Pinterest.. What The Heck Is The Goal There?

I think Pinterest could have great potential IF you can connect to the right followers, the kind who have boards that lots of other people see and is in line with your market. But most of Pinterest is just people who like to collect images and ideas and a lot of the pins are pretty random. Most of the people and organizations that follow me or have pinned my images add them to travel boards they have. That's what I'm looking for and I think it has led to a few sales, but keep in mind that my level of marketing is minimal. In my mind you want organizations following you as those are the ones that have a lot of traffic as opposed to teenage girls who are just collecting images of things they like or places they have been to.

All that's OK, but like all the SM platforms it takes care and feeding. What I found early on is that adding one or two images a day generated quite a bit of activity. I haven't actively used it for quite a while and of course there's no real activity now except for the occasional person stumbling on one of my images. And of course you have to follow others, and like FB or Twitter there can be a lot of noise.

All I really know is many of my images get repinned, some many times so that means my art is being seen there, whether that's where any of my sales came from I don't know. Last night I got the idea to pin my blog posts too, why not, it only takes a minute. I also have a few boards for repining other people's pins, I don't do a lot of that though and I don't know if that gets me any more attention.

Of the customers that have actually contacted me a pretty good percentage found me on Pinterest.

I have quite a few images that have gone somewhat viral on there and have been generating traffic for years and continue to generate traffic even though it has been years since I posted them.

It is easy to click through to the image on FAA, or more specifically my individual page which is where I pin from.

Of the images I have pinned, I have ~55,000 views a month. I get around 100 repinns a week.

Now, some of those images I know don't have a huge sales market but have a big interest base. Others have good sales potential. One of my best sellers had been repinned 2000 times before we lost the social media counters. Since it was originally pinned by someone else I cannot track that one now.

The thing for me though is this. I copy my keywords, paste it in the pin and pin it. THAT is all the interaction I have with Pinterest and it takes about ten seconds per image so it is basically easy and quick regardless if it is generating many sales or just a handful.

pinterest is the online version of hoarding. the only goal for most is to collect everything they see and organize it.

for others its a way to collect thoughts. wedding planning, parties, showing your clients matching items and so on. that's about it. to search on there, very hard. to find your image on there, nearly impossible. you can get an idea of how popular you are by typing in your name and look to see if anyone made groups about you. i hate the place, wish it wasn't there, but do get hits. sales, i don't thinks so. i'd have to look.

i joined because no matter what i tried, people put my work on that site. block it here, and they end up posting google images. at least with mine, i have some control of what it says.

its just another way for people to see you and adds more links to google. however it does take links away from google, it goes there instead of here. and because its so hard to find things, you may lose the sale.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

looking at my site on google

over one years time, pinterest got me 400 views. and none of those went to shopping cart. doesn't mean they didn't go back later though

facebook seems to be the highest in that list.


however pinterest leads to blogs, so there might be an upside.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Added thought. Typically my most viewed images on the weekly update email correlate directly to the images that are doing the best on Pinterest.

Pinterest views tend to show a Beverly Hills view.

As I see it, the goal is to give your art a wider, global audience.
What you can do or will do with that audience is quite another matter.

Pinterest works pretty well for me. I think it depends somewhat on the kind of art you are selling though. A lot of Pinterest is based around decorating. A year or so ago I decided to test various kinds of social media by pushing new art on one platform only for a while. One new piece of art promoted only on Pinterest, one only on Waynelo, one only on my Facebook page, etc just to see if one venue made a difference as compared to another. I know it probably depends on luck of the draw too but I will tell you that a year later, the one promoted on Pinterest is my number one best seller and my number one most viewed piece.

I do it like this. First I try to decide who my target buyer will be. The piece of art in question was mother and baby giraffe in shades of purple and aqua. I made up a board entitled something like purple and aqua nursery. I pinned this piece of art plus other things I found on Pinterest that I though would go in the imaginary nursery like bedding, rugs, etc. I tried to show where someone might want to use the art and some ideas about what it might look good with. I must have guessed right because I generally find it reposted on nursery decorating boards (many by mothers planning a new nursery for a specific child) and a few giraffe art boards. I'm supposing the same concept could work in any decor setting. Like an ultra modern living room with a few huge colorful abstracts. The idea is to attract people who are looking for decorating ideas and show how your art might fit into their plans.

