Pinterest Pin to Success3. Getting to Know Pinterest
• Hot new social network
• An online vision board to
collect, organize and share
images of your products
and services and things
you love
• Share your pins with friends
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
5. Why Care About Pinterest?
• Traffic
– Pinterest is the #3 Social
Networking site
– Daily unique visitors grew
from 2 million in January 2012
to 4 million in March 2012
– 9 million monthly Facebook connected users
– More traffic than Google +, LinkedIn & YouTube
combined
– Users stay an average of 14.2 minutes per visit
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
6. Who’s Using Pinterest?
• Primarily women, but the men have moved up
from 20% to 28% of users in just a few months
• Parents, 50% of users have children
• Average age 25-54
• Shoppers, 10% of buyers referred from Pinterest
are more likely to buy something than visitors
from other social networks
• Pinterest users have above average incomes
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
7. Pinterest Vocabulary
• Pin – photo, graphic or video shared via
pinboard
• Board – collection of pins grouped by category
• Bookmarklet – code added to browser which
allows pinning any website
• Repin – adding others’ pins to your own
pinboards
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
8. Signing Up at Pinterest
• Invitation only
– Request invite from friends
or request on Pinterest home page
• Sign up using Twitter or Facebook account
– Cuts down on spam
– Allows friends to find you
• Use the same email account you use for Twitter
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
11. Signing Up at Pinterest
• Create user name & password
– Good branding to use same name
across all social media networks
– Eliminates threat of imposters
• Choose categories that best
represent your business
• First followers are automatically
added based on categories
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
12. Signing Up at Pinterest
• All followers will see your pinboards
– Can always unfollow people
• Setup pinboards
– Unlimited number allowed
• Create user profile
– Fill in About Me, Location & Website sections
– Use keywords & website backlink for SEO
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
14. Be sure to include an image.
Connect to your Facebook and
Twitter accounts.
Hiding your account is not
recommended, changing this
setting will keep your profile
from being indexed in the
search engines
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
15. Creating Your First Pin
• Pin content from a website OR
• Upload photo from your computer
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
16. Creating Your First Pin
2. Click “Add A Pin”
3. Enter URL of website or upload a pin
4. Select a board OR create a new board
5. Include a description of your pin
6. Select “Pin It”
7. Share on Facebook & Twitter (optional)
8. This is also where you go to create a new board
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
17. How to Find Ideal Followers
• Building a following will build your influence
among like-minded people in your market
• Start with following people on Pinterest that are
already in your social world
– Your blog commenters / subscribers
– Newsletter subscribers
– Social media connections
– Customers
• In turn they will follow you back!
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
18. How to Follow
• Use Pinterest search or if visit user’s home page
http://pinterest.com/username
• “Follow All” button will follow all the user’s
boards OR click on thumbnails to view & select
individual boards to follow
• Like-minded people flock together, while on your
friend’s account, why not connect with their
followers?
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
19. Tips on Connecting
• In your next newsletter / blog
– Extend an invitation for subscribers to join too
– Or to follow you if they already have an account
• Post an invitation on Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn
• Use Pinterest “Find Friends” function to connect with
your Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo contacts or to send
an email invitation
• Make a video inviting people to follow you on
Pinterest and post on YouTube
• Follow back, it’s a friendly space
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
20. Personalizing Your Boards
• You can have an unlimited number of boards!
– Set up boards related to your niche, products and services
– Set up boards to show your interests, style and home decor
– Planning a wedding or other event? Set up a Wedding board
– Love to cook? Set up a recipe board
– Set up a wish list – never know what you might recieve!
• Be descriptive and creative in your board names
• Categorize your boards
• Add collaborators to a board
– Select “Me + contributors” next to the “who can pin” selection
– Send emails to invited collaborators
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
21. Anatomy of a Good Pin
• Repinning is ultimate goal
– More than 75% of all pins are repins
– Use good quality images
– Add descriptions with links
– Use @mentions to connect with
your peeps and new peeps too!
– Show your personality, be creative
– Click on “Set Board Cover” to make
any pin the cover image for the board
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
22. Anatomy of a Good Pin
• Tags
– Hashtags make pins easy to find
– Use keywords for SEO
– Can use multiple hashtags per pin
– BUT too many hashtags can look
like spam
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
23. Avoid Wasting Time
• Select email updates /
notifications on profile page
– When someone follows,
comments, likes or repins
– Single notifications or daily update
• Limit browsing time
– Set a time limit of how often & how long you interact
• Pin frequently & consistently for best results
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
25. Pinterest Etiquette
• Be cautious about self-promotion
– Pin your own stuff sometimes, pin/repin other
people’s stuff more often
• Give proper attribution
– Link pins to original source
– If “repinning” include name of
original Pinner
– Never link someone’s photo to your site
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
26. Pinterest Etiquette
• Comments should be polite
• Report offensive pins
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
27. Pinterest Etiquette
• Observe copyright laws
– Many photography sites don’t want
their work pinned
– If pin button doesn’t work on a site,
don’t try to make it work
– Add a watermark to original artwork/ images
• Make sure the link source is correct
– Pin blog posts from the actual blog link, NOT the
home page
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
28. Marketing on Pinterest
• Have products?
