Pinterest is the new social media fever. When I heard about it, my first reaction was “overwhelming”. I asked to myself, “What? Yet another social media?”.
Well I hate to spend time on social media. I simply don’t have the time for it. I’m sure many of you bloggers are on the same boat with me.
Although I love to spend reasonable amounts of time on social media by sharing stuff and interacting with people, I cannot get the most out of social media interactions.
Well, don’t get me wrong; by “making most”, I don’t mean making the most sales for my business. I simply can’t even effectively build relationships with people.
It seems to be a lot easier with email marketing and interacting with people on my blog, than trying to do the same on social media. I feel more “personal” with emailing and interacting with people on my blog.
Well, that’s a lament and its a totally different story.
But when Pinterest entered the social media arena, I simply thought that I should ignore it. And then I saw that most bloggers were talking about it and there were mixed views about Pinterest. Some liked it, some totally hated it.
I then read the awesome guide to Pinterest by Neil and decided to try it out. Neil was kind enough to send me an invite.
Within minutes of me registering and filling out the profile, I started getting emails telling me that people are already following me, when I still didn’t have any boards or pins!
Oh well… its nothing but the social media craze. It happens with any other social media. It happened with Google+ too!
Moving on.
What Pinterest is all about?
Well, it a social media site - this means it is a place where a big crowd gathers. Since the number over there is pretty good, there’s also a greater chance for attention, right?
Yes for sure. But can’t you catch the attention of anyone with anything? Certainly nope!
You need to call out the right people with the right product/service/anything in order to make them at least give you their couple of seconds.
This is one of the basic rules of marketing - Selling/promoting the right stuff to the right people.
Pinterest is about visuals. It is a social media where we can create pinboards, just like the boards we have at home or office where we pin cards, pictures of our kids, scenery, motivating phrases, sexy women posing, meeting schedules, goals, etc.
Once you have your account, a gravatar image, and your profile set up, the next thing you need to do is to create Pinboards. Each pinboard will have a theme - the title of your board should represent the theme of your board.
For instance, if you’re a puppy lover and pin a lot of cute puppy images, create a board called “Cute puppies” and pin them all there. It is just like categorizing your pins. It also makes it easier for your followers to follow particular boards of their choice.
Just like the default Google+ circles, Pinterest also has default blank boards once you create your account. You may use those boards as well and create new ones too depending upon your needs.
Why should you pin? Well, its about sharing awesome content. When you find something appealing and interesting you tend to share - that’s the fundamental instinct in being part of any social media.
But for internet marketers Pinterest can help to build backlinks (each image you pin will link back to the original page and the links are do-follow) and to help building relations, brand and audience.
What’s there at Pinterest?
As I said already, Pinterest is about visuals. You get to pin photos/images/pictures - whatever you call them. So its about images (and also videos, but they’re not very popular). The Pinterest community is mostly comprised of people who have a very good taste of enjoying visually appealing stuff.
But this is where it also gets diluted for internet marketers. IM people are so serious about business (I hope so ;)) and just like “Facebook for fun”, Pinterest is also close to that point.
You can see loads of the following kind of images there (I’m not saying these are the only things you see there; there are lots of other kinds of stuff too)-
(i) Fashion bloggers/online marketers pinning lingerie, boots, fashion stuff, garments upon sexy models.
(ii) Too much flesh - meaning, pictures of women and men posing almost naked, just covering their privates. Again, promoting lingerie, boots, beds etc.
(iii) Too much cute puppies. Well there’s too much of cute “anything” - not just puppies, but kids, kittens, birds, elephants and even cute Rhinos.
(iv) Quotes, quotes and quotes.
You see, I’ve just pointed out a very few.
It is all about your perspective. If you’re in the right mood, you’ll see Pinterest strike a chord with you. If you’re in a different mood you’ll really be annoyed.
Let me explain. Let’s say you’re overwhelmed with blogging and that you are in a refreshing or relaxation mode. If you land on Pinterest to see scenery, motivational quotes and fun stuff (flesh, cuties, other hilarious stuff etc.) you’ll enjoy it.
I know what you’re thinking - “Jane, if you follow people who post such stuff, you’ll only see those”. Well said (or well thought!). But you know, everyone strives to get attention on this new social media platform and you can’t help people pinning these kinda “visually appealing” stuff.
And also with the fun stuff, Pinterest can be a very big distraction or a time waster.
OK Internet Marketers, what do we do?
Will Pinterest work for internet marketers? Yes it will, despite all the argument about its relevance to your niche and products. You can make it work there.
