Hi all,
Totally new here. Can anyone tell me how you can get any traffic from Pinterest please? I don’t understand it. Is there some big Folksy board we can all pin on?
Anyone help a noob?
Tori x
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Hi Tori
Firstly, if you haven’t done already, join Pinterest - there are several Boards they give you to get going, then I would suggest directing your traffic from Pinterest to your Folksy Shop. I notice that you have done with Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
Although I haven’t done it this month, I normally join in with the Folksy 365 Daily Listing Challenge (will in October). And that is a great way to interact with people on the Folksy Forums. I have a Pinterest Board, and each month we list, and share each other’s work. (Note my “August Folksy 365 Daily Listings”)…To me it has been so beneficial, and I know that months, even a year later, some people will even look on Pinterest and email me as they have seen a Greeting Card of mine which has either sold out, or isn’t in stock any more… So the two things work together…
I have listed my Pinterest Account to help. As soon as you join Pinterest, I will follow you too.
SallyAnn
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As well as my own boards I post to ‘Folksy Board for All Artisans’, ‘Handmade Folksy’ (think these are open boards started by sellers and not sure how active they are) and also to ‘Made in Scotland’ (think that one is owned by Folksy and from memory think there are ones for different regions). There may be more these are just ones I’ve picked up over the years.
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Hello all,
I’ve started a new account on Pinterest a couple of days ago, but it’s not as straight forward as other socials I’m using.
Well, first I’ve asked a couple of friends to look for me and strangely they couldn’t find me… we manage to find each other but my profile wouldn’t come up in the search. I’ve checked the settings and everything should be fine, so I don’t know if mine is a common name and therefore would only appear after hundreds of others. I’ve now found out how to share my link to the account, so this shouldn’t be a major issue anymore.
So I have a few questions:
I do I get people to see my pins? Is there a way like on Twitter where you add popular hashtags?
Can I tag people? For example, if I want to share something or like on Folksy from a different shop, I know I can do it from the listing page and pin it. But then can I add a tag so to link a post to the shop’s Pinterest account?
Any other suggestions?
Here is the link to my account:
Thanks to anyone who can help!
Anna
Thanks for this thread. I’m a bit unsure about Pinterest too. I have an account under my name where I link items from my shop as well as having other boards but maybe I should have an account for my shop itself. The only way I have found to add hashtags is to add a photo then put the hashtag in the description but I have no idea if that works. I have read on the folksy blog about using Pinterest and hear it is a big source of traffic but I haven’t had any from there I’m aware of yet though I only started linking items last week. Any more tips appreciated.
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Hiya Anna. So, my thoughts…
I’m not convinced I use Pinterest properly at all - I just pin from the daily listing challenge. I have a board for each month which everyone’s work gets pinned to. I also do themed boards sometimes - I haven’t noticed them getting more or less traffic than the monthly ones.
Other than pinning regularly I don’t do a thing with Pinterest, I rarely open it & had to take the app off my phone as I was running out of space! But - I’ve had 55 views from Pinterest in the last 30 days with minimal effort on my part. I’m sure that means if I put some effort into it then it could lead to more views & hopefully sales - so fingers crossed someone will come along who does it properly!!
Ooh - I tried searching on you & had to put the whole handle in for you to come up i.e. popyshandpainted - searching on part of the name didn’t work.
Julie - yep you should set up a board just for your shop which you pin your listings to. There is a way to then use that board as the background on your Pinterest page, but I’ve just been searching & can’t for the life of me remember how I did it! There might be an option in the app that I used but can’t see how to change it in the browser version.
Fingers crossed someone will be along who knows more than me 
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Thanks Dee @OrukiDesign for going to look for me! That search thing is so weird… I tried to look also for one of my items, putting in the search box the exact same wording as the pin, and it wouldn’t come up either… 
Anyway, apart from the user friendliness which could be improved on in my opinion, I quite like it!
As I have various hobbies (and in fact, too many!) I like having all the videos, pictures and articles I like in one place. There are so many things for inspiration, I’m only sorry I haven’t started using it before!