– Get others pinning about
your products
– Add $ in description and
pin will be added to the Pinterest gift guide
– Create a Holiday Gift Guide
– Create a Pinterest ONLY weekly product offering
– Hold a contest
– Research what interests your customers on Pinterest
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
29. Marketing on Pinterest
• Promote through other channels to quickly
jumpstart your presence
– Add the Pinterest follow button to your website
– Promote on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and
Twitter
– Write a blog post and invite people to “Pin” with you
– Install a FREE Pinterest Tab on your Facebook Page
http://woobox.com/pinterest
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
30. Pinterest, Traffic & Sales
• Become the expert
– Standard SEO tactics will keep
your boards at the top of searches
– Pin consistently
– Follow people
– Interact
– Tag pins
– Connect your account with your website, blog, other
social media accounts
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
31. Pinterest, Traffic & Sales
• Get Your Stuff Pinned
– Make it easy for readers
– Use WordPress plugins
– Use a plugin to encourage people to follow you
– Add Pinterest RSS feed to your site
– Ask friends to pin your content
• Traffic & sales from Pinterest depends on how
many pins & repins you receive
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
32. Pinterest Contest
• Ask clients/customers to pin products photos
– Pin photo, tag brand to win
• Host board scavenger hunt
– Most repinned board wins
• Pin image of contest rules
• Integrate with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
• Celebrate winner on Facebook, Twitter,
YouTube, and of course, Pinterest!
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
33. Sharing on Pinterest
• Bookmarklet – javascript code that lives in your
browser’s bookmark bar
– Allows you to add pins without actually visiting a site
• Log in & select About >> Pin It Button from
navigation bar
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
34. Sharing on Pinterest
• Add a Follow button to your
website
– When visitors click, they go to your pinterest page &
can see your pinboards
• Pin It button for websites – allows visitors to pin
the content of your site to their pinboards
– Wordpress has Pinterest plugins
• iPhone and Andrios apps available
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
35. Sharing on Pinterest
• Can embed pins directly to your site
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
38. More Pinterest Tips
• Pins offer backlinks to your site
• Pins last forever so avoid pinning coupons or
special events that may expire
– Choose evergreen topics instead like recipes, how-to
videos, crafts, beauty tips, inspirational quotes
• Each pin is a link to an external website
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
39. More Pinterest Tips
• Get creative in your pinning
– Share useful tips in the form of graphics
– Share infographics relevant to your industry with
commentary
– Share photos of you or staff
– Create statistics charts relevant to your customers
– Film a how-to video sharing a new idea
– Create an infographic about your product or services
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
41. Pinterest Tools
• Allows sharing across social networks
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
42. Pinterest Tools
• Pinaquote – create custom quotes ($1.99)
• Pinerly – in beta promises to be a
comprehensive Pinterest analytics dashboard
• SpinPicks - discover new content – pulls content
from Pinterest, Twitpic and Instagram
• Snapito – screengrab an entire website
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
43. Pinterest Tools
• Pinpuff – scores your reach, activity and "virality"
of your pins
• PinReach measures your Pinterest influence
• Pinstamatic lets you add Twitter profile links,
"Sticky Notes" and websites to your boards
• Pinvolve – converts Facebook pages to
Pinterest pins
©Virtual Management Concepts LLC – 2012
44. Thanks for joining us!
Please be sure to connect with us on:
Pinterest – Donna Cravotta
Facebook – Virtual Management Concepts
Twitter - @DonnaVMC
LinkedIn – Donna Cravotta
Web – virtualmanagementconceptsllc.com
We would also love to assist
you and your business with
Social Media & Public Relations
Editor's Notes PinAQuote.com - highlight any block of text, paste it and create a cute re-pinnable pin to post to your boards (only basic options are free, more fonts require upgrade) Snapito - Just enter a website address into the box above and click on the Snap! button to take a screenshot. To pin a website on Pinterest just use the dropdown on the right of the Snap! button and select either 'Pin to Pinterest' or 'Pin Full Page'. Pinerly - Pinerly is not open to the public. Share your unique link on Facebook and Twitter to get ahead of your competition! Invite friends, co-workers, family... you get the point. Friends qualify you for an earlier invite and bonus features. Please note, signing up from the same computer multiple times will not count =) PinReach.com – basic analytics, you can find out your most repinned pin, most popular boards and it gives you a PinReach score. It’s an interesting way to gauge your Pinterest influence. (average score is 29, just an FYI) PinPuff.com – super simple site that gives you a Pinfluence score and gives you an idea of the value of your pins/referral traffic (a good score is between 40 and 70) Pinstamatic.com – lets you pin other things besides just images - i.e. a snapshot of a website, a twitter profile or user, sticky notes onto your boards and much more – try it out, it’s kind of fun! Pinvolve - Pinvolve creates a new section on your Facebook page which presents all your photo posts in a Pinterest-like fashion