pinterest 101 Archives - Don Schindler

So now that you’ve got your pinterest account up and running (if you haven’t set up a pinterest account yet – here’s how to set one up), how do you make the most of it?

First, we should change it over to a business account. Click the image below or the link to do it.

This is very simple to do and your followers won’t know the difference. The biggest benefit for you is to be able to see analytics on your page. It’ll be under the drop down on your name at the top right.

Just click the “convert” link on the page.

You’ll have to fill out some business information but then you are up and running. Simple as pie.

If you have a website (and you know I believe you should have a website), you’ll need to verify it. Depending on your website, this could be a little more complicated. I have a wordpress website so it was as easy as adding a trusted plugin and the code.

You’ll want to add the “Pinterest Follow Badge”.

I added it to my blog that if people roll over an image.

I also added a plugin for Rollover on Images so people can easily pin them to pinterest. Below is a sample of how the rollover looks when people touch an image with their pointer.

But when it comes to using Pinterest strategically, you need to have a plan in place. So what’s the first thing you need to do?

1. Make sure you are pinning what your customers want.

When it comes to dairy, there are several interests from consumers.

You can show off your products (if you sell direct or if you know exactly what your milk is being used for) but it is better to put them in the context of what your audience wants. For example:

Recipes

TIP – Rich Pins offer more information (like the recipe information above) for your pins but also require some work by your web developer. Here’s more information on rich pins via social media examiner.

Cows and farm life

People really love to see what happens on a farm (this is Brenda Hastings farm and she does a great job with pinning about the farm) – they love cows and the barns. You can give them what they desire by pinning the photos you take of the landscape and the animals.

TIP – Make sure that you are posting these photos to your website first – and not just straight into Pinterest. You want the photos on your website so you can drive traffic there. And it will also keep you safe if Pinterest decides to change how their system works.

Farm Tour

People love farm tours and to visit virtually 24/7 is not a bad thing. You’ve given probably hundreds of tours but if your tour lives in the digital space you may be giving tours to hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world. Not just the people that can make the drive to your place. Sterns County, Minnesota did a great job here with this farm tour of Groetsch Dairy Farm near Albany.
Home / farm remedies

Pinterest is a very useful search engine when it comes to practical advice and partnering that information with pictures and links back to your website can really generate a lot of repins, comments and likes. Check out this one on Gout.

Interesting facts about dairy

There are many things that just aren’t communicated about the farm, your animals or your products. Here’s an opportunity to get out quick facts along with great photos or infographics. And they don’t all have to be serious – Hiland Dairy is showing humor, fun factoids and animal care.

Videos

While videos aren’t very new to pinterest, they definitely aren’t posted as much as other content. I would recommend posting more video if you can since it generates more repins, likes and comments because it is more of a novelty. Washington State Dairy Council was passing along a YouTube video of our Fuel Up to Play 60 Program for kids.

Inspiration

Pinterest is definitely a social network where people are looking to be inspired from the things they want to have like clothes and houses to the things they want to do like exercise and eat right. Since dairy is part of a healthy diet and the Fuel Up to Play 60 program, pinterest is a perfect fit.

TIP – Images that are taller are likely to be seen more. Use good fonts when putting text on images. If you are looking for an easy-to-use image manipulator or free design program, I recommend picmonkey.com or Over App. There’s also a great design application for pinterest called Pinstamatic. You should check that out as well.

2. Keep your important boards near the top.

You can easily arrange your boards in the order that makes most sense to your audience. Whatever you want them to see first when they come to your page, you should put first and organize from there. BTW, when you add a board it will automatically be put at the bottom.

3. Put your pinterest link wherever you can.

Integrate your Pinterest Page with your other social media profiles/pages like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin, YouTube, etc…

4. Be careful of copyrighted images.

Don’t steal. Give credit where credit is due. It’s better to create your own if you can. And if you are linking to an image on a website, make sure the source is legit. Click through the links. Bad links can damage your reputation as a trusted source.

5. Remember this is a social network.

Follow other interesting users and definitely other farmers and ag supporters. Repin those your wish to influence. They will get notified if you repin, comment or like dealing on their email notifications.

Here’s a list of people I follow in farming. If you want to add to it, just send it to me and I’ll add them.

National Dairy Council
Brenda Hastings
Midwest Dairy Association
Southeast United Dairy Industry Association, Inc.
Hiland Dairy
United Dairy Industry of Michigan
Social Silo
Cabot Cheese
American Dairy Association Mideast
Mid-Atlantic Dairy Spot
Dairy MAX

And here’s some great tips from ohsopinteresting.

She always asks these questions before repinning.

