Australasian Christian Writers: Bible Pathway Adventures

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Monday, 24 April 2017

Using Pinterest to Market your Author Business

By Pip Reid

Pinterest is a great way to drive traffic to your online author platforms. Our latest quarterly page view results on www.biblepathwayadventures.com show Pinterest was the best referrer of website traffic, beating rivals like Facebook and Google Plus by a country mile.

Interested? Here are five simple ways you can use Pinterest to increase the number of visitors to your author website, blog, or social media pages.

1. Add a Website Link

Did you know Pinterest allows you to add a website link (URL) to every image you pin? This means every time a pinner clicks on your image, they land on the website or platform you’ve added to your pin. How do we do this?

Take a look at this pin of Pharaoh. When you click the pencil icon, it brings up an edit box. Next to ‘website’, I’ve added a URL to the Escape from Egypt story page on biblepathwayadventures.com. Note: Pinterest doesn’t like shortened tinyurl and bit.ly links, so remember to include the full website address.

From now on, every time a pinner clicks on Pharaoh, they get taken directly to Escape from Egypt. (see screenshot below).

2. Make sure search engines can find you.

In the Account Settings section of your Pinterest page, find ‘Search Privacy’. Search privacy allows you to choose whether you hide your Pinterest page from search engines. Make sure your settings show ‘no’, as shown in this screenshot.

Here’s an example of how effective Search Engines discoverability works. When I type ‘Jonah Bible Quiz’ into Google images, Bible Pathway Adventures’ quizzes appear five times on the first line. All these images are from our Pinterest page.

If someone clicks on one of these quiz images, they get taken our Pinterest page. If they click the image in Pinterest, they get taken to our website. It’s easy to see how consistently adding content to Pinterest can boost web traffic to your author blogpost or website!

3. Doing well on Pinterest often means your website can rise in Google rankings.

To help pinners and search engines like Google find your work, add a description to each pin. Write short engaging image descriptions that speak to your audience. Since our biggest audience is Christian moms looking for Activity and Bible teaching ideas, my Activity descriptions read like this: ‘Printable Bible Quiz: Abraham | FREE Download’ or ‘Plague of Hail | Ten Plagues of Egypt’. These descriptions are packed with keywords that show up well in search results.

4. Pinterest lets you verify your author website.

This adds credibility to your Pinterest profile and shows pinners you are the owner of your website. To verify your website, go to account settings. Next to the box where you’ve added your website domain name, click the ‘confirm website’ button to start the verification process.

Once you’ve verified your domain name, you’ll receive a check mark next to the website address. Verified websites can rank higher in Pinterest and Google search results, so it’s worth doing.

5. Join Group boards.

Group boards appear under many different names – shared boards, contributor boards, community boards and collaborative boards, and are where like-minded pinners meet. Group boards give your pins even greater visibility, meaning more traffic to your website or blog. It’s also a fantastic way of connecting with other pinners and building relationships. To join a board, ask a member to invite you. Otherwise you’ll need to contact the owner via Pinterest message, email, or twitter, and ask for an invitation.

HOT TIP: Use the website Pingroupie to find Pinterest group boards worth joining.

Never underestimate the power of consistency and perseverance. Great images, useful content, and frequent pinning are the keys to doing well on Pinterest.

Is 2017 is the year you give Pinterest a go?

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/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/biblepathwayadventures
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/biblepathwayadventures/

Monday, 17 April 2017

How to Create a Fabulous Pinterest Page

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

In fact, you can create boards for anything that’s relevant to your writing genre or you, the author.

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:

Kristen Kieffer: https://nz.pinterest.com/well_storied/

Bible Pathway Adventures: https://nz.pinterest.com/biblestory4kids/

Joanna Penn: https://nz.pinterest.com/jfpenn/

My next blogpost will discuss how to use Pinterest to drive online traffic to your author blog or website.

