Pinalytics is a social media tool that helps you find, track and evaluate pins and content and it isn’t just limited to Pinterest but will track the spread of a pin through other social media sites such as twitter, facebook and google+.

You can use it without logging in and it will return 5 results. Create an account and it will return 50 results.

You can search Pinalytics to see the type of content that is popular, look for opportunities, track conversions and look for new audiences.

You can narrow the search to search under pins, boards or pinners.

Start by searching for a keyword. In this case, I’m looking to see if a board on Irish Castles might be of use to Irish tourist accommodation businesses.

The pin with the most repins will show first in the search results. The results include information on how that pin has been shared on the other social networks too.

The pinterest results are shown first, showing the number of repins, likes and comments. These are followed by the results of shares in the other social media platforms. All of the results can be exported in a TSV file or via clipboard.

If you want a different social media platform to be shown first in descending order, you can do so: eg. facebook likes.

 Using the same keyword, I searched under ‘boards’ and it revealed a number of boards entitled ‘Irish Castles’.  While I could do the same search in Pinterest to find boards with ‘Irish Castles’, using Pinalytics has the advantage that I am able to ascertain the popularity of this board type by looking at the number of pins and the number of followers. I can also choose to follow the board and/or the board author.

Why might you use Pinalytics as an analytics tool in your social media campaign?

• You can see if that keyword and /or type of content is proving popular by looking at the ‘pins’ selection and examining the number of repins, likes and comments.
• You can establish if the pinned content is popular amongst other social media channels too.
• In the example used in this blog post, the tourism accommodation industry, pinners can decide if including a board on Irish Castles is worthwhile, see if there are sufficient people interested in it judging by the level of interaction on the individual pins (both on pinterest and on other platforms).
• You can connect with the most popular authors/pinners.

What do you think? Will you use pinalytics to aid your evaluations and planning for your Pinterest campaign?

If you would like help learning how to use Pinterest effectively, do get in touch with us to book a training sessions or details on upcoming courses.

The post Pinterest Tutorial – What is Pinalytics & How Does It Work? appeared first on Write On Track.

If you’ve been wondering about creating a shared board but weren’t sure of the topic, we have 11 ideas to help you in your strategy.

I recently set up a shared board on pinterest inviting others to share their ‘decorating stories’, mostly before and after pictures of upcycled furniture and redecorated rooms. What I have found is that more and more people are following that particular board than any of my other individual boards so it can be a great way to ensure your pins are seen by a wider audience.

I have recently been invited to join shared boards on Irish blogs and on wallpaper – which I will use to promote my own blogs and of course, the wallpapers I sell too.

If you are wondering how to set up a shared board on pinterest – here’s our explanation of how to do it.

Here’s some ideas for type of shared boards that would work well on Pinterest:

1. Travel Agencies –  invite clients to share some holiday photos onto a shared board.  Encourage your staff to share their photos there too.  This encourages interaction with your customers as well as providing photographs of your holiday destinations.

2.  Photographers – Creating ideas for a photoshoot and sharing the board with models, stylists and other participants. See how our photographer for the Grafton Media Blog Awards photoshoot used a shared board to inspire the photoshoot.

3. Organising Events:  Ask speakers to share photos / slides / videos before the event in order to promote themselves and the event.

4. Organising Exhibitions: Invite exhibitors to share photos of some of their products – this should attract attention from those considering attending the exhibition too.

5. Hotels – Ask guests to share photos of their stay there, of their meal, of the activities they took part in and local places they visited.

6. Travel Agencies – create a shared board for travel tips.

7. Fashion / Retail – ask people to share photos of themselves wearing clothes/accessories from your store. There are so many fashion blogs where people show photos of themselves that I think this would be a popular one.

8. Pet stores – people love showing pictures of their pets so create a shared board for their pets in cute poses or wearing the collars/accessories they purchased from your store.

9. Retail/ Exhibitor – create a shared ‘Trends’ board where people can share pictures they find of the latest trends. It becomes a treasure trove of ideas as well as creating a community feeling within your pinterest account.

10. Wool/Fabric shops – knitting, crochet and patchwork amongst other crafts, have become increasingly popular and people love to share photos of what they have created. Create a shared board for your customers.

11. Bookshops – create a shared board and invite people to submit reviews (link to their blog ) of recent books.  Bookclubs could create shared boards too.

12. Weddings – for anything to do with weddings, invite the couple to share pictures of wedding cakes, floral arrangements, wedding dresses, bridesmaid dresses, honeymoon pictures ……  The bride will probably create shared boards to share with her bridesmaids and her photographer at the very least.

Many thanks to Elish of Irish Furniture  Fair for discussing the topic of shared boards with me and coming up with some of the ideas above.

Have you created shared boards?  Have you found them useful for your business? Do share your experiences with us. I hope these have given you some ideas for how you could create a shared pinterest board for your business.

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The post Pinteresting Ways To Use Pinterest For Your Business appeared first on Write On Track.

