Pinterest is one of the best social media platforms that authors can use to promote their books. It’s free. It’s user-friendly. It has a huge community. It’s everything that a promising author could ever dream of.

Here are 5 tips to use Pinterest as a book marketing tool:

1. Complete your Pinterest profile.

   Since you are an author, you must consider yourself as a brand. Therefore, once you sign up for a Pinterest account, you must convert it to a business account. By doing so, you will be allowed to promote your book freely on the website. With a business account, you can track your stats through Pinterest Analytics. You can also promote your pins for a minimum price.Tips on creating your profile:

   • Use your real name or pen name, not the title of your book.
   • Use a professional photo for your avatar.
   • Include the URL to your author website in your profile.
   • Write a compelling bio or description for your profile’s ‘About’ section.
   • Make your profile public.

2. Create and organize your boards.

   Pinterest is like a virtual pin board. Once you’ve set up your profile, the next thing that you’d have to do is to create boards for different types of pins. You can start with at least five boards. Be sure to add a proper description to each of them so that users would know what to expect from following your boards.

   Suggested boards:

   • Your book’s cover photo, with its blurb on the description.
   • Relevant images that represent your book’s topic or theme.
   • Quotes from your book.
   • Writing tips, preferably coming from your own blog.
   • Infographics that contain information from your blog posts.
   • Images with your blog post headlines.
   • Seasonal book recommendations.
   • Quotes from popular books.
   • Stunning photos of libraries, book shelves, and reading nooks.
   • Photos of your favorite authors and books.
   • Videos from your YouTube vlog, if you have any.
   • Your personal interests.

3. Pin frequently, but selectively.

   Posting frequently, especially during Pinterest’s ‘busy hours’, will give your pins a higher chance of getting re-pinned. However, you must remember that pinning even just one bad quality content can affect the credibility of your board. Be selective about what you post. Choose only the best. If you’re making your own graphics, see to it that you have considered your audience’s interests in the process. To gain a readership and a loyal fan base, you must please your audience with your pins.

   The best times to post on Pinterest according to statistics and case studies:

   • Between 2:00PM to 4:00PM
   • Between 8:00PM to 12:00MN

   The more you pin during these hours, the more attention you will get. So, be sure that your pins deserve your followers’ attention. Also, don’t forget to add a carefully curated, grammatically correct description to each of your pins. You can also use hashtags, but keep them to a minimum. Nobody wants to see a paragraph of hashtags.

4. Link your pins to your website.

   In line with adding a description to each of your pins, you must also include links that would redirect users to your blog or website as they click your pin.

   Steps to manually adding a link to a pin:

   1. Open a board and click on the box that says ‘Add a Pin’.
   2. Choose an image from your computer or device.
   3. Type in your description on the field provided.
   4. Pick a board and click on the ‘Pin It’ button.
   5. View the newly uploaded pin and click on the ‘Edit’ button.
   6. Type in your blog or website’s URL on the ‘Website’ section, and click the ‘Save’ button.

   Easy peasy, right? However, you must use this feature only for your original pins though, especially for the following:

   • Your book’s cover photo.
   • Quotes from your book.
   • Writing tips coming from your own blog.
   • Infographics that contain information from your blog posts.
   • Images with your blog post headlines.
   • Videos from your YouTube vlog, if you have any.

   If you have the ‘Pin It’ button installed on your blog or website, you can just easily re-pin images from there and the link will automatically be embedded in your pin.

5. Join and pin to community boards.

   Pinterest is a community. And what is a better way to interact with and contribute to the community than participating in community boards, right? It’s not just about making new friends and connections; it’s a great way to increase your book’s exposure as well. This is very useful for new self-published authors. When you pin images to a community board, all of the followers of that particular board will see your pins.

   However, you would need an invite to be able to join a community board. But don’t fret; here are a few tips to get that invite:

   • Follow community boards.
   • Re-pin the pins from community boards.
   • Follow and befriend the board owners.
   • Like and comment on the community board pins.

   You can also create your own community board and invite other users, preferably those who would be interested with your book, to contribute! This way, you can share and promote your content to a targeted audience. And they can share their content with you too.

   What an impressive marketing tool Pinterest is! Go on and use it to drive in more traffic to your website and to get more people to read your fantastic book!