Can someone please explain pinterest to me?

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   TessSchlesingerposted 5 years ago

   I truly don't get it. It's a whole lot of pretty pictures. How does posting our articles to pinterest get them read?

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      eugbugposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      When you pin a photo to one of your boards (which are effectively sub-categories that you can group stuff into) by clicking the "+" on the Pinterest home page, you can add a backlink. When someone clicks on your photo on a board, it gives more information about the pin and clicking the photo leads them back to your article. When you go to the Pinterest home page, you are presented with a feed of pins recommended for you based on your interests or what you've searched for on Google. You can then re-pin them or just click and visit the links. On many websites, social media sharing buttons are located either on the page or appear when you hover over an image. This allows you to pin an image. When you pin, you're normally given a choice of which image from the page you want to pin and you can edit the text that appears as a caption for the pin when it's displayed on Pinterest.

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         TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         How much traffic does one get from pinning one's articles there?

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            eugbugposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            It depends on several factors such as subject matter, how many followers you have, how popular something is at any point in time, how attractive the pins are (read up about "made for Pinterest images") etc.

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            Sherry Hewinsposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            Really, the best thing is for other people to pin your articles. Put enticing images on your articles, with a little text giving a clue what the article is about, then you don't have to do anything.
            
            I always do pin new articles when I finish them, but I don't have enough followers for that to make a big difference. I have a few articles that get substantial traffic from Pinterest.

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               TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               I make a point of putting the best illustration as number 1 on all my articles. I have noticed time and time again that when one has a fantastic picture for the first one, it absolutely affects your traffic positively. To be honest, I haven't up to now pinned anything on pinterest. I think I have three followers. An d they're probably all dead at this point.
               
               And, yes, other people are pinning my stuff (same with facebook). I think, however, I'll start doing it, and I'll also put words on all my pictures. Thank you for a redhot tip!

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      promisemposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      It's a time suck with massive competition.
      
      You get the most exposure by submitting original images. The images that get the best response have superimposed words on them related to the topic. So finding and editing those images takes a chunk of time.
      
      Think of those edited images as being visual book covers that you store in an account. When you want to read more about the topic, you click on the image to go to the website page with the details.
      
      Pinterest promotes those images in its search engines and topic pages only if you contribute them on a regular basis, ranging from weekly to several times a day.
      
      But once you stop posting, the click traffic plunges again.
      
      When I calculated the amount of time I was investing in Pinterest versus the clicks I was getting from Pinterest, I quit doing it.
      
      Even more so, I can't speak for HubPages, but AdSense doesn't display quality ads to visitors to my websites from Pinterest. So it wasn't worth the revenue either.
      
      And now of course, everyone is posting on Pinterest about everything. So anything you post fights an enormous crowd.

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         TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         That's really interesting. Most of my traffic comes from google. My second highest traffic comes from pinterest. And I'm not the one putting my stuff there.

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            promisemposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            Then you are lucky.
            
            I had an article on a site I publish that generated 40% of the site's total traffic for several years. It was ranked #1 in Google for multiple keywords. It's possible you have the same kind of luck.
            
            That said, Pinterest is currently my #3 source. But I have put enough effort into growing Pinterest to know that it's not worth the time and certainly doesn't produce the income.

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               TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               I've got a good few articles on number one or two, three, or four of Google. It's not luck. it's skill. I purpose write to get to the first page of google. I check out keywords, traffic, topics very carefully. Of course, I dont' get every article there, but I'm happy with what I am able to do.

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                  promisemposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  Yes, as do I. I put an enormous amount of effort into all of my articles.
                  
                  But luck in addition to effort determines whether a small number get to the top of Google while thousands of others (at least in my case) do not.
                  
                  Otherwise, all of them would get to #1.

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                     TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                     You've only got 16 articles on hubpages. What do you mean 'thousands of others.'
                     
                     The fact is that one's articles depends on the ranking of the site. I've written for many sites (been on the web since 1994 (or 3) and I've always noticed a direct correlation between the ranking of the site and how my articles are ranked.
                     
                     It's the number one reason I couldn't be bothered to have on  own website. I'm a writer, and I really don't want to worry about technicalities of the actual website.
                     
                     Hubpages has a good PR. So if one follows basic SEO, one has a good chance of getting to page 1.

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                        promisemposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                        I used to have 50 on HP. I have thousands more on sites I own and other sites where I write. But I'm mostly retired now.
                        
