Today I want to get your creative juices flowing by telling you about some innovative approaches to Pinterest marketing. There are many more, so please share your ideas in the comments, and we can turn this post into a great Pinterest resource for writers. Here are my favorite ideas:
1. Recruit a Guest Pinner
I’ve used this strategy to great success for about six months now and it’s not only helped me to build my Pinterest boards up, but it’s also allowed me to have new, fresh content to share on my Facebook page each week. I love it. And it’s so easy! Invite another author/blogger/writer to pin on one of your existing boards (or a secret board if you want to do a big one-time roll out) by clicking “edit board” and then “invite other pinners.” From there, allow your guest pinner to add pins to your board. It’s a win for you because you’ll get fresh content on your Pinterest boards that you don’t have to work for, new pins for social media and some Pinterest collaboration with another author. And it’s a win for your guest pinners because they get a whole new audience with whom to share their content.
2. Pinterest Wars
Authors Katie Ganshert and Becky Wade host a weekly Pinterest war where they face off to try a new recipe, activity, craft or style. They both post pictures on their blogs and then have their readers vote to see who did it best. This is a brilliant idea because it not only helps both authors to drive traffic to their blogs (who doesn’t love to vote?) but it also helps them to create a relatable and fun voice with their audiences.
3. Pinterest Challenges
I’ve seen several authors and bloggers challenge their readers to make a certain recipe or craft each week and then post the results on Facebook or on a new Pinterest board. Try challenging your audience to make a superhealthy smoothie or a fun spring craft and then submit photos which you can subsequently post on Pinterest for all to see.
4. Pin-It Party
The bloggers at Creative Geekery host a weekly Pin-It party where they invite their readers to pin their favorite pins. Those pins are then shared across social media by a series of bloggers as well as a “hall of fame” of pins is posted on the blog each week. What a great way to aggregate content from other writers as well as drive traffic to both a blog and a Pinterest board.
5. Use Photos from Fans
A few months ago, I noticed that a lot of people were posting (on Facebook) photos of huge messes made by their kids. So, I quickly created an app (and related contest) where people could submit their biggest Mom-Tastrophe photos to me. Once submitted, I use PicMonkey to add a title to each photo as well as my blog title and then I save them all to a Mom-Tastrophes Pinterest Board . This board has quickly become my most repinned board on Pinterest.