12 Tips To Increase Interest In Your Pinterest Boards

Putting my marketing career cap on here to share 12 ways you can pump up the interest and influence of your Pinterest boards. These are all fun and easy things I've considered as I work on making my boards pretty - lessons I've learned in the trenches. Each one will help make your Pinterest site more eye-catching to visitors. All right, let's jump in.

1) Use a nice avatar photo. This is often the first thing people will see when they visit. Use a lovely professional photo of yourself or something to do with your business. First impressions are important. Not everyone loves a photo of your scruffy but lovable pet or something else not clearly connected to what you're doing on your boards.

2) Take the time to write a nice introduction to who you are, what you do and what to expect from your Pinterest boards. Again this is a first impression thing. Take the opportunity to draw in visitors with words as engaging as your pins. Don't leave this space empty or fill it up with meaningless junk. Say something welcoming and pleasant.

3) Think about your brand. Regardless of whether you are running a small business, a blog or are just pinning for fun, you are building a brand whenever you post anything online. What kind of brand are you creating? Is it consistent with who you are, who you want to be and where you want to go with your blog, business or online presence? Keep your online personality consistent and likable if you want to build a following and create opportunities for yourself.

4) Keep your board names short and simple. Give pins clear descriptions. There has been a real trend to use catchy names for boards that do not clearly identify what they are. For instance you might use "Ring-a-ding-a-ding" for a wedding board. If you want people to find your beautiful board on weddings, put wedding in the title. People are more interested in your content that how cutely you can name things. Give your pins clear descriptions so they are easy to find in a search. If you are hard to find they won't find you or your pretty pins.

5) Add your own content. Don't just pin other people's pins. Go to some of your favorite sites and pin your favorite products, fashions and designs - things that inspire you. There's always a genuine need and room for more beautiful pins on Pinterest.

6) Smartly organize the layout of your boards. There are different ways to do this.

• Focus on holidays. Now is a great time to move your Christmas decor and DIY boards to the top of your Pinterest page. After the holidays drop your holiday boards to the bottom and move anything to do with Valentine's Day, Spring, Easter, etc. up at the top of your page.
• Consider the season of the year. During the winter drop the summer oriented boards to the bottom and vice versa. 
• Put business first. If your board is business or blog oriented try to keep the boards most strongly associated with your brand at the top. If you sell pretty things on Etsy that you want to display but also have a board associated with your love of ugly dogs maybe put the dogs at the bottom.
•  Make sure the boards at the top of your page are pretty and robust. If you have some boards that would be good at the top of your page but don't have a lot of pins, take a few minutes to beef them up before you put them center stage.

7) Select gorgeous cover shots. Pick your prettiest, most eye-catching pins for the cover shot on each board. Make sure the photo fits in the space available and is clear, then center is so it looks pleasing to the eye. Next consider how each looks along side the boards surrounding it. Don't pick cover shots that don't look good next to each other. Try to find harmonious color combinations with all your cover shots so that your main Pinterest page feels cohesive and inviting.

8) Switch things up often. Move your more generic boards around and change up your cover shots regularly. This will help repeat visitors see that you are constantly improving and adding new things to your page. This is something I learned when I used to do craft fairs. Moving things around in the booth during the day would cause something to suddenly jump out and catch the eye of people who may have already visited several times before.

9) Clean up your boards once in a while. To keep your boards manageable and pretty, go through and delete those pins that you look back at and can't believe you pinned or that aren't meaningful to you anymore. Look for ways that tighten up your themes and organization. I recently went through my Wedding board that had gotten too big and unwieldy and broke it up into several smaller, more tightly themed boards. I also divided out my Kitchen board to be two more cohesive smaller boards.

10) Think about the mood you are setting. My best example here is all the really snarky, sarcastic cartoons on Pinterest. There are also a lot of bitter and depressive saying on Pinterest. Yes they are funny, but most are also pretty rude or just plain depressing. Some people won't care about this a bit, or will gladly stand by their love of snarkiness. But if you're trying to attract people to you for business, networking, friendship or even dating relationships it's something to consider. What are your boards telling your audience?

11) Leave nice comments. Snarky put downs are bad for brand. But leaving plenty of nice comments is great for your business, brand and online persona. See #10. You can create or destroy relationships in the comment section. You don't have to say everything that goes through your head.

12) Promote yourself and others graciously. Everyone wants followers on their social networking sites don't they? At the same time, no one likes pushy, heavy handed "invitations" to follow someone. But  you can easily offer a gentle invitation to check out your latest updates, tied into some event going on. You can send a tweet like this "Spent the evening doing holiday crafts. See my inspirations on my Pinterest board here (include link)..." It doesn't have to come across as a used car salesman pitch nor does it have to feel like it to you. When you add in a few tweets, Facebook or blog mentions about some other people's boards that you love it helps show that you are spreading the love and not purely self-promoting.

There we go. Let me know which of these tips are most helpful to you. If you have any questions leave a comment below and I'll reply. Which ones have you already tried? Which ones do you want to try soon? If you aren't on Pinterest yet it' easy to join. You can sign up right here. If you are one of the many people who joined Pinterest, maybe months ago, and haven't yet created a board or pinned anything, I say try it out. It's great fun!

You can see my Pinterest boards here and of course you are welcome to follow. Share your Pinterest link in the comment section below so we can all visit you too. Thanks for coming by. Have a fantastic day. And Happy Pinning. See you there!

image by kalanicut