Like any social media, following others and gradually getting followers of your own is key as is posting new content on regular basis. I happen to like Pinterest and get ideas of my own there and some of my boards are collecting things I'm thinking of using myself and some boards promote my art. So I am there regularly and I think that helps too.

Its used to collect things you like for home decorating or planning a wedding or daydreaming.

Who wouldn't want their artwork in someone's Pinterest board for home decorating? Or Christmas want list?

Thank you to everyone that has replied...

I get the wider market, that is without saying.

But with FB it is about groups.... Twitter it is about retweets...

Pinterest is about getting others to repin your pins? Is that what it is all about?

Or is there something else like just getting into the Google search?

Here's why I ask. I get a lot of people asking me if I can still get a lot of prints that I used to carry. Sometimes I dropped an artist because they lost their publisher and that triggers me to go searching to see if they have signed with another publisher yet.

When I search on a title or an artist, more time than not I will get a ton of Pinterest pins in the results compared to either Twitter of FB. Like 5 to 1 or higher.

So, I was thinking that maybe Pinterest was just about getting into Google search. Now I know that people would have to be searching for your name and titles, as stated above, but what, as JC said, it was about the keywords that are in your titles and or FAA uploads?

I find that just posting to FB or Tweeter is pretty much useless unless you get the retweets or target groups in FB.

Am I looking for likes or am I looking for getting repinned or just getting into the search or is there something else?

I also see some pins actually are selling pins. Is that something that is working and should be explored?

That's the kind of nitty-gritty stuff I am looking for.

I have 300 images, I lead with products and prints on Pinterest. I have 6500 pins. I keyword every single one of them across the two stores, DB and Jazz. I have 1600 pins left to keyword. I found out how to keyword them from JC. I have been in the process of set up since June July. I chip away at it just about every day. I have well over 5000 views per month on the Jazz store and something like 40,000 views per month on the DB store. Thing is I do not have yet have the depth JC has of repins. I get about 120 engagements per month, including likes. JC has a community of military people and he has been at it for years.

Following does not matter. Neither does being followed. repinning over time is one way to get found in a bigger and bigger way.

What your boards look like is very secondary. People first find you pin by pin through the search or through repins.

I post my framed work as pins. Framed work looks different and puts it in a good perspective as to how it looks on someone's wall.

When someone finds my pin, and they do, they enter my AWs if interested. Then the view counts take off in my case. In other words a visitor average can reach 10 pages per visit.

Right now is slow at times, but there are days I estimate that I have 200 visitors to each of my stores per day.

Thing is Google does not count this correctly. Because people are coming in based on pins instead of the main AW profile page, things get lost in the count commonly. This is particularly true if the pin is a Pixels product. OTOH FAA's view counts are accurate. And as JC said BH is the way they come in.

By leading with product people see a lot of my work in a common search. They see the reiterations depending on how things were searched out. A buyer needs to see your work six to seven times before buying. I get on with that process very quickly. The searchers cans see the print, the framed print, the duvet cover, the shower curtain etc and across several different images all at once.

As Mike says, it takes three months for a new image to work its way into the system. It has been about a month so far for me. Only in mid Aug were my pins up entirely. Only by the beginnings of Oct will everything be keyworded.

Do not let anyone falsely tell you Pinterest is not extremely useful. It is 60 million people per month largely female who at times are hell bent on shopping.

Dave

with Pinterest it is repins but more importantly, SAVES.
Think about all the housewives who virtually have hundreds of files of everything from recipes to art they would love to have on their walls. They save to their folders so they can know where to look when the time is right...and voila!
People follow other people who have already built impressive files and follow their files.....a gigantic ball gets rolling.....

repins and saves are the same thing.

People who are power users on for over 5 hours per day use the search in a very big way looking for anything under the sun. They commonly have larger followings and save a lot of stuff to their boards.

Dave

This is good stuff.... thanks again... I am starting to get a feel for it.

Has anyone boosted or paid for to advertise a pin yet?

Spent $25 to run a 5-day campaign just to see what that did and how the reports look.

