Pinterest 101 - getting started and getting the most out of it

Shop Talk Social Media
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Hiya, starting a new topic as a few of us on the Daily Challenge wanted to pool resources and ideas about using Pinterest to help drive customers to our shops, and to create a place to come and get help when we are stuck.

Everyone is welcome here - you don’t need to be part of the daily challenge - its just where the conversation started.

HOW TO USE THIS TOPIC

We all know how threads can get convoluted, so I’m suggesting a new approach. Rather than starting with a reply, can you search the topic first to see if it has already been asked/anwsered. And then when you are replying, start off with a short description of the aspect/s of Pinterest they are asking about, or sharing info/advice on.as this will help people find things. And if you have shared advice or your thinking, and later find it’s changed, go back and edit/add to the original, rather than add a new reply.

I’ve started a list, with the short description highlighted in bold - we don’t want too many, but let me know if you want a few more added, or if they need tweaking

  • Getting started - creating an account on Pinterest and setting up your profile

  • Creating pins - direct pinning or creating your own, different types (static pins, carousels)

  • Pinterest boards - creating, editing and managing boards

  • Business/personal - understanding the difference between using Pinterest for personal use and for business, and how to balance the two if you only have 1 account

  • SEO - how to get found, using key words, best type of images, improving descriptions, timing and frequency, latest tweaks to the algorithm

  • Promotion - self promotion, shared groups, repinning, ads

If your post is a general one that will be of interest to all of us, please add it as a topic reply at the end, tagging specific people if relevant. If you are responding to someone who has asked a particular query, reply directly to their post to keep the info linked.

WHAT THIS TOPIC IS NOT

This isn’t a showcase thread, so we won’t be adding our pins or boards for direct promotion/sharing purposes. There are already some great topics in the Showcase Category for this, or we can set up a new one if people think it helpful.

So don’t drop a link to your board or pin in this topic, unless you are asking for specific help and need to show it. And in that case, please make that clear in your post - so that newcomers are not confused. :grinning:

And remember we can always find each others boards by going to the About section on our shop page. It’s at the bottom and looks like this.

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Promotion
I’m going to start off with info on how to add a link to your Pinterest account to your Folksy shop, so customers who have already found you can follow your board. And of course we can find each other without dropping our board links in here.

You can add your social media links to your About page. If you haven’t seen it, it’s under Contact on your main shop page.

I’ll add some screenshots from my shop, just to help explain.

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After you have added them, your social media links will appear as icons under your image and “about you” text. If you haven’t added any yet, this section will be blank.

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To add a link to your Pinterest account, click on the “Shop Appearance” tab in shop settings, on my desktop it’s about halfway down, I’m not sure what it’s like on a phone

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Scroll down to the bottom, and copy your link into the right section (most people link to the full Pinterest account, but you could link directly to a single board), and click update appearance.

You can do the same with any of your social media links.

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Finally, click on the links to check they work! And check them regularly too…

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Thank you so much for starting this thread, it will be so helpful.

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Creating Pins and Business / Personal

I’ve been on Pinterest for many years but have been inactive there since they made changes a few years ago since it didn’t work for me anymore. When I used Pinterest, I used it for rabid pinning of images I liked without much thought or effort - all about being a magpie. Although I did create boards for my makes and pinned to them from Etsy (didn’t have a Folksy shop at the time and now know that’s not the best way to pin anyway - you should create each pin from scratch), that was also all rather scattered.

Since Pinterest have made some more changes recently that makes it a bit more straightforward to use, I’ve decided to go back and start using it again, but doing it ‘properly’ this time and using it for marketing. There are a couple of things that I haven’t resolved about it yet though and would love to hear others’ opinions on these:

Creating Pins - I’ve heard that the Pinterest algorithm doesn’t like it if you create too many pins in a day. This came from someone who is very successful on Pinterest, so part of me wants to believe it, but part of me says, “surely not - I thought Pinterest’s take would be: the more pins the better!”. So, is it best to just schedule creating a couple of pins a day, or does it really matter, or does anyone actually know if it matters?

