Pin to Win, Baby

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Over the last week, I hosted a writing conference with a few of my closest and brightest friends. during a live chat, the subject of Pinterest came up. I am totally in every possible way completely enamored with Pinterest. Thing w

 

as, my friend Dustin isn’t convinced. I mean– sure he thinks it can be used for fun, but he doesn’t see the marketing potential.

And so, he’s called me out. In a rap battle of sorts. Seeing as how I’ve never actually been in a rap battle, and chances are this is pretty much the closest I will ever come to one… I AM SO IN. (He also called out my friend, Nikki— she’s in, too!)

Now, the question he’s posed to me is: Can Pinterest be used to effectively in marketing. My answer is yes.

And, for my first post in this battle, I am going to pose to you a potential marketing plan for an author to get you to buy their books.

The first thing we do is find the book we want to pin on Amazon:

 

Now, we are just going to pin straight from this link.

(Don’t forget to click the pictures to make them bigger and see what I am doing.)

Now, pin it to one of your boards. Then, you will repin it to other boards– love the way the hair looks in this picture? Pin it to a board in hair and beauty, think the font is cool? There’s a category for that as well. That’s the thing about Pinterest. Nobody is looking to see what the pinners they follow are doing. They are looking at the category pages!

So, the key is to get your pin pinned as many times as you can in as many different categories as you can. How can you do this? With other authors– get together, pin each other’s pins. Make it a THING– Have Re-Pinning contests on Twitter and Facebook. Ask your followers to throw you a repin! Before you know it, your image is showing up in all the right categories!

That’s how you make Pinterest work for you!

 

Dustin and Nikki will both be chiming in this week while we try to work through the ins and outs of Pinterest. Stay tuned!

 

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5 Comments

  1. Interesting post. I just had this conversation with another author. I’ll pass this link along to her. 🙂

  2. I’m 99% sure Pinterest does not claim ownership of the photo. The issue is in copyright infringement – if you claim the photo is yours when you upload it … THIS could get problematic … but I doubt a publishing company would sue an author for uploading their own cover.

  3. Ooh – good start. I like this shotgun approach. It gives you good visibility and reach. Nice start, Jamie – but I’m coming back strong!

    And Ishta – Muahhh haaaa haaa! Great question. (rubs hands together like a mad scientist)

  4. But what about the clause in their terms and conditions that gives Pinterest ownership of any images that you pin? Can you legitimately pin images of things like book covers?

    I’m not trying to throw a wrench in the works; I genuinely want to get my head around all of this and figure it all out.

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