With every passing day, it seems a new social network arises. One of the latest is Pinterest, which describes itself as an “online pinboard.” Pinterest stands out from other sites such as Facebook because of one thing: its users can only “pin” posts with images. The draw of Pinterest is the pretty pictures found on it. It’s attractive in a way that Twitter or Facebook haven’t been. If you have a blog that makes frequent use of appealing images, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t incorporate Pinterest into your blog content.
Plugging Into Pinterest
Once you have made a Pinterest account, you should do several things to connect your blog to it. Pinterest gives bloggers the chance to add a “Follow Me on Pinterest” button to their blog. You’ll find the code for the button under the “Goodies” section of their website.
You also want to make it easy for readers of your blog to pin your posts to their boards. This increases your blog’s visibility in several ways. The reader’s pins are visible to people who follow them and other general users of Pinterest. When someone pins an image, others can repin it if they find it equally inspiring. They can also simply “like” the pin, or better yet, click through it back to your blog, boosting your traffic.
Pinterest provides the code that you can add to your posts to make a small “Pin It” button appear at the bottom of the post. When you get the code, you can add a custom description for each pin, so that it is automatically filled in when a reader pins the post. The button also allows readers to see how many others have pinned the same post.
Pinning Away
Perhaps the most important part of connecting Pinterest to your blog content is creating pins for each post. The beauty of Pinterest is that you can have multiple boards. If your blog covers a range of related topics, you can create a board for each and pin accordingly. For example, if you run a fashion blog, you can create boards for “Designers” and “Runway Looks.” Each board may attract a different group of followers, but each board will also direct those followers right back to your blog.
Each pin needs to have a description. The description should, like a great title or lead-in in order to grip the readers and make them want to click on that pin. You can simply describe the image, there’s not need to copy and paste the text from the post itself.
The image on the pin should also grip the reader as well. For example, if you are pinning images from a runway show, don’t pin an image of the model walking away or a blurry picture. It’s not visually appealing and won’t increase your readership.
Every pin you create links people back your blog. Pinterest has a proven track record of driving traffic to websites. For the month of January 2012, it drove more traffic to blogs and websites than referrals on sites such as YouTube or Google+.
Amy F is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments.
