I don’t know about you but I am OBESSED with Pinterest. I have spent way too many hours looking at pictures and pinning my little heart away, when I really should be doing something productive like working on my business or cleaning my house. Being the grand justifier that I am, I have found a business reason to be on Pinterest. It can generate a lot of traffic to your site. You definitely should be pinning your blog post images. You might pin another picture of a recipe while you are on there. You’ll probably never make this recipe. It’s okay — You are only human.
But How Do We Get People to Pin our Images?
The secret to getting more traffic from Pinterest is to get more people to pin your images. You can never predict what people are going to do, but there are 3 great ways to bolster your images pin-ability (I like making up words, tee hee).
- Use high quality images (Nobody likes to pin busted pictures)
- Make it easy for people to Pin your images
- Remind them about Pinning while they are reading your blog
This post is going to take care of those last 2. I’m sure you have seen that on some sites, when you hover over their images, a pin icon comes up. All you have to do is click, and you’re pinning. It’s easy and effective. If you haven’t seen this, hover over my post images.
The only other thing you could do, is actually sneak up behind people on the computer and whisper “You should pin that” in their ear. But that’s kinda creepy and pretty hard to implement on a large scale. You should just do the “pin it” thing instead. I promise, I’m not steering you wrong.
(Note: This tutorial is for WordPress since that’s my jam. If you use blogger, try this . I can’t verify its goodness but it’s probably a good place to start.)
Install the Plug-In
The plug-in that I’m using is called jQuery Pin It Button for Images. I tried a few different plug-ins and this one was the easiest to use + it didn’t conflict with my other plug-ins.
Customize it, Baby!
If you know how to use Photoshop, you can get fancy with it and create a custom button. I recommend making the button 100 x 100 pixels and 72 dpi.
If you don’t know Photoshop, don’t despair. Next week, I’m dropping a post with some ready-made buttons. You can use those as- is BUT I’m also going to give you the Photoshop file. So, you can customize it with your brand fonts and colors. If you don’t have Photoshop, you can always just download the trial version for next week’s tutorial. Update: the post is up!
If you already made your button or found a button you like online, follow the “Install a custom button” instructions below.
A Few Tips
- Use your Alt tags! The plug-in will use this to populate the pin’s description, so make sure it really conveys what you want people to know. Be shameless and put your url in there too, why dontcha?
- Try putting some text on your pictures. Let people know what your blog post is about. This will entice people to click to your site from Pinterest.
Congrats, you are on your way to getting more traffic from Pinterest . That wasn’t so hard, now, was it? Have any questions, problems or burning desires? Hit me up in the comments.
Oh snap! There's more:
This is such good advise and a great tutorial on how to add Pinterest and encourage people to pin an image. However, you’re right, the images need to be interesting enough to really get people to pin them.
Susan Cooper recently posted…Tale Of Three Farmers: Allegory (Podcast)
Yep! Quality is king! Thanks for reading!
I appreciate this tutorial. I’m not a tech person, and I tried to do mine through wordpress, but I like yours better, thanks!
An error message “something went wrong on our end” came up when I tried to pin the article…will try again, but shared in other places!
That’s odd. I just tried and was able to pin it. I appreciate the heads up.
thanks for the tutorial. I use blogger but I will check out the link you posted. I would love to be able to add the Pin It button. Everyone is on Pinterest and it is great for linking back to your blog
Karen recently posted…Soccer Ball Cake Pops
Let me know how that tutorial works out for you.
Thanks for sharing this plug-in. I will be sure to take a look at it as I continue to experiment with using Pinterest.
Jeri recently posted…How to Revise: What Photography Can Reveal About Writing
Pinerest rocks! I think you’ll get a lot of value from it.
Just installed this. Love it! Thanks for sharing with us!
Geek Girl recently posted…Restructuring Your Small Business With Cloud Technology
Anytime. I love, love, love your site. Fellow geek here!
I know what you mean by getting lost on Pinterest. I repin art that I love and that often gets re-pinned. I do get excited when someone pins or re-pins an image related to a blog post. I don’t think Pinterest has created much extra useful traffic for me, but it is a great platform.
Leora recently posted…Make Your Website into Home Base
I think you really have to just keep at it. And go big with your images. Over at my other blog http://thebudgetsocialite.com/ we get hits off our DIY or recipe posts from pinterest. I think adding text your images goes a long way to help this.
[…] week, I showed you how to install a “pin it” button plug-in on your wordpress website. This week, I’m giving away free pin it buttons, that you can […]
Great idea Trinidad.
Catch is I don’t use Pinterest for the simple reason that I have nothing of my own to pin. So I got rid of Pinterest.
We are responsible for anything we pin and if someone wants to sue it’s members who will be sued and not the owners. Has there been a class action suit yet in the US by a photographer against a multitude of members of Pinterest?:-)
Catarina recently posted…Are you tweeting your investors?
Hi Catarina – Yours is a valid concern. Here’s a good article on Pinterest and copyrights: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-03-15/business/35447213_1_ben-silbermann-pinterest-content
[…] don’t forget to add the “Pin It” button to your images, since they are about get injected with a shot of […]