                        I worked full time online starting in the 1980s. Yes, site ranking is a factor in how well an article does.
                        
                        Maybe it's why I passed 1 million page views on HP a long time ago with a small number of articles.
                        
                        As I'm sure you know, hundreds of other factors impact it too, including the number of writers who write about the same subject.

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                           TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                           The first time I wrote for hubpages before I closed my account, I hit 600,000 in under a year. I was litterly watching my articles numbers turn like slot machine - just number crunching everysecond. Then I left because people were so nasty.
                           
                           It is much more difficult now. How long a site has been up is also a factor. And these days a takes quite a bit of skill to regularly get to the top of the SERPS. Yes, of course, there is an element of luck. There is in everything in life. But I reckon if one follows the rules and do what works, if one gets articles regularly on page one, that's okay. Hubpages does a really good job.

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            Sherry Hewinsposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            That's what you want. Pinterest is my second highest traffic source as well, and I spend minimal time on it.

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         wildernessposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         "Pinterest promotes those images in its search engines and topic pages only if you contribute them on a regular basis, ranging from weekly to several times a day."
         
         If that's the case then, like Tess, someone is posting my stuff on there quite regularly.  In terms of traffic produced, Pinterest comes in at #3 for me, right behind Google and Bing, but I have made but 4 posts there this year, and those were all in the first half of the year.
         
         That took maybe 10 minutes max, but pinterest is pushing about 100 visitors per day my way.

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            eugbugposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            I've noticed too that stats in Pinterest Analytics and indicated on the actual pins themselves only show engagements/ saves of that pin and not repins of repins. So the total number of pins can be higher than you think. Before the slump in September, I was getting 200 visitors per day without any regular effort, coming from a few pinned, niche site articles.

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               promisemposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               You are correct. One post on Pinterest can get 2 pins or 2,000 pins. If you get 2,000 pins, then you are lucky and will get plenty of traffic from just that one post.
               
               But those situations are the exception and not the rule.
               
               More to the point, even though Pinterest is my #3 source of traffic, a total of 77% of that traffic is the result of just two pins that got repinned hundreds of times.

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                  Bedbugabscondposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  I kind of hate to bring this up, but 75% of Pinterest users are Female. If you have expertise about things that the target audience loves, you can connect to lots of traffic and lots of repins. If you happened to be a woman in the perfect age demographic, then you might find it's rather easy to come up with those unique images within the niches that do well. I'm only saying this because I think that Pinterest is one place males may have to work harder to gain a solid audience just because of the bias and the fact that Pinterest is mostly female. I'm not saying your not in touch with your feminine side, but if you are a female, then you may have insight to lots of niches that can gain tons of traffic from pinterest. For example, i could paint my nails and take pictures and write an article about some technique, then share it to pinterest, and that kind of stuff does well. Where on another account i write about video games, and that gets no traction from pinterest.

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      Bedbugabscondposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      You have the perfect articles for pinterest. But when you pin them you just have to make the perfect image for your target audience, and of course add that perfect description into pinterest. Look at other similar articles that do well for your keyword on pinterest. See what the winners are doing and then try to do even better. Really study the way people use the long form pictures 2:3 ratio with a call to action phrase in the image. Infrographics also do really well.

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         TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         Thank you. I am really going to work with this. I am very appreciative of the help I've received in this thread. With G+ closing, a lot of my 'help' is disappearing into thin air! So I need another social network. Pinterest sounds perfect for my needs.

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   Rupert Taylorposted 5 years ago

   Thanks Tess. I am also at a loss to understand it even though I've tried to follow the instructions. I've posted a few things that I think are links on Pinterest but I'm not sue anybody sees them. I shall await with eager anticipation the input of social media gurus.

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   eugbugposted 5 years ago

   Personally I find it's a better way of getting traffic than from e.g. Twitter. Tweets appear then disappear again as they roll on in the feed, so unless you've got lots of followers who continually re-tweet a tweet so that it stays visible, there's not much point. Pins tend to continually resurface as they're recommended, so they get more exposure. Also most search traffic is organic, meaning people look for things when they need to, rather than following a link when it's shoved in their faces. If you can make pin or other shared item enticing so that they're curious enough to look more closely that could be a means of getting more click throughs.

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   Rupert Taylorposted 5 years ago

   Clearly, Pinterest was not created for the benefit of 75-year-olds. So, do I have to create one of those boardy things or can I just stick my stuff on some else's boardy thing?