Here are the golden tips.
Promote others
When you jump on to the Pinterest platform, just like with any other social media, you will naturally have a urge to pin all images from your blog posts. Pinterest clearly asks you to avoid too much self promotion.
This basically means that you should not only pin images from your own blog posts, but you need to pin more of other’s stuff.
The 60-40 rule plays here as well. Pin 60% of others’ stuff and 40% of your stuff.
Interact
There’s no point in just pinning. You need to get there and interact. But wait, I hear you - there’s no time! Same here.
There’s good news though. You can use Pinterest as a refresher or a recharger. When you’re really exhausted go to Pinterest - you can kill two birds with one stone - (i) give yourself a nice deserved break and refresh, (ii) build your community and engage at a tremendously growing social media platform.
Pin it and make it easier to pin
This is the purpose of Pinterest. Whenever you read a blog post you will usually tweet it, leave a comment, like on Facebook or share on Google+ (or do all of it).
Now, make sure you pin it too. Most blogs have the “Pin it” button installed either on top of posts on or the Sharebar. This makes it easier for the readers to share the image on Pinterest.
If you don’t have one on your blog, go ahead and grab the code here (you need to scroll down a bit) and use it.
In order to make it easier for you to Pin stuff as you blog hop, install the Pinterest Pin It bookmarklet on your browser (the bookmarklet is also available on the same page given above).
Make your images appealing to Pin
You see Pinterest is all about eye catching stuff. And if you are an internet marketer there is not a greater chance for you to get your feet there compared to a fashion blogger. A fashion blogger usually has a lot of appealing and stunning images.
Therefore in order to compete with and be relevant to the crowd there you need to go for high quality images on your blog posts. This way you get a nice chance of getting repinned and liked a lot.
Sometimes, your images in blog posts won’t be very related to the topic, but simply catchy/colorful. Such images can go viral and create buzz on Pinterest. And, if the image manages to get a lot of repins, you get a lot of backlinks too!
Make your images meaty to pin
Not just beautiful images, but images that carry useful information also gets noticed a lot on Pinterest. For instance, infographics. They have it all. They have all the information and don’t need additional text or other accompanying information.
But if you’re not skilled at doing infographics (and yes, they can’t be done very often) you can simply create images on Photoshop or Paint. You can put some text information on a colored background with mild patterns.
If you’re good at Photoshop, you can create such an image in about 5-10 minutes.
The text can simply be the title of the post or the title of the post plus the bullet points discussed at the post. Both of these will create curiosity to check back the original post.
Pinterest for internet marketing: Takeaway
Well, you have it. 5 simple, no-gimmick and not-so complicated strategies to get your wheels spinning on Pinterest
As we’re all busy bloggers, there’s no surprise anything that adds to our to-do list is overwhelming (that’s why we use social tools after all); and Pinterest is no exception.
If you use Pinterest lightly and apply the basic engagement tactics, you should be doing great.
What do you think about Pinterest? Do you find it useful for your internet marketing life?
I appreciate your comments as always.
Rosemary Jayne says
Everyone’s talking about Pinterest this week - even the Podcast Answer Man Cliff Ravenscraft and MacWorld. I only really got started with Pinterest 3 days ago but I’m quickly finding it quite fun. I’m not really an images person but I’m having great fun creating bookshelves and hunting down infographics, plus the first time you get a notification saying someone liked/repinned one of your pins is kind of exciting 😉
I have 1 tip I’d like to add to your list Jane - pin new things and repin things from others. By adding content and re-sharing content from others you’re adding to the community more
Rosemary, yes I understand the excitement
Thanks for the great additions 
Good ones!
Thanks Jayne for the Pinterest invite and Thanks Jane for writing this cool article. Without it, I would not have joined today!
Kundan says
I think it is a new player in social media arena and I am reading about it for the first time on your blog. I would like to explore it sure, thanks for sharing a new and useful information.
Glad that you decided to try it out Kundan
Let me know if you need an invite (will need your email address).
Mark says
Well i was thinking about joining Pinterest for an entire week now. I wasn’t really sure that it’s going to make much difference in my business. However, that’s the same thing that many people said about Twitter when it first came out. So i think i’m going to give it a shot and see what’s the benefit (although i’m very busy right now). thanks for the wonderful post Jane
M Mark
Mark, that’s my opinion too. Unless we give it a shot we won’t see what it has. I’m doing the same - just giving it a shot; as of now, the results are promising. Let’s see!
