Pinetiquette
As with all social media tools, there are written and unwritten rules as to how you use them. Pinterest isn’t any different and we’ve come up with our suggestions to ensure you know what you’re doing when you go to use it and you don’t break any pinetiquette rules.
- Pin Little & Often – Don’t spend an hour pinning and auto-tweeting as it will annoy your followers on twitter for a start. If I go to my pinterest page and see that one person I follow has pinned so many similar pins that it almost fills the page, I am likely to unfollow them so it is best to pin 2 or 3 of your own images, repin a few and leave it at that and then come back to it two or three times a day.
- Don’t Self-Promote – Don’t fill your boards with your own products. True pinners love visuals so they fill their boards with pictures they enjoy and love and this shows their personality and that of their brand. Follow the 80/20 rule – 80% other people’s products, 20% your products.
- Credit the Source – If using a pin on your facebook page or within a blog post, always always always credit the source. You can use the embed button on pinterest to insert the pin in your blog post.
- Personality – Show the personality of your brand by creating boards that enhance or complement your services or your products e.g. a photographer could have a boards on wedding dresses, exotic locations, kids and gardens – to bring his/her business to the attention of engaged couples but also to show their personality and passions.
- Your Reputation – If you are a business pinner then bear in mind the reputation of your brand when repinning or pinning images, for example, while many fashion pins may include women or men in scanty lingerie or underwear, a board containing such pins may not be expected by your audience and may damage your online reputation particularly if you are selling homewares or children’s furniture.
- Reciprocate– Follow back those who follow you.
- Twitter – if you are auto-tweeting from your pins, remember to check into twitter too to see if you’ve received any responses on your pinning.
- Interaction – According to Repinly, we spend 0.5% of our time on pinterest commenting so it seems that we’re mostly interacting there by repinning rather than having conversations. Leave a comment on the occasional pin and if someone comments on one of your pins, do respond – it could be the start of a beautiful friendship 🙂
Image: Quick Meme
Find It Friday – 9 Pinterest Questions & Answers
Today’s Find It Friday is about pinterest (we’re having a pinterest week here – did you notice?;) ). Following a consultation with a new client recently, I thought I’d share some of the questions she had about her new pinterest account and some of the answers I gave her. Her products are bathroom & kitchen sinks and taps.
What boards should I set up? Should I just call them Kitchen Sinks, Bathroom Taps?
Yes, you can certainly include those boards for the specific product seeker. However, remember to include quirky or different kitchen sinks along with your own pins to those boards too. Don’t concentrate on self-promoting.
I’d also suggest setting up boards for the various Kitchen types or styles. For example, contemporary kitchens, classic kitchens, country kitchens, white kitchens, small kitchens etc. If you are selling a product for kitchens, be on the lookout for striking or pretty kitchen images and share them with your followers which will demonstrate your passion and enthusiasm for your product. You can then include some of your own images as well.
I see you have a ‘Gardens’ board but you don’t have any products for gardens. Why do you have a board for it?
Partly because I like gardening and to me, pinterest is about showing the ‘whole you’ and showing your interests too. It’s not just about the product, it is about showing the lifestyle too. If your target audience were those who wanted ‘country kitchens’, then including boards of cute farmyard animals and country scenes wouldn’t go amiss. I actually did slip one product picture into that board the other day as it was photographed in a pretty garden but generally, that board is just for fun and for sharing.
Hubspot recently flagged Oreck, a vacuum cleaning brand, as a great example of how to use images other than the actual vacuum cleaners, to entice pinners to follow and people to engage and buy. While it also has product boards, it also had a board called ‘furry friends’ emphasising subtly of course, that their products can deal with all the dog hairs that pets leave on your sofa. It’s ‘Stunning floors’ board connotes that your floors can be just as stunning by using their products and of course, all the floors are stunning.
How will people come to my website from my pins?
All the photos pinned from your website or blog are traceable back to their originial source so no matter how many times they are repinned, if someone clicks on them, they will be brought to where you pinned it from.