Business / Personal - I know that many people say you should keep this separate but it feels wrong to me - my business is me and it is personal. Surely for ‘one man band’ businesses like most of ours, splitting the two isn’t the way to go? I want to swap recipes and memes and pictures of bunnies with my clients on Pinterest - what’s wrong with that?

Would love to know what others are thinking about these things.

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Getting started also Business/personal accounts

Some useful links on setting up Pinterest accounts, including setting up a business account or converting your personal account

Folksy have some resources on their blog - but they are rather old and Pinterest has changed a lot in the last few years and the advice and suggestions may not be so useful now. So I’m not linking until I’;ve had chance to check them out. They did recently run an online event for Plus Members - How to make Pinterest work for your small creative business - with Dörte Januszewski- you can find a recording and a pdf of the slides in your Plus Account tab.

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Debbie @thecrimsonrabbit I read somewhere that if you pin too much the algorrithm thinks you are a bot and therefore won’t help promote you.

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Thank you @TheOldButton for starting this post. It’s inspired me to give it a proper go.
I opened a business account after watching Folksy plus event thing, but then couldn’t work out how to even create a board, or pin things to it unless they already had a handy button, so I abandoned it until today!
Today I discovred how to get from this unhelpful screen, full of things I don’t care about:

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to ‘create a board’
click on your profile - top right on screen above
and this screen appears
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then hit saved.
Then the + button on the right

Sorry if you’ve all discovered this already and I was being stupid!

I then had the ‘how on earth do I pin stuff if there isn’t a button?’
I assume you can copy and paste the URL but that seemed a long way round. A bit of googling gave me the answer. I downloaded a Chrome extension to my laptop (who knew you could get such things?!) and now I just right click. It doesn’t seem to come up for everything - instagram for example, but I’m sure I’ll work it out.
Again if this is old hat to you, my apologies
Bridget

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Hi Debbie, Bridget and Chris (@thecrimsonrabbit, @FeltbyBridget @ChrisOsbornJewellery) - some really good questions and helpful hints.

To help people find what they are looking for (and hopefully reduce multiple posts asking the same question) can you start with the relevant short description word (shown in bold in the intro post). I appreciate it’s not the way we normally do forum topics, and I’m not sure how it will work out, but I’d like to give it a go.

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There’s lots of really useful stuff here so thanks Sharon @TheOldButton. It’ll take me a while to get my act together and get my Pinterst page sorted though but this will help a lot.

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Thank you Sharon, I’ve had pintrest account for ages but haven’t added it to my links in my shop as it’s pure chaos over there. Really need to spend some time working it out and make it look a bit better and work for me so this thread will be super helpful

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Creating pins - Debbie @thecrimsonrabbit asked about creating too many pins in one day. A lot of the vidoes I’ve watched recently do suggest it’s best to pin little and often, rather than do a whole load in 1 day (oops that me in the naughty corner). There are scheduling tools that can help - I’ve not tried them but others may have?

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Pinterest boards
Great topic! Thankyou for starting it. I am trying to make more of an effort with pinterest after watching the video. My question is, if I have a business board with say my wall art on, should I pin other peoples work to the same board to hopefully increase views or should I keep other peoples work on my personal account?

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This is so helpful @TheOldButton Thank you!

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Business / Personal

I don’t think there is one way to do this, as it depends on your style/preference, and suspect most of us don’t want to have sterile “marketing-look” boards. Some good advice I saw recently was to make sure you curate your boards carefully, so you are sharing things you feel will appeal to your customer audience, or showcase your style or flair, or that show you appreciate skills or techniques by others.

So personally I think you can include gardening or cookery if you wish. I have boards about costume design and upcycling - I’ve just cleared out the stuff I didn’t think worked with my brand. I have archived as I’m not sure I’ll delete them just yet). And of course you can have secret boards too.

What do others think?

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Ok, only a couple of hours in :person_facepalming:, and I think it might be good to tweak my method idea when we are replying. Still use the short description, but reply to the person if it’s directly “on topic” so we can keep relevant stuff linked. And do a new reply if it’s a different question, or a much broader update.

