I’m sure by now you will have heard about Pinterest. If you haven’t then let me explain briefly what Pinterest is and how you can use it to effectively promote content (images) on your blog and create a new traffic source for your blog.

Pinterest is a visual bookmarking tool like no other; it currently houses over 10 million users and growing on a daily basis.

How it works is, it allows registered users to pin images of interest from content found on the web. These images are pinned to your Pinterest pin board and shared with your friends and followers on Pinterest, you can also share what you’ve pinned on Pinterest with followers on Twitter and friends on Facebook. By using Pinterest you can generate a lot of referral traffic back to your blog as well as help to increase your search engine rankings.

In this post we’re going to cover the important basics of how to get the most out of Pinterest from completing your social profile, connecting with Twitter and Facebook to how to use Pinterest to promote the content from your blog.

If you’re not already on Pinterest then you can request for an invite from the site. Currently you can’t just register for an account. Also if you’re on Pinterest you can connect with me here and share your visual bookmarks with me:

OK, once you have received your invite you can register either with an email and username, or use Facebook or Twitter app auth to create an account. You might want to use your blog’s name as a username i.e. http://pinterest/yourblogtitle, as this will help others who know you by your blog title to find you easily.

Editing and Completing your Pinterest Account Profile

In your account settings there are some boxes to fill in, just the usual stuff like name, email, username, password etc, but the boxes that you should really pay attention to are the about and website field as well as uploading an image for your profile. Again, think about promoting your blog so write a short catchy about section, get your blog URL in the website field and upload an image, something like your Gravatar image so people will instantly recognize you from other places.

Linking your Twitter and Facebook Profiles

I’d also recommend linking your Twitter and Facebook accounts with your Pinterest profile. This can be done easily using the app auth process. You should also enable the ‘Add Pinterest to Timeline’ option.

There is also an option to hide your profile from the search engines, but it’s not something you should be enabling if you want users to get the most out of Pinterest.

Inviting Friends and Following Existing Friends on Pinterest

If you’ve connected your Facebook account with your Pinterest profile you can invite your friends on Facebook to join you on Pinterest. If they’re already registered on Pinterest you can just hit the follow all button.

You can also send email invitations or invite your Gmail contacts. Unfortunately you can’t find your followers on Twitter to connect with on Pinterest.

Pinning Stuff from your Blog to your Pinterest Board

Adding a Pinterest Button to WordPress Blog

First of all I want to show you how to add the pin it button code into your WordPress blog, this will enable users to pin content from your blog easily.

First of all head over to the goodies page on Pinterest or follow this URL:

http://pinterest.com/about/goodies/

Select the button style you want displayed in your posts, and then grab the second code as circled in the image below and paste directly above the closing </BODY> tag: If you’re using Genesis, this can be placed in the wp_footer() of the theme settings page, if you’re using Thesis this can be placed in the Stats and Tracking Scripts field in the Thesis Site Options page.

Now grab the second code and paste anywhere into your post or page, before or after the content. You’ll have to do this each time you create a new post. However there is much easier way…

If you’re not using this plugin I highly recommend it. Install the Sharebar dynamic sharing icon buttons plugin into your WordPress blog. Once you’ve activated it, you can then paste the second script code into a new button as shown below. Clear your cache and view your post to see the button working in the Sharebar, see below also.

There is even another simpler way to get the Pin it button into your WordPress blog, and I’ve only just stumbled upon this one. Check out the Pinterest Plugin for WordPress. Unlike most plugins currently for Pinterest this doesn’t place a button into your post or pages, instead it places the Pin it button on top of the image itself, when your readers move their mouse over the image. This makes it easier for your readers to select exactly which image they want to pin.

Pinning images to your Pinterest Pin Board

Installing the Pin it button or plugin makes it a lot easier for others to pin images to their profile and share with their followers, however you can also pin images to your board by adding the pin it button into your web browser bookmarks. Check out the short video I created below that demonstrates just that.

Pinterest is a great source for traffic to your blog, especially if you have a lot of contacts that are regular readers of your blog or maybe fans on Facebook etc. It’s still early days yet but I’m positive there is much more to come from this site, so ensure you make full use of it. Remember you can connect with me on Pinterest here: I look forward to seeing you on my followers list.

Well I hope you’ve enjoyed my short little tutorial on getting the most out of Pinterest and how to use it to promote content from your blog in the form of image sharing, now I want to hear your own thoughts, are you using Pinterest? Let me know what’s on your mind, leave me a comment below.