Last week, I signed up for a Pinterest account after someone told me on Medium recently that Pinterest was great for driving blog traffic. I did some research and yep, they were right; Pinterest rocks when it comes to pushing traffic – and in other ways too. Here are the top five ways I’ve found so far that make Pinterest great as a place to get more eyes on your poetry…
1. Inbuilt virality
According to leading influencer, Neil Patel, pins (this is what posts on Pinterest are called) are 100 times more spreadable than a tweet. Another online marketer, Jeff Bullas, says that 80% of pins are repins (similar to retweets on Twitter of shares on Facebook) so there is a high chance of getting your pins to spread.
2. Great lead generation
As a poet entrepreneur, I want to get people to buy my books and other products (Yes, I don’t have any yet, but they are coming – I’m planning ahead here 😉 ). Pinterest is three times more effective at generating leads than Twitter.
3. Awesome traffic driver
You know how you can’t put links in your posts on Instagram? Well, with Pinterest you can link every pin you post to your blog. What’s even more exciting is that even as your pins are repinned by others (refer to point 1 above) the links remain. So every time this happens you are increasing the likelihood that someone will click on the pin and visit your blog. Ahem! Pinterest drives a ton of traffic to blogs.
4. You can see what’s hot
Pinterest lets you see what’s trending in real time. You can also see what inspires the people who follow you and this helps you create more engaging content.
5. You don’t have to make comments on Pinterest
On Instagram, one of the primary ways of getting traction is to have engagement with other users. So comments, likes, inboxed messages, etc count a lot, This leads to a lot of spam comments on posts, where people are basically sucking up to the algorithm and not really making intelligent comments. On Pinterest, comments are optional. If you like something, pin it. If you like an account or a board, follow it. Makes it easy to keep it real.
Final Note
Having said all of this, It’s important to note that when I say “put your poetry on Pinterest,” you need to decide what you’ll share online and what you’ll put in a book that you will sell. Some poets publish everything online (and then put it in print as well), others nothing. I put mostly snippets of poems on social media. It’s up to you.
PICTURES:
#1: Vitaly Sacred
#2: Screenshot of pinterest.com/izmazano
Writer | Digital Storyteller | Web Developer
I believe that every serious artist should be able to make a living from their work if they want to and I’m on a mission to find the best tools, ideas, and resources to help artists succeed. I experiment with business models, monetization ideas, and new technology in my own creative process as part of this journey of discovering.