Pinterest for Poets; because One can Never Have enough Social Media Accounts
For those of you that have been living under a rock for the past couple of years, Pinterest is a visual discovery engine for finding ideas like recipes, home and style inspiration, and more. Everyone and their mother has a Pinterest account nowadays.
Most of us go there to ‘pin’ recipes, inspiration for our dream flat or wedding dresses. It’s never been easier to keep a scrapbook. The idea behind the platform is to enhance creativity in daily life through organized interest.
“That’s all very cute but how can a digital scrapbook help me as a poet?” I hear you ask. Well, with about 70 million users, Pinterest is increasingly becoming a place where authors not only seek real inspiration but also sell books. And one of the best things about Pinterest? You don’t have to sit behind a computer all day. You can pin on the go. Hit the pin button while you are in a queue at the supermarket, in a traffic jam, or at a boring birthday bash.
So where do we start?
Build a killer Profile
The Pinterest profile is different from other social media pages; it is dotted with ideas that inspire your creativity and your interest. Because you are on Pinterest to promote your work, it’s important to use a "Pinterest business account." A business account allows you to access analytical tools such as impressions. Impressions are the number of times your Pin appeared on the homepage feed. It also shows you the number of times people click a pin to leave Pinterest (to go to your website). These ‘clicks’ highlight the kind of content your followers want to see. Lastly, a business account shows you how many times a pin is ‘repinned’ and again, gives you an insight of what content is working for your readers.
You are on Pinterest to connect to your readers, so simply posting your writing will not hook people to your profile. People want to get to know you. In other words; your profile needs to show your personality. And for the love of God, don’t forget to add your author website.
Filling your Scrapbook
Congratulations on obtaining a fancy virtual scrapbook by signing up to Pinterest. At least this time, you won’t glue your fingers together, or chop of your nails with a blunt pair of scissors. When you first start out on Pinterest, create at least 5 to 10 boards. If you can give these boards short and snappy titles, you are already halfway there.
It is helpful to browse other boards for ideas. The best thing to do is to have a mix of original content (your own pins) and ‘repins’ from other users. The holy rule of social media is to attract and promote others before promoting yourself, after all.
Expand your target audience by creating boards that show readers your identity on a more personal level. If you need a little bit of inspiration on what kind of boards to create; we got you covered. We think you could start out with a genre board where you can celebrate and show your love for your genre; poetry. You can pin blogs and book covers there, but also think a little outside the box and pin your favourite dead poet’s edited manuscript drafts.
Once you got your genre board going, you can start a blog board. Yes, darlings, this is where your own work comes in. You can pin your blog posts here. If you add a ‘pin it to Pinterest option underneath your blog posts, you can hit that to save your posts as pins on your Pinterest account. The "Pin" button also allows readers to leave Pinterest and enter your author website or blog when they click on your pinned content.
You can also create a themed board where you stick all the ‘behind the scenes’ stuff. This would be a place where your readers can ‘meet you’ and find out what things inspire you. A themed board is a series of boards about general interests, such as favourite authors, favourite literary cafés, favourite bookshops, quotes, inspirational role models, travel, etc.
Some Examples
These are some of the pinners that are ‘doing it right’ in our humble opinion.
Poetry Foundation
Shelby Leigh Poetry
The Poetry Blog
Public Poetry
And you can find us here.
Pinterest is an amazing search engine for finding readers looking for quotes, books, and tips. You want those readers to be able to find you. So get off our blog and get cracking.