Using Pinterest as an Author

I use Pinterest a lot. I use it to keep track of my own personal goals and motivations, to get inspired, and to save ideas that I love. I also use it as an author. You can check out my Pinterest here.

But Pinterest has been widely viewed as a place for bloggers, foodies, artists, and graphic designers. How can you use Pinterest as an author? While it's true that Pinterest may not have been originally created to cater to authors, it actually has two applications:

1. It's great for using during the actual writing process
2. It's good as a marketing tool

Let's take a look at both of those in more depth.

1. Pinterest as a Writing Tool

Pinterest is known as a place where people can go to get inspired, to find ideas they like, and to save and organize their pins. Within the same vein, you can use Pinterest to

• find ideas and visual inspiration - I keep all my writing inspo here!
• create a mood board for your stories 
• create an aesthetic for your WIPs

In other words, it'll help you create separate visual boards for each of your works. I use them to get architectural references, clothing references, and images that really fit the vibe and aesthetic of the story itself.

Organization-wise, these boards have been extremely helpful for me. These are fully editable, so you can rearrange, delete, and update them as you see fit. Even if you start off with one aesthetic in mind for your story and make a complete 180 later on in your writing process, it won't be too much of a hassle to create a new board or edit your current one.

And - as far as I know - there aren't any limits to how many boards you can create! Of my 36 Pinterest boards, only 9 are public. Six out of those nine are dedicated to my WIPs and writing. Those are the ones I share via my social media platforms. 

Which brings us to...

2. Pinterest as a Marketing Tool

This one may seem more obvious. When you create a board to go along with your WIP or published story, you're giving readers more engaging content that they can check out. If they're avid Pinterest users and fans, they might even pin some of your pins or comment on them. They'll probably follow you, too, so they can stay up to date with any changes, additions, or new boards you create going forward. 

I take the extra step of actually creating my own visual content to add to my Pinterest boards for each of my WIPs and link it back to where they can find more info about that book. If you check out one of my boards for a current WIPs, like this one or this one, you'll see that I've created 2-3 graphics and scattered them through each board that talk about the novel itself, so that readers can get an idea of what your story is about. Because some of my boards are getting quite big, I'm planning on adding even more graphics! 

You can even choose one of your own graphics as the cover image for your board so that it's the first thing visitors see when they're going through your boards.

It's hard to get lots of followers on Pinterest, especially when you're working in a niche that isn't quite as popular on the platform as food, jewelry, clothing, fitness, art, and more. If you have a blog, it's a good idea to share your blog posts through there, since people can click through into your blog if they're interested enough in what your article is about. You might find it helpful to create boards that are related to writing that actually help people - these can be boards full of writing motivation, quotes, writing advice, prompts, or even book covers. These kinds of boards will help attract more people to your blog, and they'll end up following you if you regularly add to them.

Do you use Pinterest as an author? If so, let me know how your experience has been so far! 

This article was originally posted on my SheWrites account; as I am not longer using it, I'm migrating all of the articles I still like here.