It is a good idea to have a ‘pin it’ button on your blog or on your product pages so that it is easier for visitors to your site to pin the photos (and it reminds them to do so too).
How do I merge my products with those of other pinners? Will they stand out like a sore thumb?
The cut-out photos of the taps, for example, will look like product shots so yes, it will be evident that they are your products. My tip is to pin them little and often, that is, don’t pin ten photos of taps from your website in one go. Write a clear description for the taps including a benefit for the user or why that tap is perfect for a country kitchen especially if you are pinning it to the ‘Country Kitchens’ board.
How often should I pin?
Little and often. If you are pinning lots, then ensure that they are of different types of photos and for different boards. There is nothing more off-putting than going to my pinterest account and seeing the page almost full of similar pins from a single pinner. Don’t pin too often to your facebook profile and take care of pinning too often if sending them out as tweets too. Pinerly will soon have a scheduling option which will be a really handy tool.
How long should the description be?
Pinterest allows up to 500 characters but unless you wish to include a tutorial, I think up to 150 characters is sufficient. Ensure that you are including keywords that are likely to be searched for and if you wish, do include a price. At the moment, only the £ and $ signs display across the front of the pin (not the €) but research suggests that pins with prices displayed receive more click throughs. Remember to include a ‘benefit’ for the customer or a tip on how it can be used.
I tried to link my Pinterest account to my Facebook business page but it wouldn’t work. Why not?
At present, there is only the facility to link pinterest to your personal profile on facebook.
How can I get more followers?
Here’s 5 suggestions for getting more followers on pinterest:
- It is a case of following other pinners and seeing it they follow you back. By repinning pins you like, this can generate follows too. Don’t rush to follow people – take some time to build up a good portfolio of boards and pins first. Check out our post on why you should set the covers of each board so that they look more attractive.
- If you have your pinterest account in sync with twitter and facebook, you will be able to see which of your facebook friends are using pinterest and they will be flagged up for you to follow.
- Find others that have a similar interest to yours. Check out Pinerly which flags up suggested pinners to follow under the various categories (if you need an invite to Pinerly, just ask us for one in the comment box).
- When you look at a person’s profile on pinterest, you will also see 3 people they have repinned from so it is likely that those pinners follow a similar theme – this can be a handy way of finding new people to follow too.
- Look at the most popular or the trending pins and boards on Repinly – if they fit in with your style, pin images that are similar to them.
How do I build up a relationship with followers? I remember being told that twitter is about relationship building and having conversations. Is pinterest similar?
Yes and no, to be honest. About 80% of the pins on Pinterest are repins which suggests that people enjoy looking for fresh content to pin on pinterest rather than on other sites and build their relationships with others by repinning their pins if they like them. As you can see from the statistics above, we only spend 0.5% of our time on pinterest commenting so we have some way to go in terms of having conversations there.
If you have any questions on pinterest, do ask in the comment box.
At Write on Track, we offer training on pinterest as well as showing business owners how to blog more effectively for their business so do get in touch if you would like to book a consultation or a training session.
Setting Your Pinterest Board Covers – How & Why
Did you know that you can select the image for the dominant space on your pinterest boards? You might be asking why would you want to do that when it already shows your most recent image?
Well, as you can see in the screengrab below, that doesn’t necessarily show off your board or your pin to its best advantage.
The ‘Boy’s Bedroom’ board shows a guitar cushion as its main image but as it only displays part of the picture, it really isn’t possible to see what it is. It would be more appropriate to display a picture that makes it clear it is a product for a boy’s bedroom or show an image of a boy’s bedroom. I’ve chosen to select an image of dinosaur wall stickers (see below) as this is a product I stock and it clearly shows it is a bedroom for a young boy.
As you can see from all the boards above, none of them are shown off to their best advantage and not only does this affect the repinning statistics by potential new followers but it can also affect their decision regarding whether to follow you or your individual boards. All the ‘bookcases’ board needed was a re-alignment of the photograph.
How to set a photograph for your board cover:
- Select the ‘boards’ option in the drop down mention under your name (top right hand corner).
