How NOT To Use Your Pinterest Account

Mar 19

Having started all willy-nilly with Pinterest like Joe-Joe the idiot circus boy, I put absolutely no thought into what I was doing while kicking the tires. Now that PT is hotter than Canadian Maple syrup at a swingers party I can tell you what I did wrong.

First off, like most of us I really didn't know what it was. Therefore I was just so eager to get my hands on it and stake a claim. A few things fell out of that experience. I started a bunch of lists that were important to me such as "Zombies, DesigNation, Survivalistic" and near naked women at "Shabam." That being said my account is more about me personally and not about me 'the brand.'

First question to ask - "Are you supporting a brand (corporate or personal) or is this a personal Pinterest account?"

The point here is all I've really done with my current account is give people a reason to think I'm a porn freak-based doomsday prepper that has a insatiable interest in art, automotive and design. While that's not wrong per se, it's not necessarily a glowing presentation of the personal creative/social thought leadership that I'm trying to establish.

Well If you're not launching a brand, I say let's lose the dogs of war and find the weirdest shit you can. Pin it and your noisy co-workers will create new things to gossip about around the water-cooler – "then last night he pinned 17 different kind of Chinese throwing stars with anime characters on them! I know right!?!" The other edge to this sword however is that it's more about the real "you" in the real world. If you don't want people thinking you dress up and play Phyllis Diller on the weekends, probably best not to pin up a road map to that effect.

Next question to ask - "How do I categorize and thereby subjugate by brand?"

It's like constructing an information architecture for a website and the "pins" end up the relational sub-pages within the "boards" you create. If you where to launch a clothing line or related outreach you might do something like:

Men's Tops
Men's Pants
Men's Accessories
Men's Shoes

...rinse and repeat with gender and age-group variance.

The caveat being that your pin either be yours OR have an affiliate or referral agreement with the product line to show it, as there's been some "gray" areas regarding copyright and terms as is pertains to Pinterest. ADDITIONALLY! It's also important to note that Pinterest may make money using your links in a referral capacity with companies such as Skim Links and others. They literally piggy back your link posted on the site to see if it goes to a retail site with an affiliate program. Upon finding referral coding it adds an affiliate code that ensures Pinterest will make some cash from sales that derive from that link. While not illegal (yet) it has brought them under some scrutiny.

Other things I didn't do that you should:

USE #HASHTAGS AND REFERRING (truncated) LINKS IN YOUR PINS!
Be sure to edit EACH BOARD with the proper description, category and if you want to advocate external (social) pinning on that particular board.
Include links back to your website and landing pages in your pins to drive traffic back to your website.
Create a "Follow Me On Pinterest" button for my site and social channels. You can also now add Pinterest to your Facebook account.
Use it like a focus group and crowdsource with it.
Create boards that you can use as competitive reference or trends within your industries.
Pinterest, as of yet, has not created a business "Page" model and therefore it might be said that there will be a redux in the process given that this is the case. I can't imagine they won't, as most LARGE social channel models have adopted this as standard practice.
Actively cross-fertilize your 'pinning' with your other social channels to boost traffic (important to note however it will NOT increase your SEO as has been proselytized until you turn your search engine "visability" on in your settings.)
If I get to do it again I think I will sort media too. I'd create specify boards for video vs. photos.
Also look for really "different" visuals. No one will click through on a default logo, but a beret wearing ferret riding a monkey that has a beret and AR15 rifle just might get you "repinned."
Engage other pinners + make nice = more followers.