Pinterest for Dummies

Having trouble getting started with Pinterest? I did, too! But now I have over 80 boards to share other novels and promote my own!

A few months ago, I made a Pinterest account. I created a couple of boards. I pinned my cover art into those boards. Then I got stuck.

I looked at other author’s profiles and they had tens of book boards. I clicked on a few. Some said, “Feel free to pin.”

Huh? Feel free to pin. HOW? Who owns this board? How do I get that lovely “plus” sign and EDIT tag? Gosh darn it. I searched the web and they all assumed I knew the basics. I shouted. I screamed. I asked…. but I must be a little slow, because I just didn’t get it.

Then, like a genie streaming out of a bottle, one day I figured out how to ask if I could join as a pinner to someone else’s board.

If you don’t have a Pinterest account, you can start here.

• Using your email, create a login and password. You might want to click on business, if you are a professional .
• Instead of choosing one of the home feeds presented, type in ‘books’ or ‘novels’. Choose five or more feeds to follow from that result.
• Get the Pinterest button
• Confirm your email address

Now it is time to make a board…

Log in and click on the bright red pin in the upper right corner.

• Do so again.
• Click on Edit Profile and fill in the form.
• Create three empty boards. This is quite easy, There is an icon in the middle of the page. One board should be the title of your novel. One should be ‘Books To Promote’ and one should be your Author name.
• Click on the red pin again. You should see your blank boards. Click on it. You can paste one pin from anyplace you like. You can always delete it.  You can search for me, Stella Marie Alden, if you like.
• Pin one pin to your board. Now you will see an “add a pin” box. You can click on that, and use it to pin your cover art from your hard drive or someplace on the web. ALWAYS fill in the website to your BUY-LINK  in the edit pin section.

Get familiar with this process and make a few personal boards. But this isn’t really helping to sell your novel. To do that you must connect with readers, but how?

You can use my board as a test.

• Type ‘BOOKS, A PLACE TO PROMOTE’ in your search window.
• Click on Boards
• Click on the board for Stella Marie Alden
• Click on the little white box on the upper left with a plus sign plus a number.
• Click on the creator. (me)
• Next to the follow/unfollow button there is a gear. Click it. That is where you can message me and ask for an invite.

The polite and well-mannered Pinterest pinner, would invite me to pin to their board. To do that, go back to your pubic board, click on the red invite, and paste my name into the invite form, to the left of the word, invite.

This technique will generally work on boards that say, “Feel free to pin.”

 

I sure hope this helps!! Stay tuned and I will add some images. Did this help you? Leave a comment and let me know!