Pinterest is like an online manifestation of the traditional pile of coffee table books we like to have on display in our homes. They are books that look gorgeous inside and out, filled with amazing images, projects we are working on (or would be if we had the time or the skills), destinations we are planning to visit...  Books and magazines that make us and our friends go "ooooh" and spark up a conversation and give us aspirations to work towards. Or maybe it's just stuff we love!

Why pin?

Pinterest allows us to bookmark and share images and websites onto 'boards' – just like having a series of pinboards full of memos and magazine clippings.  Our Pinterest boards not only project our tastes and passions but can also be a useful way of filing great resources we have found to read later – just like other bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Digg or Delicious.

Pinterest, according to Mashable is showing up Twitter and Facebook in terms of referral traffic. Quite frankly, they just aren’t as beautiful as Pinterest and that’s why it’s getting people pinning and clicking away. It’s a very female social network, globally more than 80 per cent of users are women.

Also Pinterest is piggybacking on blogs, Twitter and Facebook as all Pins are instantly shareable to your existing networks and embeddable into a blog/web page – drawing more people to the site every day.

Pinning 101

Work your way through the Pinning 101 contents on the Pinterest help page – here they explain the basics of pinning and how to use the Pin it Bookmarklet – it really is helpful to understand the ‘anatomy’ of a pin and Pinterest board.

You should also work out whether you want a business profile or a personal profile or both. At this point there is not a lot of real difference between the accounts, save for the option to verify your website and the ability to create widgets to add to your website and blogs. This may well change in the future as Pinterest develops the business side. You can convert your personal page, so you needn’t lose any existing followers if you realize you’d like to change from a personal page to a business page.

More details on Pinterest for businesses can be found here http://business.pinterest.com/

Starting to pin is a bit like standing in a cork-board covered room, being handed a packet of pins, a pair of scissors and 60 million magazines and asked to decorate it! Where to start?

You need a strategy

This comes back to everything we have learned looking at Facebook and Twitter and all of your social media networking. The content we share needs to ‘fit’ and complement our target market. We need to filter out noise and focus on goals.

With Pinterest you can really have a lot of fun selecting the niche boards to make. Lateral thinking is really important. What will your target audience be searching for online? It may not be your exact product but you want them to find you and follow your boards because you share images, links and videos that interest them.

If you are online and you have the widget installed (see the help area on Pinterest for details of how to install the ‘pin it’ widget) then you should always be thinking about pinning. Some amazing images will pop up, just make sure you pin them to a relevant board. As you are researching blog posts, or for content to share on Twitter and Facebook and looking through the RSS feeds you have set up (as shown last week) you will naturally find images and videos that fit your niche topics.

Here's a few things to bear in mind: Try not to pin to just one board at a time in quick

succession as this can flood people's Pinterest streams and appear a bit intense.

If you can, try to pin throughout the day – grabbing the opportunities as they arise when you are online.

Try to mix up equally the number of repins, pins from web pages and original pins uploaded by you.

Always ensure the pin links to the original source Try not to pin from a home page address – link to the

actual blog post permalink, as in a few weeks it will become hard for anyone to find the original image from the home page of a blog or a regularly updated website.

Where there is a choice of similar images to pin, go for the one with the largest dimensions.

Regularly search for new people and brands to follow and engage with.

Take care and be selective with who to follow – you want your home page to be full of highly relevant Pinterest users all acting like your personal marketing team finding you juicy content to share.

Create a list of board ideas as part of your social media schedule, but try not to have too many boards that just have a handful of pins – you want your boards to be active and busy to encourage new followers – or if inactive to fill the screen, with 20 or so pins minimum.

There is no rush to fill a board! Quality over quantity every time.

Choosing themes, titles and descriptions for boards

Keep up with your Pinterest housework. All boards and pins need a good descriptive name and a description of the pin or the theme of the board. Boards should also be submitted to a particular category – you can do this by clicking on ‘edit board’.

You have to add a description to every pin as Pinterest will not allow you to leave this part blank. When adding descriptions to your 'pin it' buttons or on your own pins, don't make the cardinal sin of adding a full stop to save time – the pin will be unsearchable and so it defeats the object.

 

The goal is to get people repinning. The text you use can affect people on a personal level – where they decide whether or not to share your pins to their boards – as well as affecting the search engine ranking. So don’t rush here!

Use relevant keywords and hashtags, but don't write too much unless absolutely necessary – you want the text and image to appear as a teaser to tempt people to click. Anything longer than a tweet is usually too much.

 

Add a relevant hashtag – hashtags become hyperlinks to a search of the word tagged – just like with Twitter. One hashtag per pin should be plenty and as you have the option to share quickly to Twitter they will also get picked up there if they are within the 140 character limit. Use the search function to find images with keywords that are relevant to you and your target audience, then repin anything you find interesting  to your boards.

 

Keywords will enable users to find your boards and pins from internal and external searches. As with all content, think hard about the sort of search terms people will be using to find information on the web. If you are uploading images, ensure you name the files with highly relevant keywords rather than numbers your camera or computer has automatically assigned them.

Always consider when pinning or creating boards:1. Keywords – what are people searching for2. Target market – who will this appeal to?

Creating boards and pinning lots of interesting stuff is a brilliant way to help with brand identity. You can give off a wonderful brand image and spend ages preening your boards to perfection... but the real traffic you can draw from Pinterest comes not from your activity on Pinterest (particularly if you are new to it) but the activity of people pinning from your site or blog.