- Hover the mouse over the board and ‘edit board cover’ pops up.
- Click on it and a box will open showing the current photo that is in the board cover (usually your most recent pin unless you have pre-set your board covers)
- You can then scroll across until you find the image you like, you can adjust it and then click ‘Set cover’
- As you can see from the screengrab above, the photographs have been adjusted so that the ‘best’ part of the pin is on display.
Just as we recommend you to move your boards around occasionally, we also recommend that you set your board covers and change them periodically.
I am speaking on the topic of ‘Pinterest for Bloggers’ at the KLCK Bloggers Meeting this coming Monday in Kilkenny. More details here if you would like to come along. If you can’t make it in person, do follow the hashtag #klck on twitter from 7:30pm
Pinterest Explained
Have you decided that it has become a case of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ with regard to Pinterest but you’re a tad baffled by it? Here’s an explanation of many of the Pinterest terminology.
Pin – A pin is a picture that is ‘pinned’ to pinterest. When you decide to ‘pin’ a picture to Pinterest from your website or another website, you will be asked to choose a pinboard to post it into, and to write a descriptor.
Pinterest Board – a board is a virtual pinboard, resembling a scrapbook. You can ‘pin’ as many pictures as you like onto a relevant board and you can create as many boards as you like. Popular titles for boards include ‘My Dream Kitchen’, ‘My Wedding’, ‘For My Home’ and ‘Recipes’. You can pin as many pictures as you like to each board.
Repin – to repin means that somebody pins a pin that they see on pinterest – partly to share it so their followers can see it and partly because they want to include it on their boards. A pin can always be linked back to its original source by clicking on it. When you repin, you can change the descriptor of the pin if you wish.
Like – Liking a pin means that it isn’t added to your boards or your collection of pins but it will show on your profile as one of your ‘liked’ pins. The originator of the pin will receive a notifcation that you have liked it.
Comment – As with so many other social media tools, one can comment on other pins. However, very little time is spent doing this. People tend to either like or repins pins they like, rather than commenting. Hence, is pinterest going to be the place to develop relationships? Time will tell if this changes.
Following – You can follow all of another pinner’s boards or you can choose to follow selected boards. Following all means that you will see new boards as and when that pinner creates them.
Because my boards are set up in my personal name rather than for each business, my boards tend to be a mixture of social media, interior design and farming along with other things I like so I have noticed people following selected boards rather than selecting ‘follow all’.
You can unfollow someone and they won’t be notified. When you follow someone, they will receive an email showing a number of your pins to encourage them to follow you back.
Sharing to Facebook and Twitter – note that you can choose to have your pins coming through to facebook but that it is to your personal facebook page, not your business page. I tend to let the very occasional pin go to my facebook page, however, I let all of my pins and repins update my twitter stream, being careful to do so ‘little and often’.
Sharing a pin with another user – if you want to bring a pin to another pinner’s attention, you can comment on the pin and by using the @ symbol with the pinner’s username (you need to be following that pinner) , that person will be alerted to your comment and hence, the pin.
Sharing a board – you can share a board with other users so that they can also pin to that board and it will also show up on their page of boards. (See our post on how to share a board)
If you have any questions on pinterest, leave a question in the comment box. You can follow Marie on pinterest here and Lorna here.
Is Pinterest Right For Your Business?
Is Pinterest becoming King of the social media platforms?
Have you seen reports that pinterest is surpassing other social media platforms, including facebook, for driving traffic to various websites? Indeed, on checking my own google analytics last week, I discovered that traffic from Pinterest had surpassed that from Facebook for the first time, and not only were more people visiting but the bounce rate was lower, they were staying on the website for longer and they were looking at more pages. Of course, the next step is to put aside time to set up funnels for my Google Analytics to see if the traffic from Pinterest is resulting in sales (See CGOnline Marketing’s post on how to set up a funnel).
Are you wondering if Pinterest is right for your business?