Will my followers find this pin valuable?
Are my followers likely to repin this?
Who am I repinning from? Could they have an interest in my business and be a potential follower?
When pinning from an account with a large following how many times has it been repinned?

She goes into detail on each one of these questions so I would definitely check out her blog post on this.

Comment and Like other people’s pins.

You can use usernames and hashtags when you are pinning as well to notify people of interesting pins.

And, of course, don’t forget to thank them when they repin your information.

6. Call to Action or Pinterest contests

If you have something to promote, it’s really easy to use Pinterest for contests or putting in a Call to Action.

So what are your best tips for using Pinterest for your farm or business? Let me know and I’ll add them to it. If you have any more questions, feel free to reach out.

Oh and I wanted to add this infographic from Amy Porterfield. You should definitely check out her blog. The 10 Commandments for Pinterest is easy to understand and looks great. Enjoy.

So why get involved in yet another social network? Pinterest is more than just another social network.

While the good people at Pinterest claim that “Pinterest is a tool for collecting and organizing the things that inspire you”, I would say that Pinterest is the ultimate photo browsing solution.

To most others, Pinterest is an online scrapbook – you basically get to tear out images you want to save and add them to your cork board virtually.

If you want to find a great image or some nice photos of things that others find attractive and cool, then pinterest will help you do that, too. And it’s organized by people – not machine algorithms – which makes it easier to find things.

Just do a quick search for cookies in google and you’ll find a lot of text and, of course, the digital browser cookie that advertisers love but not a lot of individual recipes on cookies and virtually no images unless you do just an image search.

But on pinterest, you’ll find thousands of pictures of amazing looking cookies with their recipes attached. But it works for more than just recipes. Search “cows” or “milk” and you’ll find great photos of both.

Pinterest is still one of the fastest growing networks with over 70 million users and most are women (over 80%).

But they are tablet browsers, which means they aren’t searching but more or less letting content find them. So what does that mean?

It means that if you have interesting farm photos or dairy recipes, they will get found on the network because people are sharing the good stuff.

How do you use Pinterest? It’s very easy to get started with just a few steps.

1. Go to Pinterest.com

Pretty easy, right? Here’s a link for you.

2. Sign up

You’ll have to use an email address or attach to your Facebook login.

You’ll have to tell them your gender. You can click the Pinterest personalize your experience if you want.

3. Check for an email notification

This is to verify you are a person.

4. Follow some boards

This is to start your main home feed. If you click on the images you like, you can follow those boards.

You can also do a search for your particular interests.

5. Pin an image and create a board

As you can see I selected a motorcycle shot. At the top right is the Pin It button. When I click this, I’ll have to create a board to assign the photograph.

Don’t worry it’s not saving the photo to your computer. It’s just adding the photo and a link to the photo to the board I created.

TIP – The more descriptive you are in the Description Box, the more chances you have to show up in the search results.

6. Go to Homefeed

If you click on the Pinterest logo at the top of the screen, you’ll go to your home feed. This will be images pinned by the people you are following.

At the top right, you’ll see a little box with lines in it. This is the Category Selection box. You can click this to find all the categories within Pinterest.

Next to this box is the search field.

If you put in a search term, you’ll get back the results of pins with those keywords. I put in “cows”.

Once you do a keyword search, you’ll see different ways you can narrow the search down. You can do “All pins” which is everything on pinterest or you can select “Just my Pins”.

You can also search for boards.

And pinners with the search term in their name.

Over on the left hand side of the screen, you can click on the Plus box and it will allow you to Upload A Pin (if you don’t have a website – I don’t recommend this), Add from a Website (which I do recommend) and create a board.

You can also get the Pin It button which allows you to pin images from any website as you browse the web. This is the best and easiest way to pin images outside of Pinterest.

If you click on the Name box, you get a drop down of things you can do.

You can check out your Boards, your Pins and your Likes.

You can also Find Friends from Facebook and Twitter and follow their boards.

If you click on the “Follow Boards”, you’ll be able to see boards in the categories that are most likely like the boards you follow. It’s an easy way to find more boards to follow.

Finally, you have the Help Center and Settings.

Under Settings, you’ll find your Basic Settings.

And email settings.

And social settings.

When you pin things, you should always check whether or not you want them shared with your other networks. I’ve got a funny story about this but I’ll save it for another time.

You can also deactivate your account here.

Finally you can log out here.

The last box at the top of the page is your Notifications. This just lets you know what’s going on with your network.

Now you know how all the pieces work. Next post we’ll talk about what to pin to help your business the most.

Don Schindler

Executive Reputation Coach & Digital Marketer

Tag: pinterest 101

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