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      eugbugposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      I'm not sure. You probably don't have to make boards, just setup the account, add a summary of what you're about and then click the "+" button to add an URL that you've copied from the top of your browser of a page you'd like to add. You can add boards later and re-pin the pins into them and delete the original pins.

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      TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Nope. You can't stick your stuff on someone else's boardie thing. That happens when people like your stuff and read it and then decide to pin it on their boards. Same story on all social networks.
      
      It's incredibly difficult to and takes concerted effort to get traffic on social networks. G+ (closing in April) was the fastest way to get traffic. Within months, I had 7/8000. In two years, I had 18,000 to 20,000, and in 4 years I had upto35,000, and I wasn't even  trying. It taught me a lot about social networking.
      
      It's also useful to have that kind of social network. For instance, I only had a few thousand to go these last few days to get to a million views. So I posted up some hubs, told everybody I wanted to hit a million before year end, and I got it!
      
      The thing is there's nothing like G+ availble now. They killed it. Probably because it wasn't generating money.
      
      I would never invest in another social network. They work too slowly and it takes immense investment. Much better just to focus on getting to number one spot in Google which is far easier.

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         eugbugposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         The exception is that sometimes people invite you and give you permission to pin to their boards (not sure what the term is, maybe shared board)

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            TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            Yes, that's true. I suppose if one knows people, that will happen. But, again, if you don't know people, it takes a while to build up relationships, and to get asked. To me, it's simply much easier to write articles aimed at getting to the top of google, and then those peopleon instagram who are looking for copy will find it if it suits and share it automatically (which, I assume, is how I am getting traffic).

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               eugbugposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               Instagram doesn't do clickable links though (except on a profile). I agree the best thing is to get high rankings and organic traffic or hopefully a backlink on a forum or popular website.

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                  TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  Are we talking about instagram or pinterest?

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                     eugbugposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                     Well you can't share a link on Instagram in a post, but you can tell viewers to find it on your profile.

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   eugbugposted 5 years ago

   In a sense, the idea or appeal of Pinterest is that it taps into the psyche of those of us who compulsively like to collect things (even though we don't necessarily do anything with the pins once we've collected them ).

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   Natalie Frankposted 5 years ago

   I think the key is to select/use great pictures that, in the absence of any text, get peoples attention, then pin all of the pictures from each article.  If you have, say, four pictures in an article and pin all four that increases the likelihood that someone will click on any one of them.  This takes longer because you need to go to Pinterest and do it manually instead of just hitting the pinterest button on an article.  The button will let you post the article using the first picture.  To add a description you have to go back in and do it after it's been pinned.  So I just go there to begin with.  Instead of posting every image at the same time, since I don't publish a ton of new articles each month, I post one picture, wait a day or two then post the next, etc.  Pinterest works best if you post frequently so i've noticed I get better traffic doing it this way vs. posting 4 pictures one day then nothing else for several weeks.  I won't say I see a ton of traffic from Pinterest, maybe 2000 views or so but since it only takes a couple of minutes per picture it isn't a huge outlay of time or effort for those views.

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      TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      When you say 2000 view, do you mean 2000 views per day, per  month, per year or ever?
      
      And are these views on hubpages or on Pinterest?

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         Natalie Frankposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         Somewhere between 1800-2000 views per month from pinterest so not so many but again that's for very little time and only when I have a new article up.

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            TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            Wow. That's a lot.

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   psycheskinnerposted 5 years ago

   Like many people I use pinterest not just to save pictures, but to use pictures to organize/save recipes, and sewing patterns, and mosaic techniques.  So whether pinterest will work well has to do with what you hubs are about--and whether people on pinterest will save it to share and use later.

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      TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Okay. Thank you. I got the picture now. I suppose I'ma generalist and I save articles to flipboard. I think I'll just continue the way I am.Thank you so much for your input.

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   Lovelli Fuadposted 5 years ago

   Pinterest has been developing "rich pins" since 2013, and one of them are "article pins", which let pinners pin their articles. These are what their developer blog define as:
   
   Article Pins let users know that they're clicking on a page with original content that tells a story. Article Pins include a headline, author and story description.
   
   There things you can do better with article pins:
   
   * You can use Pinterest to create a board of your portfolio, and then post a link to it when you discuss pitches with an editor.
   
