Granny Geek’s Guide to Pinning Strategy

Have a Pinning Strategy

First, you learned how to make Pinterest-worthy graphics. Next, you learned where to write the copy so that Pinterest would notice it and to make your pins something that others want to read. Third, we talked about cleaning up your Pinterest boards (aka, cleaning your file cabinet). Now we’ll talk pinning strategy.

For an old gal like me, ‘pinning strategy’ sounds like something you do when you get ready to finish a quilt. It takes a plan to keep the top layer, batting, and backing together—especially if you plan on hand quilting. But, I’ve learned that pinning strategy works well with Pinterest, too.

Let me explain—no, you won’t need to go out and buy a giant box of pins. Yes, you can invite others to a type of quilting party.

First of all, if you have a blog, you’ll want to create a board for your blog. I named mine “Anita Ojeda Blog’s.’ Pretty creative, I know. Each time I publish a blog post, I click on my Pinterest graphic and save it to my ‘Anita Ojeda’s Blog’ file folder (board).

When I started Pinterest at the end of January, I quickly filled up the board with pins from my most recent posts. If you scroll down through them, you’ll notice that some of them just have one-word descriptions. I hadn’t learned how to put the correct information in the alt tag line yet, so the pins don’t really explain much about the blog post. When I have time, I’ll go back through and edit those pins.

Remember to keep the board secret until you have something to look at—enough to make your board look active to someone dropping by. I wait until I have 25-30 pins in a board before I open them up to public peeking. That’s a good strategy for starting out your boards filled with good stuff for others to look at.

Map Out Six More Boards

Now, think about categories that you write about on your blog. Create a Pinterest board for each of them. I write a regular series called Self-Care Sundays, with each Sunday of the month featuring a different aspect of self-care. The first Sunday I write about mental wholeness, so I created a board called “Healthy Choices + Mental Wholeness.”

Decide what the six main topics you write about on your blog are, and create a board for each one. Make sure you write a good description of your board so that visitors know what they’ll find.

I started by filling the file (board) with pins from other blogs that fit my board’s title and description. I added in some of my own pins, too, but I mostly added pins from other bloggers. Pinterest likes it when you do this, and they reward (promote) pinners who act generously.

Once I had 25 pins in the board, I changed it from secret to public. It took about 25 minutes to find 25 relevant pins. You don’t have to read everything in the blog post—good pinners will have good descriptions. Remember, you want to curate resources, not create them all yourself.

Now, do this five more times. I find it easiest to re-pin other people’s things from my phone—don’t ask me why. Anyone can find 25 minutes to create a tidy board—I work on mine when I wait in line or during commercials.

You don’t have to carve out half a day to plan your strategy and execute it. Working in interrupted chunks of time works just fine. Just remember to keep your board secret until it has plenty of pins inside (otherwise, it looks as if it’s an inactive board).

Solo vs. Community Boards

If you look at my Pinterest account, you’ll notice that the second board has a little circle in the bottom left corner with three photos in it. That means it’s a community board—you can invite other people to your quilting party! Ok, not a quilting party, but to contribute pins to your file folder (board).

I invite people to my community board who link up at my weekly link up—Inspire Me Monday. I also pin graphics from the blog post that linkers link up each week to this board (not all of them actively use Pinterest).

The biggest benefit of a community board? A lot of times, I’ll find things to re-pin to my other boards—a win-win situation. Best practices for community boards include giving clear directions about WHO can join and HOW to join in the board description area. It’s your board, so you get to make the rules.

I belong to one or two other community boards, and they have different rules—for example, for each pin you add, you have to re-pin three other people’s pins. This is a good rule, because it gets exposure for other people’s pins. And it’s easy to do, because I only ask to join community boards that have information that I would want to re-pin to my boards.

Come back next week, and I’ll talk about manual pinning.

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