1. Pin Little & Often – Don’t spend an hour pinning and auto-tweeting as it will annoy your followers on twitter for a start.  If I go to my pinterest page and see that one person I follow has pinned so many similar pins that it almost fills the page, I am likely to unfollow them so it is best to pin 2 or 3 of your own images, repin a few and leave it at that and then come back to it two or three times a day.
2. Don’t Self-Promote – Don’t fill your boards with your own products.  True pinners love visuals so they fill their boards with pictures they enjoy and love and this shows their personality and that of their brand. Follow the 80/20 rule – 80% other people’s products, 20% your products.
3. Credit the Source – If using a pin on your facebook page or within a blog post, always always always credit the source. You can use the embed button on pinterest to insert the pin in your blog post.
4. Personality – Show the personality of your brand by  creating boards that enhance or complement your services or your products e.g. a photographer could have a boards on wedding dresses, exotic locations, kids and gardens – to bring his/her business to the attention of engaged couples but also to show their personality and passions.
5. Your Reputation – If you are a business pinner then bear in mind the reputation of your brand when repinning or pinning images, for example, while many fashion pins may include women or men in scanty lingerie or underwear, a board containing such pins may not be expected by your audience and may damage your online reputation particularly if you are selling homewares or children’s furniture.
6. Reciprocate- Follow back those who follow you.
7. Twitter – if you are auto-tweeting from your pins, remember to check into twitter too to see if you’ve received any responses on your pinning.
8. Interaction – According to Repinly, we spend 0.5% of our time on pinterest commenting so it seems that we’re mostly interacting there by repinning rather than having conversations. Leave a comment on the occasional pin and if someone comments on one of your pins, do respond – it could be the start of a beautiful friendship

Image: Quick Meme

The post Pinetiquette appeared first on Write On Track.

If you hover your mouse over a photograph, the name of the photograph appears.  All too often, the name of the photograph is something like 04578373.jpg or IMG9873.jpg.  Google cannot read images, hence each one of your pictures should have a name that includes your keyword.  For example, If you wish to sell your recipe book, your photograph of brown bread should be named brown bread recipe. Every photograph should have a relevant name and yes, it does take time to rename them.

It is also a good idea to name the photograph in the title and ‘alt tag’ part of uploading your photograph to your blog. (See our post on how to upload a photograph to your blog)  The Alternate Tag is the keyphrase that displays when someone hovers over the photo.

There are now other benefits to naming your photographs properly. More and more people are using pinterest, they are either pinning photographs by having the ‘pin it’ button on the top of their screen or they can use the ‘pin it’ button on your blog post if you have installed a plugin (see my ‘pin it’ button at the top of each Garrendenny Lane blog post).

When they pin your photograph, the name you gave that photograph in your Alt Tag will show up in the description for the pin – this means that unless the pinner changes it, your keyword within your description will remain with the photograph. If you have used a well optimised keyword, it should show up in searches and receive repins and hence, drive more traffic back to your website.

If the pinner has their account linked to twitter or chooses to tweet the pin, that description will also be tweeted with the link.  I’ve noticed that most people tend to leave the description, adding their own opinion to it such as ‘Love this’ or ‘ perfect for my child’s bedroom’ etc.

Remember that the description doesn’t just have to be factual, it can be a compelling description too.

We are planning to teach various courses on pinterest in the autumn so do let us know if you’d be interested and we’ll post up the details once we have the dates.  I will be presenting on the topic of pinterest at our next KLCK bloggers network meeting in Kilkenny on 9th July if you would like to come along.

The post Pinterest: SEO Benefits of Naming Photographs appeared first on Write On Track.

Pinterest Boards

Tips For Your Pinterest Boards

1. Try to ensure that each board name contains a popular keyword that people may search for. For example, ‘my fabric boxes’ is fine as other pinners may be looking for ‘fabric’, ‘boxes’, or ‘fabric boxes’ and your board and pins should then show up in searches.  ’My tutorials’ is too vague – you need to explain what the tutorials are about e.g. ‘My  Sewing Tutorials’. ‘Sewing’ may also be a popular search term which would lead to your products being found and repinned.
2. Set up as many boards as are appropriate but ensure that you have a number of pins in each one. Don’t have boards that are empty.
3. See if some of the most popular board names would fit your boards. For example, according to the infographic we posted yesterday, two of the most popular board names are ‘For the Home’ and ‘Products I Love’.
4. Remember to re-arrange your boards for variety and don’t forget to move those out-of-season boards to the bottom of the page. See ‘How to Re-arrange your Pinterest Boards‘.
5. Pinterest has many benefits for your business from increasing brand awareness to significant SEO advantages.  With many people spending more time on Pinterest than any of the other social media platforms, it is certainly worth spending time on getting it right and maximising the benefits for your business.  Pinterest traffic to my online shop surpassed that of Facebook for the first time this month – time will tell if sales from Pinterest surpass those from Facebook.

Are you being dishonest by mixing your own products with others?

Would you like to attend a course on pinterest?

We will be putting in tenders to teach courses on pinterest and are hoping to gauge interest for same by posting a poll on our facebook page. We are also wondering if people would be interested in attending a webinar taught by Marie and I. We’d really appreciate if you could answer the questions on our poll or leave any comments in the box below.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend and that the sun shines

Lorna

The post Find It Friday: Pinterest appeared first on Write On Track.