   * You can add article pins to your blog so that people can easily pin your entire article instead of your images.
   
   * When you encounter an article pin, you have the option to read the story, instead of admiring the images. (See the "Read It" button.)
   
   
   
   
   It's actually pretty neat-o for HP if they can use the graph and make sure every article we publish here can be pinned with the article pins feature.

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      TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      That looks very cool. Thank you.I must be honest and say I didn't see any of that on Pinterest. I shall explore that more. Thank you.
      
      I can't find a 'read it' button anywhere on pinterest. When I click on the Pinterest button (on hubpages), it just asks which board, but I can't see a way to make it an article pin, and it doesn't show a 'read it' button. How does one do that?

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         Lovelli Fuadposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         That's the thing, Tess.
         
         On a regular pin, we only see the image, and can only read it if we click on the arrow that would take us to the publication. And most Pinterest users don't because they can't find any helpful button that says "read it" - EDIT: see example of said arrow on a pin below.
         
         
         
         The regular pins are not focused on our articles. They're just showcasing our choices of images.. According to GA, 65% of my views this last three months came from Pinterest. That's why I think HP should really consider using the "article pins" feature.

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            TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            So there is no way I can attach a 'read it' feature to my pins on pinterest? It can only be used if one has a blog? Is that right?
            
            Your article is about blogging, not acutally how to upload an article to pinterest with a icon saying 'read it.'

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               Lovelli Fuadposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               No. You cannot upload an article to pinterest. You can pin an article using "article pins", and the way you do it is detailed on Pinterest developer blog. Also, that is not an icon, that is a button.

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                  TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  What I am unclear about is the pinterest site itself. I have no interest in blogs, and I don't have a website.
                  
                  So I'm trying to find out how to get my pins to say 'read it.' I only found details on how to use HTML for a blog site - not how to actually load my article to pinterest with the words 'read it.'

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                     Lovelli Fuadposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                     I use Pinterest for Business account, and my current views, without a website, is 17.2K per month. But only about 125 of those views are to my HP articles. I'm pretty sure Pinterest is not people's first choice for reading articles. I'd say if you've got cool attractive images to share, pin them on Pinterest. But if you don't, why bother?

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                        TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                        Thank you. But you're not being clear on the issue of how to pin an article on Pintereest with 'read it?' Can that be done?
                        
                        I took a look at your pinterest. Thank you. I get the idea.

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                           eugbugposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                           No, HubPages have to add code to our articles in order for these "rich pins" to be displayed.
                           
                           https://developers.pinterest.com/docs/r … overview/?

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                              TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                              Ah. Okay. Maybe we shouldmake that suggestion. Thank you so much for explaining this to me.

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   Shesabutterflyposted 5 years ago

   I saw you got some good explanations, but thought I'd share my experience as well. I don't use pinterest much anymore, but I still get more traffic from it than all the niche sites combined.
   
   This month I have around 640 views from pinterest. It is my 3rd highest overall source of traffic behind Google and other SE's.
   
   For the little effort I've put in, I'm happy with the results. I can't say it brings in much revenue, but the traffic seems to be steady. Either way it's bringing readers in at a greater rate than the niche sites or other social media platforms I've tried.

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    Glimmer Twin Fanposted 5 years ago

    Hi Tess -
    
    Pinterest is a terrific traffic source for me and back in January 2014, I was asked to do a guest post on the HubPages blog to talk about it.  Maybe it will help you a bit.  Granted, the post was written quite some time ago so some things have changed a bit, but the general gist of it hasn't. 
    
    Here's the post.  https://blog.hubpages.com/2014/01/16/ho … -twin-fan/

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       TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

       Wow! Thank you. That was an awesome hub. I learnt a lot, and I will most definitely use it. I'll also share this hub to my various streams.

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          Glimmer Twin Fanposted 5 years agoin reply to this

          Thanks Tess, I'm glad you liked it.  However, this article isn't a hub. HubPages asked me to do a guest blog post for them, so I wrote it for their blog.
          
          Happy New Year.

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    Erudite Scholarposted 5 years ago

    @Tess,
    Pinterest is a social network that allows users to post pictures with links to their sites. The pictures are called Pins. Users can create albums for their pictures or for pictures from other users. The albums are called boards. Pinterest is great for fashion, recipes, art, graphics, design, architecture and other visual topics. I use Pinterest regularly and I have found it to be a great traffic source. You can pictures from your hubs to Pinterest.

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