Jane, I like your post
I checked out Pinterest and it’s pretty cool. You can basically post/share anything on any topic and share it with the world. I checked their traffic rank and they get lots of traffic!! I’ll be back I’m on my way to Pinterest 
Sure Joseph, feel free to try it out and see for yourself! Thanks for stopping by
I knew about pinterest from reading a webpronews ezine last week, but only decided to signup, sorry, ‘requested and invite’ after reading your post. Pinterest is awesome! Its like a long list of vertical post-it notes! A really novel idea, and it has a stores-like pages like in Etsy. They might start allowing us to sell things directly soon. Great post, by the way.
Thanks Deron, be sure to check it out!
Allie says
Jane,
You nailed it. I love Pinterest but more in a personal way. A few of my offline friends are there and I get to know them in a different way than Facebook.
But for us marketers and bloggers that are artistically impaired (me) and get their images from free stock sites, well, Pinterest is a challenge. So…
I decided to put more effort into my images. This is not just for Pinterest but for me and my audience too. I love to visit a blog that is visually pleasing, even if it is an SEO site.
I do bookmark my stuff and stuff I like there from business, heck, it is a backlink, right? But I have to admit, I may not if the image is bad.
~Allie
“I decided to put more effort into my images” - I’ve taken the same decision too Allie
Let’s see how it pays!
Love that you posted this! It’s covering a lot of the basics but it definitely sets the stage for people that are new to the experience. I think it’s a great marketing tool and am excited to see what http://www.pinerly.com has in store for helping market on it… I’m first in line
Ah Pinerly - there’s always a dashboard to any social media site! Just checked it out. Gotta explore this
We all know that P interest has recently exploded onto the social media scene as the newest networking platform. It has been seen that an internet marketing firm can really benefit from P interest. Attention-grabbing photos and info graphics allow SEO companies to optimize a client’s online presence through a more simplistic social media platform. Thanks for sharing this.
Very true Philppe, thanks for stopping by!
When you are pinning your products link to the different forums, make sure the weblink goes to something on your website, site or other public networking. It should help targeted visitors of your company , and in addition be something your customers will want to reveal their own supporters on Pinterest by re-pinning your articles.
Indeed Aleena, bringing the Pinterest traffic back to your website should be your ultimate aim (although it should not be your only aim).
There is no doubt Pinterest have attract millions in very short time of it’s launch but for me it’s not working. Maybe because i’m not a image likable person or maybe there is something which is not helping me build anything back for my sites.
I don’t know, what! But for me Pinterest is not worth to give attention.
Oh yes Irfan, not many like Pinterest
Hi Jane,
Thank you so much for this informative article about Pinterest, I will defiantly bookmark this article to be used in my articles later on.
Glad that you found this post useful, Qasim!
I have just came to know about Pinterest through one of my favorite blogger Neil yet got some issues with pinning the images and stuff well your updates given my some juice will work it out thanks for sharing it Jane.
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I find Pinterest great to share and for SEO as well. I also get to interact with nice people there!
Hi Jane, Well, I was reading your article and tweeted out a request for an invite to Pinterest. Guess who answered my call? Rosemary Jayne
thanks to you both I should be on Pinterest soon.
Ah glad you joined the band David
Hi Jane,
I’m not even know what pinterest is and haven’t seen that before. Simple, that’s social networking platform is completely new to me. I might consider to join it another day because I found a new social media today called “Pearltress” if you have change please connect with me on it.
Sure Ferb, I’ll check out Pearltress.
Jeremy Ruggles says
Hi Jane,
Pinterest sounds interesting. I have heard about it briefly from a couple different bloggers. They seemed to have mixed feelings about it. I’ll have to check it out, it sounds like there is a lot of potential there.
Thanks,
~Jeremy
Sure Jeremy, do check it out!
Pinterest is playing important role in internet marketing…..Jane you have given the whole idea about what it is for and everything little thing…..
Thanks Jane!!!!!!!!
You’re welcome Prakash!
Finally the article about Pinterest is here!
Being a passionate photographer I must say that Pinterest is a gem for both passionate & professional photographers like it says “A picture is worth a thousand words.”
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“A picture is worth a thousand words.” - That’s right Dennis!
Its very valuable info for me thanks for it sharing.
You’re welcome Abhinav.
Farrel says
Hello Jane, I find your post very informative and to be honest this is my first time to hear about pinterest. Thanks for adding me here and inviting us about pinterest. I will look forward to it.