I’ll update the intro. Sorry…

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Creating Pins

I have seen that too, but I suspect they are thinking 100 (or more) every day. Most people seem to say up to of 5 pins in a day is ok, but don’t do them all to the same URL. It’ easily done - I pinned 5 pictures one day last week from the same blog article :person_facepalming:

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Pinterest boards

I am not an expert but I’ve been doing a bit of research recently. There seems to be a wide range of opinion on this from “purely your brand” to “mix everything to show your personality”. It seems they can all be sucessful, depending on how well you do it, and who you are targetting.

Apparently Pinterest has changed a lot in the last year or so, and I believe the focus in now on new content
with good graphics and strong relevant search words to get pins found, rather than just relying on followers, repins, comments or likes. So sorting that out must come first. That said, it will demote “dull” pins that have no engagement, so we need to make sure who people visit our boards like what they see and comment or click through. And hopefully follow you.

Personally I think having other people’s content on your business board can be very helpful in achieving this - as long as you choose it carefully. Like most social media platforms, Pinterest shows you stuff based on your search history, and there is merit in having content that “works together”. Also, if someone lands on your board because they followed someone else’s pin, they will just disappear if it is competely at odds with the rest of the board.

In the past I’ve pinned lots of different things to my business account for different reasons - I’ve tried to keep it in separate boards but I’ve included things I want to buy and things I love, plus stuff that inspires me. As well as my own blogs and my own makes. And on top of that, I pinned and re-pinned endlessley from all my fellow crafters - as we were told that was the way!

Going forward I’ll be making sure pins and repins to my business account suits my target audience - including other people’s makes that sit well - and I’ll be using my personal account to pin the rest. For example, as much as I love these quirky prints I found on Folksy that are based on old Welsh photos, I can use one on a business board - the rest are amazing but a bit too scary for people buying kids toys and nursery decor who are my main target. Adding them to my personal account stiill allows me to help promote that shop. But adding them to my business account may harm my brand, and actually doesn’t help the other shop either as the target audiences are so very different.

It’s not a precise science. Obviously crocheted baby blankets, fun birthday cards or relaxing gifts for mums would work really well with my hand sewn toys and nursery decor, but my target audience also buys jewellry and candles…and gardening things, and … loads more. I just need to get the balance right.

If you decide to include other people’s makes (on any account), also make sure you go through and check them periodically - nothing worse that a board full of obselete links or sold out items. I’m cleaning my boards now - they are shockingly out of date.

Sorry this is so long, but I hope it’s helpful.

Do others agree? Or do you have a different approach?

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Hi Debbie @thecrimsonrabbit
Up until about a month ago I’d only used Pinterest for me. I didn’t have a business account so when I decided to set one up for my business it made sense for me to link it to my personal account. That way I could move easily between what I’d pinned just for me and what I pinned for my business but without having my personal boards on display to my potential customers. I don’t know about anyone else but I pin the strangest of things and I didn’t feel entirely comfortable with customers seeing the 19 recipes for leftover sprouts I’d pinned or the Gilmore Girls quotes or the many ‘easy’ ways to drop a dress size and slim your thighs!
The down side to that is that if you then install the Pinterest extension to Google on your laptop like I did, then when you want to save a photo/item then the extension wants to automatically save to my personal account.Although there may be a way round this I didn’t find. So, I split them so kept both ( so my sprout fetish doesn’t become common knowledge!) and so I can pin straight to my business account easier.
Like Sharon @TheOldButton has said though, I think it depends on your style and how you want your boards to look. I think for business a more curated look can work really well whereas for a personal account you can randomly add sprout recipes as much as you like without customers running a mile! Only you know your clients, so only you will know if recipes and bunny pics will appeal to them. Maybe try it out and ask your clients what they think on your socials. Which is a good way to get interaction too so win win.
Louise x

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@TheOldButton Sharon, thank you very much for this thread. Will be so much help or us. Xx

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Thank you Sharon @TheOldButton I’m sure I’m going to find some very useful stuff here, it just takes my poor old brain ages to absorb new info, I’ll get there eventually. xx

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