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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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’.
4. 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‘.
5. 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?

Not at all.  You can make it clear that the products are yours by describing them as such in the descriptor or by putting them in boards with an appropriate title, e.g. ‘My Craft Ideas’.  For example, on my pinterest account, I have a board that is named ‘Garrendenny Lane Products’ and it is evident they are products from my online shop.  I also have a board named ‘Wallpapers I Love’ and these are a mixture between wallpapers I stock and others I like. However, I think it is evident from my collection of boards that I have two businesses and my total of 59 boards reflect my products, my services as well as other areas of my life and my interests.

True pinners pin products they like as well as their own products but you are not being dishonest by mixing them up.  What is ‘bad pinterest practice‘ is pinning only your own products and it is very unlikely that you will get many repins or followers as a result unless you are already a hugely successful brand.

Pinning is about sharing and as long as you remember that, you won’t go wrong.

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

Why You Should Re-Arrange Your Pinterest Boards

Pinterest have just redesigned their pages and it is most noticeable (for now anyway, perhaps they are changing the pages one at a time) on the ‘Boards’ pages.  Your most recent pinned picture is larger than the others with 4 others displayed underneath and pinners can also see the total number of pins within each board.

What is important is that you re-arrange your boards regularly. I have seen pages with a ‘Christmas’ board still at the top – this doesn’t reflect well on your pinning ability nor your pinning kudos. If you are including some business boards within your account, it is all the more important that you re-arrange them regularly.

To rearrange your boards – go to the top right of the home pinterest page once you have logged in, where your avatar and name are, click on the arrow and a dropdown menu will open, just click boards and your Boards page will open.

I had St Patrick’s Day and Mother’s Day boards at the top of my ‘Boards’ page and as those dates have just passed (Mother’s Day was today in Ireland and the UK – but I must remember to raise its profile again closer to the US Mother’s Day in May), I decided to move them to the bottom of my page.

Simply click on the little icon as indicated by the red arrow in this graphic. Then click on each board that you wish to move and drag it to the place you wish to place it.  I have to say it is much easier to move boards around within this new design.

Once you have moved the boards around, don’t forget to click the red tick box to save them or you will have lost your work.

We recently wrote a number of blog posts on pinterest so do check them out if you have any queries or ask us a question in the comment box below. Are you pinning yet? Is it proving good for your business? Are you enjoying it?