About Pip Reid

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/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/biblepathwayadventures

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/biblepathwayadventures/

Monday, 10 April 2017

Using Pinterest to Increase Book Sales

Today I'd like to welcome a new guest blogger to Australasian Christian Writers, Pip Reid. Pip and I actually attended high school together, but didn't know each other back then (although we have lots of mutual friends and memories). Pip now lives in Wellington, but visits her family in Tauranga ... which is where we remet, thanks to mutual friend Catherine Hudson.

Last time we met, Pip was giving me the low-down on Bible Pathway Adventures, which she runs with her husband, Curtis. They've taken a unique approach to writing, publishing and marketing their children's books. Instead of writing then publishing then marketing, they've spent the last few years developing an online ministry platform, and will start turning their content into real books later this year.

What intrigued me was the way Bible Pathway Adventures have leveraged Pinterest to build traffic to their website. Pinterest is the major social network I'm least comfortable with, so I wanted to find out more about how they've done it. So I asked Pip to share in a series of posts here on Australasian Christian Writers, and I was thrilled when she agreed.

Welcome, Pip!

By Pip Reid, Bible Pathway Adventures.

When thousands of books are released on Amazon each week, how do you stand out? Have you considered using Pinterest as part of your social media marketing outreach? There’s world of opportunity out there for authors on Pinterest if you know how to use it. Most authors I know have limited or no marketing budget - which is why it’s a great time to learn how Pinterest can increase exposure and sales of your books. Best of all, every author can use Pinterest for free.

So, let’s dive under the hood and take a closer look at how Pinterest can help your author business.

Pinterest is a social network that allows people to visually share and discover new interests for posting (known as ‘pinning’) images or videos to their own or other’s boards. I use Pinterest for three reasons;

To research and collect images that inspire my stories.
To drive online traffic to our Bible story ministry website www.biblepathwayadventures.com
To improve SEO (search engine optimization) so more people can find our stories and free resources.

While most people know Pinterest is a fantastic visual platform, many authors don’t realize that Pinterest is now one of the main social media platforms driving internet search traffic to websites. This is especially true for online businesses.

Take a look at this screenshot from our Google Analytics page. Pinterest drives roughly 90% of all social media traffic to bibleathwayadventures.com, with the other 10% coming from Facebook, Google Plus, and Instagram. If you have an author website and aren’t using Pinterest to drive traffic to your website, it’s worth another look!

Why create a Pinterest page?

For a start, 87% of users have purchased a product because of Pinterest. Your images (pins) get greater reach compared with Facebook and Google Plus, and have a longer shelf life. While Facebook, Google Plus, and Instagram posts generally disappear from your news feed after a few hours, images posted years ago on Pinterest still get shared by Pinterest users.

For example, images I posted over a year ago, such as Planning Bible Time, Ten Plagues of Egypt coloring page, and Bible Coloring Pages (see below) have been shared thousands of times, and are still being shared. These images are linked directly to the Stories and Activities sections on our website, which means a constant stream of new visitors to these pages. If you have a website with products to sell, this can mean sales.

Before you decide whether Pinterest is the right social media platform for you, consider whether your potential audience is on Pinterest. Here are some statistics to think about:

Total number of monthly active users: 150 million
Number of Pinterest users from the USA: 70 million
Number of Pinterest users outside the USA: 80 million
81% of Pinterest users are female
Men account for only 7% of total pins on Pinterest

And that’s not all…. The median age of a Pinterest user is 40, however the majority of active users are below 40. Half of Pinterest users earn USD$50K or more per year, with 10% earning more than USD$125K. 30% of all US social media users are Pinterest users, and 60% of Pinterest users are from the US. Pinterest is booming!

Here’s a snapshot of Bible Pathway Adventures’ Pinterest followers.

Approximately 87% are from the US, 86% are female, and the majority are English speakers, followed by Spanish and Portuguese.

Do you have:

A largely female readership?
With disposable income?
Based in English-speaking countries?

If so, it might be time to consider using Pinterest to reach new readers. If you already have a Pinterest account, consider increasing the number of boards and posts you create.

The next two blog posts go into Pinterest in more detail, including how to set up a Pinterest account, and what type of boards and pins to create to help boost website traffic.

Thanks, Pip! You've given us a lot of food for thought, and I'm looking forward to reading the next post.