Tips To Make Your Blog Pinterest Perfect

Pinterest might be the new social media kid on the block, but it has quickly become one of the most powerful and popular photo sharing sites on the internet.  Bloggers can capitalize on that popularity by making sure their blogs include a lot of interesting photos that users will want to share with their network.  After using this platform for over a year and seeing what works and what doesn’t, I’ve compiled the following tips to help you optimize your Pinterest popularity.

1. Add Alt Text and Image Titles – If someone pins your image using the Pinmarklet (the little button that gets downloaded to your favorites bar in your browser), it will pull the description from the image’s title or alt text.  Don’t leave it up to the reader to change the description, because they probably won’t!  Make sure the description you want is already set up and waiting.
2. Make sure your images are a decent size –  If you use tiny images on your blog, they will be tiny on Pinterest.  Bigger images are more likely to attract people’s attention and as a result, get more repins.
3. Add a “Pinterest ready” image to each post – See the image at the top of the post?  That is a “Pinterest ready” image.  It’s meant to be pinned and it tells people exactly what they will get if they click on it.  If you write a post about Pinterest tips and include an image of your adorable cat, and it gets pinned, you may get lucky and get a few cat lovers visiting your site, but they probably will be disappointed in your content and not stay very long.  Conversely, if you write about cats and want to attract other readers who love cats, then you should post as many pictures of cats as you possibly fit.
4. Watermark your images – Images are easily stolen.  You can easily use a photo editing program to add a small watermark or your blog’s name to your photos so they are always credited back to you.  I like to use Paint.net, a freeware program similar to Adobe Photoshop.  Microsoft Paint also works nicely for this purpose.
5. Make it easy for readers to pin your images – Adding social media share buttons will encourage readers to share your content, and Pinterest is no exception.  There are several ways to add share buttons to your post.  I like ShareThis.com which I found easy to integrate with Blogger.  For WordPress, there are plug-ins you can install to add hover “pin it” buttons to all your images.
6. Make your descriptions search friendly – When pinning your own images, try to be as descriptive as possible, so others will find it in a search.  Pinterest uses hashtags, just like Twitter, so feel free to use them to get your images seen in search results (although try to refrain from using 20 hashtags in a single description, for goodness’ sake).

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Do you use Pinterest?  Have you discovered any strategies that work for you? I would love to hear your tips.