Julie @CraftstoKeep thank you for the reply about the tags. I did see a few pins having them, but I’m not sure, as you said, if they work or not.
So yeah, please Pinterest experts, show yourselves! 
we need tips here 
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I used to really like Pinterest but since watching a load of videos to try to understand it better I’m now totally confused and have no idea what I should be doing on it any more - they seem to keep changing how it works and how they want you to interact with it.
Well I’ve just spent the last 3 hours on Pinterest and got nowhere. I’m so confused. I tried to choose the option to create a linked business account but all it seems to have done is make my personal account into a business account. So now I have a board for my shop along with other interests of mine. What I’m really struggling with is knowing what the link/URL is to my Pinterest page because I’ve tried searching but cannot find it. It is not in my shopkeeping section and yet when I click pin on a product page it does pin that item to my page. As I say, I’m totally confused. I can keep pinning photos and creating boards but no idea if anyone can see them.
Any help appreciated.
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Yeah I found it strange too that it’s not so clear how to share your page link. The link should be: https://pinterest.com/nameofyouraccount. With name of your account I mean the name that follow the @ (in my case, for example, my Pinterest name is Popy’s and the account name is @popyhandpainted. In the link i mentioned above though you don’t need to put the @). You can add it to the shop appearance page on Folksy if you want people to be able to access your Pinterest page from your shop page on Folksy.
I tried to share my page directly from Pinterest, but can’t find the way to do it. 
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Any idea where I would find the name of my account? I’ve tried searching with the pinterest link adding my name and the name of my shop but they don’t work. I set it up a long time ago and have only just started to use it again. I’ve tried to search for items I have on my boards on Pinterest on another computer and none appear and I can’t even locate my account. It’s all a mystery to me.
It would be in your profile page. Mine looks like this:
So, once you are logged in, click in your profile picture to see your profile page, than click again your picture at the top left of the screen to view your details. You should see your version of what I’m showing above. This is what I do from the app and from a tablet, not sure whether it would be different for a desktop version.
Thanks. That’s what I thought but when I use a computer to search https://Pinterest.com/Craftstokeep I don’t find anything.
Uhm… though the link definitely works because if I click on it, it opens up your Pinterest page. So you can use that link to get people outside Pinterest to visit your page.
Yes I just tried it and it worked but when I enter it on the shop appearance page it comes up as invalid. I’ll try again. Thanks for helping.
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It worked this time when I copied and pasted it. I would have preferred a personal account and a business account but can’t get that to work so it will all have to be on the same one. Thanks again for helping.
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No problem at all!
I still have a few questions myself, but I don’t think this post has been seen by many.
Julie @CraftstoKeep thanks for the advice you sent me on Pinterest, I’ve just replied there too.
Though now I’ve got a question, my shop board should already be at the top, that’s how I see it:
So it’s the one called My handpainted stuff. Do you see it at the bottom?
Thanks!
@Popys Your board “my handpainted stuff” shows up third for me, after “natural remedies” and “Folksy finds”.
Pinterest does confuse me, I only remember to log in and pin things every couple of months, and everything seems to have changed so much recently I don’t even know what the best way to list things is. I used to write nice descriptions with lots of keywords, and now it seems like we can’t write any description ourselves and it’s all taken from the web page. It’s annoying because I’d write notes I want to remember, like tweaks to recipes or noting that a certain place has closed down now on my travel boards (which would also be useful for other people to know), and although I notice there’s now a “note to self” bit, all the stuff I’d put in the past has been lost.
It looks like if I create a pin from scratch using the + button then there’s a place to write a title and description, and done that way (hopefully) the description is staying. If you want to add hashtags I think that’s how you have to do it. However most pins I’ve saved have been done through a pin button on a website, and that comes with no option to add anything else (it used to let you write a description but doesn’t give me the option any more, and any descriptions I had added that way no longer show). I know when I first starting using Pinterest many years ago they didn’t use hashtags, then a while ago they encouraged them, and now I really have no idea.
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