Kay Mortimer says
It seems that those 1634 Words on Pinterest For Internet Marketers are really vital. I think that those words would make a big change on the success of your business. I know that business owners who are interested on Internet Marketing would also love to read those words.
I’ve been avoiding Pinterest at all costs, but mainly because I just didn’t understand the process and had heard how negatively IM’ers can be treated there.
Thanks for clearing some stuff up for me. This is quickly becoming a favorite blog for me and I only discovered it just over an hour ago…
Great and helpful article, to be sure…!
Rick says
Oh well I also heard about pinterest! It has quite did some noise. Great review too! I think this social media website will help a lot too for online business.
Catarina says
Let’s see what happens with Pinterest Jane.
The copy right issue can potentially ruin it. Have read about how all legal responsibility about what we pin is on us. Pinterest takes no responsibility for it.
The problem all boils down to copy right and, above all, the American culture of litigation. Pinterest would most likely have been sued already if it wasn’t for the clauses they make individual users sign. Suing individual users will not make enough money for whoever holds the copy right. The best option would be to sue Pinterest or a class action suit against “all” users of Pinterest. Most likely if it comes down to the latter they would focus on users residing in the US since it gets too complicated and expensive to involve other parts of the world. If Sopa and Pipa had been implemented Pinterest would have been closed down fairly quickly. And since a moderate version will be introduced after US presidential elections Pinterest will have to find a way forward:-)
You and I are most likely safe since we are not American. But a class action suit against a multitude of US members of Pinterest is a possibility in the future. So let’s see what happens with Pinterest.
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Hi Jane I would like to work with pinterest, kindly send me an invitation to this email id [email protected]
Just sent Caroline
Enjoy!
Khajamoin says
Hi Jani sheeba,
I would like to pinterest, can you send me request on my mail id.
Sure, just sent you one
Khajamoin says
Got just now! will try this out..
thank you for the request
Khajamoin, did u try it out?
I think pinterest is getting popular now will have to try it out for my business to drive some traffic
Shaam sure it is a good place for business.
Hey Jane I usually Use Pinterest for internet marketing and got lot of traffic from it.I think it’s a better for wasting money from blogengage.
Sumera, so true!
Ayesha says
Pinterest is also a social media site. It’s a good place for interaction as big crowd gather and interact here. In this era everybody becomes so busy and there is no extra time for wasting. Pinterest helps in marketing and it’s business as well as enjoyment. I like the above post.
Well i was thinking about joining Pinterest for an entire week now. I wasn’t really sure that it’s going to make much difference in my business.
Miki you can find that out by trying Pinterest for and see for yourself!
Pinterest is very interesting. I recently visited site it showcases every products and services. people can enjoy the some awesome snaps. It is the best way to market your products. After Face-book, Twitter, Pinterest is the best one to market your product.
Eva says
I love Pinterest! Thanks for the tips.
Peter Lee says
Yes I heard of it but I don’t use it….yet! I guess there are too many social media out there right now, way too many… I can imagine sooner or later all blogs/posts would be full of social media sharing buttons all over the place and that won’t look nice. You said the links are dofollow Jane? Okay I will check Pinterest out then 😛
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I have used pinterest to optimize my site and the result was great, it jumped from #142 to #6 in 2.5 weeks time.
The trick is we must got our website pinned and repinned by many people, which is the hardest part. Most of pinterest users won’t doing repin when they aren’t like what we pinned.
I do simple thing to outsource it on fiverr and got my site pinned by 75 people, I don’t know how can he did it just search by typing pinterest on fiverr and you will find it on the TOP. Many other seller offer pinterest service on fiverr but in my experience they can’t make my website increase in SEO. I don’t know why.
Reasons why Pinterest is great for SEO:
1. Even not support anchor text (except the url link), it’s still perfect for placing our keywords in description. Google will READ it!!
2. Google interest in social media signal so it will not tagged as links farm.
3. Once our website pinned it has 3 backlinks counts.
4. You need to ping the links of your pins to the to get your website increase in SEO.
Very interesting article about using Pinterest for Internet Marketing. I only just started on Pinterest and I quite enjoy it but have been a bit concerned that it was ideal to use for the promotion of physical products but apparently less so for eproducts such as mine.
Your article provides very useful ideas. many thanks. Tony
I actually got into this post. I located it to be interesting and loaded with exclusive points of interest. I like to read material that makes me believe. Thank you for writing this great content
Hi jane,
This is something great words for internet marketing on Pinterest. Thanks for sharing it.
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Cheers!