By Pip Reid
Every social media platform, including Pinterest,
starts with an empty page - no followers and no content. However, with
perseverance, great images and clever ideas, you’ll grow your platform, one
follower at a time.
I’ve been using Pinterest for three years. But I’ll let you in
on a secret—I nearly gave up after six months. Our images weren’t being
pinned or shared. It was like watching tumbleweed blow by.
As I listened to Pinterest experts and applied their ideas, our
followers began to grow. Now Bible Pathway Adventures has thousands of followers,
with more added daily. And our Activity pins dominate certain bible activity categories.
So don’t give up too soon!
To use Pinterest effectively as an author, open a business account, not a personal one.
A business account gives you analytics, so you can
see where your followers are from, what pins they like, and what boards are
most popular. It also gives you access to other tools so you can embed pins and
boards into blog posts - another great way of growing your following.
To
open a business Pinterest account, go to https://business.pinterest.com/en.
You simply need to add your email address, password, and name of your
organization or brand. In 15 seconds you’ll have a new Pinterest account. Easy!
Once
you’ve opened your account, write a great bio. Read this helpful blogpost
on how to write Pinterest bios like a boss. Don’t forget to include keywords in
your ‘About’ section. You have a 200-character limit, so keep your description
concise.
To create a board, simply click ‘Create Board’.
Name your boards based on keywords
for better discoverability. The
search tool is one of the most used functions on Pinterest, so make sure
pinners can find you. Many users now go to
Pinterest for search results, rather than other search engines like Google.
Because Pinterest search results show me how pinners
search for Bible activities, our boards include names like Ten Plagues of
Egypt, Bible Quizzing, and Free Bible Printables for kids. In this screenshot
I’m creating a board called Bible Teachings, where I plan
to post artwork and links to teachings on our YouTube channel, The Donkey
Speaks.
Type the board name and choose if you want to make it secret or not. I
use secret boards to collect Activities ideas, add content to new boards so they’re
filled with pins when I make them public, or for personal interests unrelated
to Bible Pathway Adventures.
If you’re completely new to Pinterest, start by creating themed boards.
Ideas
include:
- Boards for each book project
- Locations
- Behind the scenes
- Writing tips
- Activities
This screenshot of Bible Pathway Adventures’ Pinterest page
shows a sample selection of boards I’ve created. We’ve created boards for every
Bible story we’ve published, Activities (word searches, mazes, crosswords, quizzes
and coloring pages), Behind the Scenes, book cover reveals, location and Meet
the Team boards, and lots more. Popular Pinterest accounts often have over 60
boards.
Now it’s time to fill your boards with content.
When pinning, don’t just pin your own content – pin from your newsfeed and search results, too.
With tons of images being posted each day, it’s important your
own pins stand out in a crowded newsfeed. Vertical images work better than
horizontal images, and get you more space. If you’re creating your own pins, try
736 x 1128px for best results. 80% of Pinterest’s traffic now comes via mobile devices -
so when it comes to your pin, it needs to stand out on a smaller screen.
These two screenshots show you examples of vertical pins from
Bible Pathway Adventures’ Pinterest page.
But I’m an author, not a graphic designer!
Luckily websites like
Picmonkey or Canva
provide online tools to make designing high-quality pins
quick, easy and fun. This screenshot shows an image I created in
Picmonkey using a mix of our cartoons and their online tools.
HOT TIP: Place your most popular boards in the top two rows.
When Pinners click on your Pinterest page, they only see seven
boards ‘above the fold’. So show them your best work. To move a board, just
click and drag the board into its new position.
For
Pinterest inspiration, check out these authors:
My
next blogpost will discuss how to use Pinterest to drive online traffic to your
author blog or website.
About Pip Reid
Pip Reid is the co-founder and author of Bible Pathway Adventures, a free Bible storyapp created to help parents around the world teach children more about the Bible. To help with this mission, Bible Pathway Adventures offers Bible stories and educational resources stories in many languages including Chinese, Hindi, Swahili, Tagalog, Spanish, Russian, Indonesian and Portuguese. All available for free download at www.biblepathwayadventures.com.
Outside of writing, Pip loves spending time in the outdoors, traveling, reading, and hiking with MJ, the world’s most lovable Staffy X.
Stay up to date with Bible Pathway Adventures on social media:
Pinterest: https://nz.pinterest.com/biblestory4kids/
thanks, very helpful. I will look forward to your next posts on the subject
ReplyDeleteThanks Christine!
DeleteI've just spent an hour rearranging my random Pinterest boards into some semblance of order - and deleting a bunch that had hardly any pins. It's also surprising how many pins I'd put in the wrong boards!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tips, Pip. I'll conquer this one day!