Repinly will help you to determine this. You can check out the most popular pinners and see if you can emulate their success, read the statistics on the most popular categories and perhaps it is of no surprise that Food and Drink is the most popular in terms of pins, with its most popular pin of fish cakes coming in at 1,516 repins. Home Decor is the most popular category for boards. You can even find out your own pinterest score (Mine is 26 out of 100).
How can you use repinly effectively? It will give you pointers regarding how to create popular pins and how to gain comments, likes and repins. Of the Food and Drink category, the top pin with 1,516 repins may seem like a very high number of repins to reach but if you look further down the page, #16 has 53 repins, a relatively small number in comparison (at the time of my search). Having a pin repinned by one of the most popular pinners would certainly be an excellent method for your picture to go viral.
80% of pins on pinterest are repins, this is an interesting statistic especially when compared to the statistic that only 1.4% of tweets are retweets. It certainly demonstrates the high possibility of pins going viral. What is interesting is that while people repin or like a picture to show that they like it and wish to share it, they don’t spend much time commenting. I have to admit I rarely comment on pins – but perhaps we need to be doing more of this in order to build relationships on pinterest.
See the above table for the most popular categories – this also shows that it is important to categorise your boards appropriately. I was surprised the ‘Food and Drink’ was so low on the list considering the popularity of any pins related to food and drink.
Repinly is an interesting tool particularly if you love statistics but it is also interesting to see the most popular pins and wonder sometimes just what has made them so popular!
Are you on pinterest yet? If you have any questions, do ask them in the comment box below. You can follow me on pinterest here.
Thursday’s Blogging Tip #4
Today’s blogging tip is to remember that your potential customers are not telepathic, they need to be asked/told what you want them to do. At the end of each business blog post, you must make a simple request – be it to follow you on twitter, become a fan on facebook, leave a comment or direct them to where they might purchase the product you have written about.
Thursday’s 15 Second Blogging Tip
Thursday’s Tip
Always put your photo on your blog / website – use a professional photo where you are smiling and looking friendly.
Pinterest: SEO Benefits of Naming Photographs
You have probably heard of the SEO benefits of naming your photographs properly for your blog or website. With the increased use of Pinterest, it makes even more sense to name your photographs effectively.
If you hover your mouse over a photograph, the name of the photograph appears. All too often, the name of the photograph is something like 04578373.jpg or IMG9873.jpg. Google cannot read images, hence each one of your pictures should have a name that includes your keyword. For example, If you wish to sell your recipe book, your photograph of brown bread should be named brown bread recipe. Every photograph should have a relevant name and yes, it does take time to rename them.
It is also a good idea to name the photograph in the title and ‘alt tag’ part of uploading your photograph to your blog. (See our post on how to upload a photograph to your blog) The Alternate Tag is the keyphrase that displays when someone hovers over the photo.
There are now other benefits to naming your photographs properly. More and more people are using pinterest, they are either pinning photographs by having the ‘pin it’ button on the top of their screen or they can use the ‘pin it’ button on your blog post if you have installed a plugin (see my ‘pin it’ button at the top of each Garrendenny Lane blog post).
When they pin your photograph, the name you gave that photograph in your Alt Tag will show up in the description for the pin – this means that unless the pinner changes it, your keyword within your description will remain with the photograph. If you have used a well optimised keyword, it should show up in searches and receive repins and hence, drive more traffic back to your website.
If the pinner has their account linked to twitter or chooses to tweet the pin, that description will also be tweeted with the link. I’ve noticed that most people tend to leave the description, adding their own opinion to it such as ‘Love this’ or ‘ perfect for my child’s bedroom’ etc.
Remember that the description doesn’t just have to be factual, it can be a compelling description too.
We are planning to teach various courses on pinterest in the autumn so do let us know if you’d be interested and we’ll post up the details once we have the dates. I will be presenting on the topic of pinterest at our next KLCK bloggers network meeting in Kilkenny on 9th July if you would like to come along.
Find It Friday: Pinterest
For this week’s Find It Friday post, we were asked a question about pinterest from Racquele: Should I set up a specific board for each of my Pinterest categories (e.g. ‘My tutorials’ and ‘My Fabric Boxes’). Am I being dishonest if I pin my products amongst other pictures in more general boards as people wouldn’t know some of the items are mine?