That pin is of course now my number one everything. lol

But I am not real impressed with the numbers.

11.53k impressions, 313 engagements but only 10 image clicks. So far that is 72 cents per click.

However, it did generate 15 pins or repins, if that is what you call them.

The other interesting thig is I gave them $25 to run over 5 days. It expires in 24 hours but they have only charged me $7.21 so they are obviously not using click farm to buy through my money.

$7.21 for 15 repins, assuming they are going to sit there on those other boards, may be worth a lot down the road. But 72 cents per click is not all that great.

So there is the question again, is the goal longer term as in getting the repins?

Is the value not going to be in the clicks generated in the 5 day period but more in the repins down the road?

And again is it just being in the Google search but now with 15 repins it shows up more often in that search?

Or am I looking at this totally wrong?

Floyd,

Over time I'd like to know a lot more about how this worked for you. Please keep me posted.

Pins are on the boards, you set them up. Repins are what others do to save your work to their boards.

Dave

Right on Dave, will do.

I get the pins and repins...

When you put the keywords in are you using # or separating by commas? Is there a prescribed way that needs to satisfy Pinterest?

I do not look at all at the Google search for this.

I look at being found in P search. I look then to have saves/repins and being found by their followers.

It is a matter of time. It takes time to garner better and better results. That is my take.

Dave

commas no spaces. 500 character limit. So you do it like you would Pixels.

Actually I went over all my FAA boards and updated the keywords per JC, then when I added a pin I added the keywords. Thing is with products you do not have that access to the FAA keywords. So now I am taking the print board pin's keywords, a mouthful, and spreading the keywords over the image across its respective products. 1600 to go, but who is counting?

Dave

Thanks again Dave.

Ok, that sounds like the 15 additional repins I got for my $7 is not all that bad of a deal. It will actually end up much higher if I extend the 5 days to longer and spend the entire $25.

Gotta run, will be back later this afternoon.

I t-off in 45 minutes! Fore!!!!

I use pin and save interchangeably and probably shouldn't....it gets confusing.

A pin is when you find something you like on the internet and you 'save' it to one of your boards ( folders)

A REpin is when you find something on another pinterest user's boards and you pin ( or save) to one of your boards.

JC & David, I'd like to know a bit more about how you are using keywords. Is that in place of a description?

I was just going to ask the exact same question as Chuck, please do tell!!

TL Mair
http://tlmair.com
http://mairsphotography.com

I ventured on Pinterest for about one month or so and then I closed my account. I tried to be participatory, no chance. In the end it seemed like I was hanging things on the wall of a completely empty room. Absolutely no interaction there during this short period. Nothing, absolutely nothing. Nothing that could even justify the time I spend to login once a day, unfortunately. In comparison, I am sure that on Twitter at least 5 or 10 real followers I would have won without much effort.

What most caught my attention there, however, as an user, it was the way you can organize your stuff into those collections. I found it very intuitive and efficient.

Now. I would never call it terrible or anything since, paradoxically, the coolest things I could find about a particular subject, as a visitor, are almost always there. Especially if it concerns the creative content.

To be honest, I still wanted to have a pin account if I found a way to make it at least a little more dynamic and less difficult to interact. Beginner issues, perhaps.

I'm selective about what I pin to my boards )(alleries) at Pinterest, and only have around 230 currently. As Marlene stated earlier, it's about the re-pins, and I'm starting to get a few more re-pins and favorites from other "pinners". I do my pinning from my AW, that way it gives a link back to the AW. I don't use keywords, but do copy the description, or part of the description from the description at the AW. I've seen though where JC uses the keywords at his Pinterest site.

Go to my Pinterest site below, click on a "board", and then an image. My AW (greg-jackson.pixels) URL should be showing.

https://www.pinterest.com/GregJPhotos/

Repins beget repins beget repins. I have one image lately that's been repined quite a bit lately and I think it's just because one person with a hefty following repined it. It's a lot like twitter with retweets, the more repins you get the more your art is seen. I've never played the follower game on Pinterest, all my followers came to me organically, not that I have that many but I think having a large following is less important on Pinterest than other platforms.