Use Pinterest buttons and widgets

Make it easy for people to pin your images by adding the 'pin it' button for any images you want to encourage pinning of, and making use of all the goodies that Pinterest has available for sharing boards in blog posts and in your sidebars. This

has made a huge difference to my posts and Pinterest following. Unfortunately, you can’t pin images from Facebook pages.

 

Even if your blog readers have added the easy share Pinterest bookmarklet to their tool bars, this button beside the image reminds them to pin (like a call to action) and importantly it enables you to add your own text suggestion.

 

You need to add a little code to your blog or website template (you do this just once). Then a little code next to each image when in the 'HTML' view of your post. You can also download plugins if you use a Wordpress blog that will add the 'pin it' buttons automatically.

The code creator is available on Pinterest Business in the 'goodies' section – it's FREE!

Making your website and blog content more ‘Pinnable’

You need to optimize your blog post images for Pinterest users – it's easy to do, you just have to add great images, they need to be in sharp focus and be really bright. 

There are a  huge list of photography tips on the Craft Blog UK Gallery pages that will help you get your photography up to scratch.

 

Having quality, beautiful images to go alongside your blog content could find your posts being picked up and shared on Pinterest by its army of social media loving users. That could potentially see your post spread across Facebook and Twitter too – so it’s worth spending time choosing the right images to accompany your text.

 

Take care if you are using images that belong to other people – always credit images immediately beneath and where possible make them 'clickable' to the original image source.

Add text to your original images

You can use simple, free editing software to add text to an image – most software gives you this option, or you can download something like ‘Gimp’ a free version of Photoshop if you want more flexibility. 

When you add text it should be enough to make people realize that if they click they are getting something like a tutorial or a collection or some top tips. As with the above image, just the word DIY is enough to pique my interest – I would not have known just by looking at the image that this linked to a tutorial, so adding text to the image is a great way to get people to click through.

Remember that Pinterest users love beautiful things, so ensure the picture is lovely enough to carry the text and that you choose your fonts and font sizes carefully to fit neatly with your brand image. Try using the same treatment to your leading images with every post – people will begin to recognize your unique style (a.k.a brand identity). When they are presented with the choice of which image to pin, they

will naturally be drawn to the image with text as it also saves them time describing the pin.

Even if you are yet to set up a website, you can link images through to your Facebook page, to albums of your work in progress or work for sale – just click 'edit' once you have uploaded the image and paste in the link to your page.

Building up a Pinterest followingJust as with any other social network you can like and make comments on peoples pins and follow people. You can also find people from your existing networks, through your email address and networks by inviting them to join or follow you on Pinterest.http://pinterest.com/invites/As your networks grow, revisitn these links to be sure that people are following you on Pinterest too.Not many people do comment on Pinterest so I believe it’s worth the effort if you are looking to connect with a particularly influential Pinterest user – you will stand out to them by not simply repinning. Other than through using Pinterest’s internal search for pins, people or boards, you can discover influential pinners via Twitter or Facebook as many people connect their accounts to thesenetworks. Also look out for the Pinterest symbols on people's blogs and websites. Pin profiles alsoinclude links to people's other networks, so if you find someone whose boards you think are great,check if they have a Twitter account or a Facebook page and be sure to tell them – it could win youa new Pinterest and Twitter follower, and be the start of a great conversation.

CompetitionsRunning competitions can boost follower numbers on social networks and Pinterest is a particularlyGood place to get people interested. Make sure you are not just giving things away for free – youNeed to work out what represents a good return on your investment. It needs to be fairly straightforward to enter – and the prize has to be worth the time it takes. You also need to be ableTo track entries, by repinning, hashtags or naming a board for example.

Make sure that the entry requirements lead to increased traffic or sharing of one of your products, or lead to more followers of your Pinterest boards.

Be very clear about the goal of the competition to help you decide what approach to take andWhat the entrant needs to do to enter.

Some examples might be:Repin a pin you have created to enterComment on a pin to enterPin something off your website or blog and a hashtagCreate a board on a certain theme to be judgedCreate a wishlist within a certain budget

Creating and joining community boardsGroup boards have much more potential reach than individual boards. For example many ofThe pinners on my ‘Craft Life’ board have just a handful of followers, but when they pin to this boardThey reach over 1700 Pinterest users. Community boards are a great way to have your account discovered and to build up followers, as well as potentially driving more traffic to your website.Get together with your existing networks and start your own niche board. It may help boost your follower numbers.I have created a‘Creative University’ board where I will invite members to share any great tips theyHave found online and I will share links to useful blog posts.http://pinterest.com/haptree/creative--‐university--‐social--‐media--‐tips/If you find a group board, get in touch with the owner of the board – most people have aweb/Facebook/Twitter link on their profiles.It can be tricky to find these community boards – there is no specific search function but you canSpot community boards through the ‘group’ symbol in search results and the contributors listedAt the top.

Success on Pinterest can be seen through the number of followers you have and by looking at your analytics to see how much traffic is being sent to your website through your pinning and that of others.

To find out if your website content has been pinned you can use the following link:

http://pinterest.com/source/ukcraftblog.com/ 

Replace my address 'ukcraftblog.com' with your website address (minus the www.) and see whether or not people are already pinning your images.

Pinterest has also recently added in it’s own analytics feature – you can now see interesting data to tell you at a glance which pins are doing well in terms of being repinned and which are bringing the most clicks through to your website. You need to verify your website for the analytics feature to work – you can do this by adding a snippet of code to your blog/website:

http://blog.pinterest.com/post/34315137913/verifying-your-website

Strategy update

Now look to your strategy for your own business and see how Pinterest can be incorporated into it, be realistic about the time you have available. For example if you are keen to create a board each week, why not make this board the topic of a blog post or Facebook post.