pin? The best here we are at pinning is between 4 to 11pm US EST. I pin while waiting in the bus stay in the mid-day, awaiting my daughter. However I also pin early each morning, while my coffee percolates. It’s an ideal method to spend some time each morning.

The unspoken rule of pinning is comparable to StumbledUpon. It’s easier to high-five others than yourself. (Have you try high-fiving yourself? Yeah. Doesn’t work nicely.)

You shouldn't be boasting regarding your publish or product constantly. Should you compliment others by pinning and repining, soon, others is going to do exactly the same for you personally. Sure, you are able to pin your stuff every now and then but it's usually easier to pin those of others.

My general guideline of ratio is 1:6 in pinning my publish to individuals of others. Again, this isn't designed in stone, but it’s my very own unspoken rule. And don't forget, never violate Pinterest’s copyright rules when pinning. Just don’t visit.

It’s apparent that you'll require a Pin it button in your posts. I personally use the Pin it extension or widget from my bookmark bar. But it’d be simple to possess a Pin it button somewhere in your publish too. Don’t make visitors need to search for this. Allow them.

To consider it a step further, I love symbols with counters. I had been f-l-o-o-r-e-d after i saw “108k” on my small Pin It icon with that washer publish when its pinning craze began. Time is going to be over 127k when you look at this. Your posts’ visitors notice number too, and they'll become more inclined to pin it, simply because it’s a extremely popular publish.

Why? Visitors feel validated when their sights are using the popular majority. They would like to share that feeling using their fans, which means they are wish to pin.

Add nicely and attentively built personal comments to hooks. Not just one word comments like “nice” or “

It normally won't allow interactions. A genuine sentence or two will.

Also, answer comments in your posts which have been pinned. I usually look into the comments individuals are departing on posts of mine which have been pinned or repinned. I thank the initial pinner and then leave replies with other commenters too. Many people are shocked that “ecokaren” is “that personal” and really found comment. Have a tendency to cracks me up. I seem like an overall total celebrity after i read comments like this.

Load a normal blog badge or logo design in your website landing page, to ensure that even when there's no image mounted on your publish, a minimum of your logo design or badge for the blog is going to be drawn on Pinterest for individuals to make use of.

I loaded my logo design in to the sidebar therefore if there's some reason a picture doesn’t stock up for site visitors to pin, a minimum of they are able to make use of the blog’s logo design. I see my badge on Pinterest every now and then, alongside comments like “Awesome site!”—and which makes me grin.

My in history record-breaking pinned/repinned publish is all about washing your front loading washer. Yes: a really sexy subject indeed!

But apparently, people had a lot challenge with moldy-smelling front-loading, high-efficiency automatic washers that they are pinning and discussing my publish for “solving their problem.”

So despite the fact that the publish was written 3 years ago and pictures are ugly, it finally got the interest it deserves—albeit late—and all due to Pinterest. All since the publish trained visitors something. It solved an issue.

How do you realize that? I receive emails from average women weekly, (I do not mean to stereotype average women but you probably know this folks, who the laundry probably the most frequently within your house?) saying thanks to me for that publish.

I additionally produced a Welcome page for email customers contributing to 75% from the signees come from the publish. As well as in the comment section, they describe the way i solved their front-loading washer mystery. Personally i think their warm hugs daily.

Here are a few clean stats for that publish (by The month of january 21, 2013):

Publish date: June 2009Total pageviews: 965,085Pageviews from Pinterest: 489,014Average time: 1:27Bounce rate: 57.21%Approximately. quantity of hooks: 127,000

And also the publish gets more sights while you look at this.

So, it’s great this little star of the publish gets tons of eye. But what did I actually do optimize it?

The moment I observed the traffic, I designed a couple of key changes towards the publish:

I added related links in to the body from the publish with other posts visitors might want to consider, like steps to make dryer balls from orphaned socks, steps to make homemade laundry soap, how you can clean your dishwasher, and much more. And today, individuals posts are becoming traction on Pinterst. I will tell you're intrigued by these subjects too!I added affiliate links to relevant items on my small Amazon . com affiliate account. I am not a uniform yet, but it’s having to pay the debts.I cleared up the pictures. Okay, therefore the images continue to be not Darren’s quality however i cleared up the pictures which were dull and fuzzy searching. A moldy washing gasket isn't that pretty however the older images were dark and fewer desirable for pinning.I added text towards the images to ensure they are more pinnable and gain attention immediately.I added watermarks to photographs to ensure that even when someone hooks (or “steals”) the pictures, anybody who sees them knows where they originated from.

If you wish to have more exposure on Pinterest, a few of these ideas might meet your needs, too.

Finally, I needed to focus on my greatest pet peeves about Pinterest. They are a few things i always avoid—as does worthwhile citizen of Pinterest!

I abhor when individuals don’t give credit where credit arrives on Pinterest. Quite simply, they steal your image out on another connect to your publish. And So I began watermarking my images. And That I check up on Pinterest to make certain the pictures are connecting to my website from time to time. To date, I haven’t discovered my image being hi-jacked, but I've come across lots of other hooks that don't connect to its original publish. I believe that's wrong!If only there is an simpler way on Pinterest to determine all of the hooks that others pinned from ecokaren. Presently, there's not a way that i can search my URL or title on the website to determine all of the images or posts which are pinned. I still need to use Google Statistics for that stat. Not awesome. I’m wishing that Pinterest will improve pinning visibility for blog proprietors before lengthy.There isn’t an idiot-proof approach to trying to find Pinterest customers. I attempted to look for pinners and generally, it normally won't come in looking results. Again, I've better luck using Google. Something is wrong with this picture.If only there is an simpler method to conduct contests. A Pinterest contest is among the best social networking campaigns that you can do for the business or perhaps your blog. At Eco-friendly Sisterhood (http://greensisterhood.com), we manage Pinterest contests for the clients plus they require lots of maintenance. Something that finds boards and hooks which have been repinned probably the most could be ideal. Again, let’s hope Pinterest adds functionality with this type of factor soon.

Are you currently listening Pinterest? If you're able to make these four unexpected things happen, I’d adore you much more!

Solve people’s problems!

On Monday, Jamie outlined the truth that attractive, inspiring content does well on Pinterest, and that’s true. Place up pretty images or cute creatures pictures as well as existence altering quotes with awesome graphics around the network.

But nothing—and I am talking about nothing—gets people’s attention like fixing problems they have been battling with.

Request yourself, “What would i would like to pin and repin?” That’s the publish which get pinned probably the most.

Have you got a personal success story on Pinterest? That which was the publish about? Inform us about this within the comments.

Adding author Karen Lee is really a co-founder and controlling partner of Eco-friendly Sisterhood, a network of eco-friendly women writers with aggregated monthly page sights well over 2.5 million pageviews. We help companies to improve online branding awareness with content and social networking marketing methods, like Pinterest contests. Karen is another founder and writer of ecokaren where she creates about need for washing your washer as well as on greening your existence.

View the original article here