I am a little more than just two months into the Pinterest test but so far I am not really able to draw any conclusions other than lacking the proper stats from FAA, there is no way of telling what is going on.

I was actually hoping that between the P stats and GA I may be able to piece together some sort of indication, see some sort of correlation between recent sales and the pins being promoted and of the ones getting the most saves. But there is nothing there that is not highly speculative at best.

Based on that, I am dropping my six month plan and redirecting those monies to be spent on my other sites.

I am getting very soft on advertsing a dang thing on FAA until we get those states. I will continue to use P for all new uploads but no more spending money for promoting anything on FAA until we get those stats.

Floyd,

Have you set up goals in GA? You can see if something is added to a cart by setting up a goal, but you can not see a conversion on your AW in GA.

I am now running ads on P and in the last couple of days have had two things put into the cart. That is the best I have done in many many months. And considering it was in a matter of two days...I am happy. Remember Nov 25 is Black Friday, shopping online goes softer for the day.

SORRY!! Just looked at the time line for the shopping cart additions. The two cart additions happened during my FB campaign. And before my catalog went on sale.

Dave

Dave, I am working with web.com/Netrork Solutions people and telling them what I want. The are dying to take my money and I am very willing to give it to them. I am pretty sure there is probably not a lot of people out there that are going to know a whole lot more about how to read and use GA or any other tracking software.

But the bottom line is, there is nothing at all that is worth gleaning from GA or any other sources that are currently out there until Sean makes the data available.

This is the kind of stuff I am looking for. I have 50 pages of that for just the last 30 days. Note the impressions, 639,000 for just one month.

Floyd,

Addition: I just clicked on yoor data image. You are posting Pinterest results or Ebay results?
Addition 2: 6278 listings Ebay?

Nix these two questions......
How many pins did you promote?

You promoted for saves? etc.....??

I have a friend locally who trusts it all to Network Solutions. Some of the basic stuff they do is very inexpensive and worth it. I will be looking into what they can do for me in the new year.

Dave

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/549017010809110476/

Floyd,

Separately this is a Nuime ad on Pinterest for your recent blog entry. The two parties know I follow you on Pinterest. This was on my Jazz feed.

Just some feedback by posting the link here.

Are you paying for this ad? Or did the two mix it up and show it? It was about five or six rows of images down, less than a page, on the right hand side of the screen.

Dave

I promoted dozens of them in the last two months. And they do create the most amount of saves by a wide margin. But there seems to be no relationship between promoted pins, saves and sales. None that I can make that is 100% for sure.

/

For the record, I am not saying that Pinterest is not worth the effort. I really do not have any idea. I can not help but believe that there are people like Mike and JC and a lot of others here are getting sales via Pinterest.

I am on the hunt for things I can see are working beyond a shadow of a doubt and this is not it. And I am of the opinion that there is nothing out there that will work until Sean decides to share more information.

Does anyone KNOW whether it's advisable to duplicate important words used in a Pinterest description in the Pinterest keywords?

On the assumption that if someone searches for butterfly images, for example, my pin would show up whether I had the word butterfly in the description or in the keywords, I have essentially been trying to create two sets of relevant keywords, one through a short description and the other with supplemental keywords, with no overlap. It actually takes extra time to do this, and I don't want to continue if it's counterproductive.

(And yes, I know that "butterfly" is a ridiculously common example and my image would most likely be so far back in the search as to never be found, but you get the idea.)

There are separate keywords? Where are you putting those?

In the description box. I think JC said he puts keywords there but others put descriptions. I've been putting a short (one or two sentence) description, as packed with relevant keywords as I can get it, followed by more relevant keywords I think someone might possibly use.

For example: This “Whitelined Sphinx Moth - Hawk-moth - Hummingbird Moth” by Nikolyn McDonald is shown sipping nectar from phlox. The black background and panoramic crop make it particularly dramatic. moths,insect,wings,hyles lineate,lepidoptera,feeding,flowers,proboscishovering,hemaris,bee moths,nikki,nikolyn,mcdonald

So it's all just one place you are talking about. Why would you intentionally put the same word twice in there? I don't believe that will help you. I just copy my description from the image page and then if I feel like it I add more relevant words that are not already in the description. I often run into the 500 character limit just putting the description in there anyway.