Pinterest Boards
Tips For Your Pinterest Boards
- Try to ensure that each board name contains a popular keyword that people may search for. For example, ‘my fabric boxes’ is fine as other pinners may be looking for ‘fabric’, ‘boxes’, or ‘fabric boxes’ and your board and pins should then show up in searches. ‘My tutorials’ is too vague – you need to explain what the tutorials are about e.g. ‘My Sewing Tutorials’. ‘Sewing’ may also be a popular search term which would lead to your products being found and repinned.
- Set up as many boards as are appropriate but ensure that you have a number of pins in each one. Don’t have boards that are empty.
- See if some of the most popular board names would fit your boards. For example, according to the infographic we posted yesterday, two of the most popular board names are ‘For the Home’ and ‘Products I Love’.
- Remember to re-arrange your boards for variety and don’t forget to move those out-of-season boards to the bottom of the page. See ‘How to Re-arrange your Pinterest Boards‘.
- Pinterest has many benefits for your business from increasing brand awareness to significant SEO advantages. With many people spending more time on Pinterest than any of the other social media platforms, it is certainly worth spending time on getting it right and maximising the benefits for your business. Pinterest traffic to my online shop surpassed that of Facebook for the first time this month – time will tell if sales from Pinterest surpass those from Facebook.
Are you being dishonest by mixing your own products with others?
Would you like to attend a course on pinterest?
We will be putting in tenders to teach courses on pinterest and are hoping to gauge interest for same by posting a poll on our facebook page. We are also wondering if people would be interested in attending a webinar taught by Marie and I. We’d really appreciate if you could answer the questions on our poll or leave any comments in the box below.
Hope you all have a lovely weekend and that the sun shines 🙂
Lorna
Blog Awards Ireland – The What, Who, Why, Where & How
If you write a blog, be it personal or business, I do hope you will enter it in the Blog Awards Ireland awards coming up in October. The nominations are now open until 16th July, you can nominate your own blog or place this button in the sidebar to ask others to nominate you (see instructions here if you’re not sure how to do it) and after the 3 rounds of judging, the 2012 will culminate in a gala dinner awards evening in the Osprey on October 13th.
There are 30 categories to choose from and you can enter your blog in more than one category so do have a look through and decide on those that are best suited to your blog. Entry to the Blog Awards is free. Do have a look at the general judging criteria to guide you in improving your blog over the coming weeks and don’t forget about the ‘Best Blog Post’ category too which will be judged by public vote. The other 29 categories will all be judged by independent judges.
Competition for Tickets
Tickets for the event will soon be on sale but you don’t have to wait until then to give yourself a chance of snapping up a pair of tickets as we are having a competition for 2 tickets and a night’s accommodation at the Osprey. Don’t forget to like the Facebook page too.
Why enter the awards?
From having being in the finals in previous blog awards and social media awards, I can vouch for it being a fantastic feeling to see your work recognised on a national level. So many of us put so much passion, enthusiasm, talent and hard work into our blogs that it is great to see that being recognised. Being in the finals (and also being shortlisted) for an awards can generate significant local and national press coverage for your blog and for your business which is, of course, also free.
Why have a blog awards?
Beatrice, Amanda and I decided to organise the blog awards for 2012 last autumn. (The Irish Blog Awards ended last March after a very successful six years and they were not going to be continued). Being passionate about blogging and having organised local networking blogging meetings for almost 18 months, we felt that Blog Awards Ireland would be a challenge that we would enjoy and succeed with running well. You can read more about our reasons in this blog post too.
The nominations have only been open a week and so many people have entered already, put buttons on their blogs and written blog posts about the awards that it really feels that it is taking off. We have so much planned – both in the run up to the awards and for the night itself – that we know it is going to be a fantastic event. Yes, there’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes and there’s also a lot of fun too.
We hope that you will enjoy the run up to the blog awards too and that lots of people will join us on 13th October for a wonderful night.
Follow Lorna on Pinterest
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