It has been three years since Pinterest began its phenomenal rise among the ranks of the many social media sites. The site’s potential as a marketing platform was realised quite early. Soon, the Internet was awash with blogs and articles explaining how the online platform could be effectively used by everyone from authors to journalists to chefs and artists and more. If you are a regular user of social media, chances are high that you have come across the site in your online travels. And if you are an author, chances are even higher that the site has caught your attention as a potential avenue to connect with your audience.
Pinterest? Now what is that again?
On the off chance that you are not familiar with Pinterest, it is a social media platform like Facebook and Twitter. The only difference is, Pinterest is all about visual media. Think of it as an online scrapbook, where you create and share images with other users online, using a virtual clipboard of images. The site holds a lot of exciting possibilities, especially for authors to connect and share with others. All that has been covered in detail elsewhere. Here, let us ponder a few things of special interest to authors and their agents that we have learned about using the site as a platform for book promotion after three years on Pinterest .
Sell more by “selling less” of yourself
For starters, after only three years, Pinterest is the best performing social media platform when it comes to lead generation. For authors who use the site for book promotion, that means that users who visit your Pinterest board are more likely to buy your book than people who visit your Facebook page or follow you on Twitter. But there is a caveat here. To achieve that kind of popularity, one has to tone down the selling aspect. Blatant self promotion just puts people off. The more successful authors on the Pinterest boards are those that engage and interact with their target audience.
Who is using Pinterest these days?![red push pin]( "Pinterest for book promotion")
The target audience can be extremely important for any kind of marketing activity, let alone book promotion. And when it comes to the latter, it is all about reaching out to the kind of people your book is intended for. Enter the importance of Pinterest user demographics. Earlier surveys reported that an overwhelming percentage of Pinterest users were women – an estimated 82% of the global user base. But there are regional variations. In the U.K. for instance, the trend is the opposite, with young men the predominant users at around 56%. But these are not safe numbers to place your bets on. Because the Pinterest user base is expanding at an astonishing rate, they could easily change. But regardless of whether your book’s target audience is male or female, you are better off having a presence on the site.
Watch what you pin on your boards
Last but not least, be careful about the images and photos that you put up on your boards. Conventional wisdom states that for promotional purposes, the images that you pin on your board should link back to your own site, or to a site where lead generation is possible. Over time, the issue of copyright of the content being pinned on Pinterest has popped up again and again. So authors using Pinterest boards for book promotion should to take the issue of legality, copyright and ownership of the images and photos they use seriously.
And in conclusion…
As of now, Pinterest is growing by leaps and bounds in the social media sphere. How long will it sustain this growth? Though we don’t really know the answer to that question, for the time being the going looks good. As we use it more, we are learning more and more about its potential. The site has gained some serious attention in the niche of book promotion. Several publishing houses already have their own popular boards with published and upcoming titles. When the big publishers are hitching a ride on the phenomenon of Pinterest, how can individual authors afford to lag behind?
