Back in January, I wrote a post about Pinterest as a curation tool to organize and share visual content I’ve collected in a pleasing visual way. As the platform has evolved over the past few months, there are some other benefits including driving traffic and conversions and more recently how pinning helps encourage audiences to “like” the brand more.
I’ve be facilitating a few introductory workshops and briefings about Pinterest for nonprofits with a goal of explaining it, what it does, benefits, and examples of how nonprofits and others are using it. I’ve been actively curating tools, research, and tips and have found some great ones that I’m sharing sharing below.
1. Integration
Convince and Convert has a terrific post by Chris Sietsama called “Abandonment Issues: What To Do With Content Archipelagos” in which he asks you take a bird’s eye view of your content and figure out if there is a content area that is “standing alone” and not integrated into your overall strategy. He suggests doing an inventory and asking how each contributes to your overall goals and whether it is measurable. Based on the answer, either repurpose, abandon, or bring into the fold.
If you’re just starting to think about adding Pinterest to your content strategy or if you jumped in before you had a strategy, you can do this type of questioning on the front end, perhaps coming up with a small experiment that supports an overall goal and a measurement strategy.
2. Research
You might also want to spend some time doing a little research on site and browse some of the pinterest stat sites. This will help you get a sense of the users and whether or not Pinterest is a good fit for your content.
Repinly is a site that analyzes Pinterest users and content. You can discover the most popular categories for pins and boards, how users spend their time, and most followed users. Checking out top pinners is a good way to learn best practices.
You will also want to take a look at what and how other nonprofits are using Pinterest. There are several Pinterest boards that showcase nonprofit users like these: Nonprofit Organizations, Nonprofit Pinterest Ideas, and Nonprofits on Pinterest. For more ideas, see this list of 50 nonprofits on Pinterest.
It also might be worth doing a little research on PinME and see if any your existing content has already been pinned by other users. I was surprised to find so much of my blog content pinned by others.
3. Mindful Implementation
Once you have done your research and have a basic concept for a pilot or action learning project for Pinterest that supports your overall objectives AND is integrated with your content strategy, now it is time to establish good practices. The above image is a chunk out of an useful infographic “64 Pinterest Marketing Tips,” simply use it as a template and tackle a half-dozen or so techniques per week for 30 minutes a day. If you practice Pinterest like you would practice piano etudes, you’ll master the basics quickly and get better results.
I’m curating How-Tos and Tips for using Pinterest here and here if you want to explore other tips and tricks.
4. A Few Pinterest Measurement Tools
Most importantly, you’ll want a way to measure against your overall goals – so you can track whether the small experiment is working or not. There are many tools that can help you, here’s a few that help with measuring your Pinterest use:
Pinpuff is a sort of klout for pinterest that gives you a number from 1-100 that indicates your “pinfluence.” The site gives you suggestions of other users collecting similar content.
And while there is some bogus stats that attempts to give you a dollar amount per pin, the site does generate some useful data for you. For example, you can a list of the followers, repins, and likes for all your boards.
A similar site is PinReach which gives you an number from 1-100 and suggests influential followers. It also shows trending pins, topics, and users, although I found it too general to be of use.
Probably the best one is Pinerly and I’m on the waiting list. Based on this analysis from the Poynter Blog, it looks like it generates useful metrics.
How is your organization using pinterest strategically? What type of pilot test are you doing? Have you explored any of the measurement tools or other management tools?
