Pinterest Tips To Sell More Books
Using these Pinterest tips to sell more books is important to your overall marketing strategy. It's an important piece of the marketing puzzle.
Pinterest for author marketing isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind when you think Pinterest.
Me, I think of food. I can get lost for hours on Pinterest looking at new recipes and drooling. Things I’d like to make but are way more advanced than my cooking skills. I also enjoy looking at clothes, houses I can’t afford, and places I want to visit.
Come to think about it, Pinterest makes me very covetous.
So I was quite surprised last year when I began focusing more on Pinterest to promote my books, and I started to get traffic from those Pins.
Crazy, I know!
At first, I thought it was a fluke. But I kept doing it and kept getting traffic. Now Pinterest and Facebook consistently vie for the top 2 spots of referring traffic back to my website.
I know what you might be thinking, oh please no. Not another social platform. I can’t possibly handle managing one more thing.
Don’t worry. Before you run and jump on the Pinterest bandwagon, adding yet ANOTHER social media platform to your already huge list of daily tasks, know you don’t have to be active on every social platform in existence. Not enough time in the day for that. Plus, not all are appropriate for your author brand.
You want to be where your audience lives. THAT's what’s important. Not the bright, shiny new thing that came out today.
So how can you use Pinterest to build your readership? First, you want to make sure you have the technical aspect of Pinning down. Like all other social media, you want to make sure you’re doing it the right way, so you don’t waste your time. You want to create and promote Pins that will get you the biggest bang for your buck.
Here are some of the basics you want to pay attention to.
Make sure your images are the right size, vertical (approximately 732 x 1200) and that they aren’t too text heavy. There are so many beautiful images on Pinterest, so you want to spend the time on creating them so yours will also stand out. Canva or Picmonkey are 2 free/low-cost sites that you can use to help you create awesome images.
Have your profile set up on your Pinterest page so people can see at a glance who you are and what you’re all about. Link back to your website or wherever you might sell your books.
Use the right keywords relating to your Pin and the board you’re pinning to. Thorough descriptions for your Pins and alt tags will make sure your Pins are searchable.
Have a Pin it button on your website so people can easily Pin your book cover images and blog post images (if you blog).
Pin others content along with yours. Rule of thumb that experts say, and that has worked for me, is a ratio of 3 to 1. Pin 3 posts of someone else to every one of yours.
Remember it’s not all about shameless self-promotion.
How should you use Pinterest to sell more books?
1. You want to create boards that relate to your books and interests you and your readers share. For example, I have a board for the main character of my cozy mystery series, Presley Thurman. I post things related to her character and directly related to my books. People who are new to the series or existing fans can check it out and get a better idea of what she’s all about.
I also have boards that are more personal such as cupcakes and cocktails. That’s a board that may not be directly related to my books but is related to my demographic of readers. Like you’ve heard me say a million times you want to connect with your readers on a personal level as much as a professional one.
2. Be consistent. I know it’s hard. I struggle with balancing marketing and writing constantly. I use Tailwind to schedule my Pins in advance which saves me a lot of time. It's not that expensive, $19 a month, and is totally worth it. I can sit down in the evening, enjoy looking at Pinterest, and schedule the Pins I like and that are relevant to my content.
3. Pinterest also affords you the ability to run contests and get your readers input on different things. For instance, let’s say you want to build the buzz for a new book. You could set up a board and invite readers to Pin their favorite Pins related to elements of your book. You could even organize a giveaway, just make sure to follow the Pinterest guidelines.
4. Joining author group boards or starting your own group board is another way to connect with other authors and readers and get the word out about your books and your author brand.
5. Have a strategy and know what trends are happening each month/season. Make sure to use your Pinterest analytics to see what people like and what they’re sharing. You always want to build in time to look at your data and make changes based on what’s working, or not.
When trying to decide what to do and where to start on Pinterest take it slow. If you’re just starting then create 8-10 boards with 5-7 Pins each. That will give you a good baseline with which to start.
Set a small goal of 30 minutes a week to curate content for scheduling. If you’re not ready to invest in Tailwind (which I can certainly understand), then you might want to set a few minutes each day to search for and schedule Pins.
Most important, don’t Pin just for Pinning sake. Have a specific purpose and goal for your Pinterest marketing and stick to it long enough to see if it’s gaining you any traffic. I recommend at least 30 days before scrapping it and trying something else. Sometimes things take time.
If you’re stuck trying to figure out what boards you should start with and how often you should Pin download this list of suggestions. You might not use the exact topic, but I’m sure it will at least spark an idea. After all, you ARE a creative.
After all, you ARE a creative.