Yes, it's all just one place. Thank you for pointing that out, David. I knew that, of course - but at the same time I didn't know it. I think what I've been doing is fine.

I don't copy my description from the image page because (and I AM making this up) I think that if google picks up real sentences and penalizes for exact duplicates (both of which we've been told here in the forum, more than once), one or the other description - presumably the Pinterest one since it's always posted second - would not get picked up.

"I think that if google picks up real sentences and penalizes for exact duplicates "

That's what they say but I'm just not going to take a bunch of time and head scratching trying to figure out ten different ways to say the same thing for every SM portal. I don't know about Pinterest but it doesn't seem to have hurt me on tumblr.

the problem is - even if google finds you there. the buyer won't be able to find you on that page. and pinterest may rank higher than you going to this site.

google penalizes you if you STEAL the content from another site. if you said it on your own thing, it doesn't have to be unique as far as i know. to keep it simple i put in what i said here on pinterest. whatever fits in that box minus a few hashtags for good measure. on the other sites like facebook and goog, i write a quick blurb and put it on both. twitter is all hashtags.

i don't like putting just keywords in the pinterest box. its messy, though probably more functional to find you, i think you would get less repins because people like reading it.

however... if you say pinterest today, 9 out of 10 times people will say craft project right after that. the site has become a non credited site of just craft and how to's. i don't think to many people relate it to making sales or advertising products. so i wouldn't worry too much about the results there. every time i do a search i end up there anyway, and i can never, ever find what i was looking for.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Hello.

Why is the Pinterest click greyed out? And why does it say "Sorry, pinning is not allowed from this page. Please contact the site operator if you have any questions."

Guilherme Silveira Dias
http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/guilherme-silveiradias.html?tab=artwork

Hi GSD,

Every couple of months Pinterest changes its code and FAA falls behind. It is not a priority.

Get an extension for Chrome or whatever browser you use....ie a P button.

Dave

Guilhereme, go to "Behind the Scenes" then go to the Marketing section click on the "Sharing Buttons" button and then make sure the Pinterest box is checked, it appears you haven't got that box checked.

I get a dozen, sometimes maybe 2 dozen request for specific images every month.

When I do research on those images through an image search or a title/artist search, in the vast majority of those searches I find an exact match for what I am looking for on Pinterest.

That is why I figured I had to be there. I am not disillusioned or dissatisfied with Pinterest and still think that I get a ton of hits from there. What I am disillusioned and dissatisfied with it is FAA just flat refusing to give us decent stats to make sure we are not wasting our time advertising our FAA presence.

That is why I have stopped ALL paid and a lot of free advertising of my FAA presence. The idea of post and pray on FAA to get sales has run its course, IMHO. Not playing that game anymore.

Nikolyn,

Funny thing you mentioned, "Butterfly"

Even though butterflies ain't my thing, I have created a few digital ( "Pixel Pointillism") versions.

https://www.pinterest.com/feralcoot/

This one seems to be going "viral" on Pinterest:



Resulting in one of the very few digital sales here on FAA.

I'm continually prodded by Pinterest to pin other peoples images (which I never do*), they feel "similar" to my work

I must assume that others on Pinterest are equally prodded to consider my work.


* Some believe that I should schmooze more......Your thoughts?

https://www.pinterest.com/dogfordstudios/

No thoughts, Roger, but I was happy to find and pin your butterfly to my butterfly board. Don't expect any pins from there, though - my boards are seriously dead LOL

Nikolyn McDonald the ARTIST from Papillion Nebraska.

No wonder you are into butterflies.

Great photos

I'm now a Pinterest Follower

Yeah, Roger. The emblem of the town - even painted on the water tower - is a monarch butterfly. They even spelled it wrong way back when (Papillion rather than papillon) to try to get people to pronounce it right. No one does. If you're from around here, you say, "pa - pill - yun".

Thanks for the follow, though.

@David Bridburg.

I got the Pinterest extension.

@David King
Thank you. Now on the "Sharing Buttons" I got the Pinterest box checked.

GSD,

The extension works faster with your browser than using the share button between FAA and Pinterest servers, if you are posting your own pins.

Dave