GUEST POST!
5
Ways Authors Can Expand Their Audience On Pinterest
By
Karen Leland
Excerpted
from the new book
Entrepreneur
Magazine’s Ultimate Guide to Pinterest for Business
As
every author knows, a good deal of our time is spent in a room by
ourselves, hunched over a keyboard, typing away like a crazy person.
Pinterest
can be an invaluable way for writers to break out of the natural
isolation of the profession and connect with their fellow scribes and
readers.
From
the new book “Entrepreneur
Magazine’s Ultimate Guide to Pinterest for Business,”
here are a few not overly promotional ways to get word out about your
books to a bigger audience.
1.
Go Beyond Promotion to Educational Value
Most
writers are also big readers, and they are always looking for tips
and techniques on how to be better at their profession. While writing
is an art, breaking into getting published is just as much a science.
Boards that help your fellow writers (and would-be writers)
understand the business of writing are always popular, and can garner
you a new audience who also wants to read your books.
For
example, Writer’s Relief (http://pinterest.com/writersrelief/) is
an author’s submission service that states their mission as
“helping creative writers get published by targeting their poems,
essays, short stories and books to the best-suited literary journals
and agencies.”
Their
Pinterest boards offer advice on all aspects of writing and
publishing, including a board on “Submission Strategies, Tips, And
Etiquette.”
If
you want to find fellow writers, click on the “followers” tab on
the Writer’s Relief Pinterest page and a whole page of their fans
will pop up. Do some research, and pick and choose who you might want
to reach out and connect with.
2.
Ask for Help to Get over a Hump
Stuck
on finding a visual metaphor you need for your story, a name for your
main character, or a tidy title for your new novel? Pose a pin for
discussion, asking fellow pinners to pin their solutions and
suggestions to a guest board you have created for just that purpose.
By
involving the community in your writing process, you not only create
greater engagement but expand your reach to a whole new potential
group of readers.
3.
Storyboard Your Book
If
you’ve got a case of writer’s block and are feeling stuck in your
story, fiction or nonfiction, surf the site and see what visuals
inspire you. Then create a brainstorming board as a placeholder for
ideas to develop and draw on, including:
• The
physical look for your story’s characters: hair, fashion, makeup.
• The
interior and exterior surroundings where your characters live.
• Studies,
statistics and other data for your nonfiction book.
• Experts
you may want to interview for your nonfiction book.
4.
Create FAQ and SAQ Boards
You
know the types of questions your readers are always asking…and
you know the ones they should be asking—the SAQs. Create a board
for each type, and use them as a place to create curiosity about your
books and send curious readers for answers.
5.
Get Your Publisher On Board
In
an era of small presses and self-publishing, Pinterest provides a
great opportunity for small, independent publishers to promote new
authors. If your publisher hasn’t joined, reach out and ask them to
consider it.
A
strong presence on Pinterest can help a relatively unknown writer
compete with the big boys. For example: XinXii
(http://pinterest.com/xinxii_en/xinxii-ebook-bestsellers/),
sellers of eBooks based out of Europe, features book cover eye candy
on their boards. By featuring your book on a publisher’s
Pinterest, you can garner a whole new set of eyes for your work.
Karen
Leland is the bestselling author of eight business books, including
the recently released “Entrepreneur
Magazine’s Ultimate Guide to Pinterest for Business,”
which can be purchased at http://bit.ly/Amazonbook. She is the
president of Sterling Marketing Group, where she works with small
businesses and Fortune 500 companies on building stronger personal
and team brands. She writes the Modern Marketing Blog at
www.karenleland.com.
Karen
Leland is the bestselling author of 8 business books including the
recently released Entrepreneur Magazine’s Ultimate Guide to
Pinterest For Business, which can be purchased at
http://bit.ly/Amazonbook. She
is the president of Sterling Marketing Group, where she works with
small businesses and Fortune 500 on building stronger personal and
team brands. She writes the Modern Marketing Blog at
www.karenleland.com.
Pinterest
is a social bookmarking site that allows users to create a visual,
online pinboard with images they love organized around topics of
their choice by category. It’s the fastest growing social media
site in history, the third-largest
network after Facebook and Twitter and has over 25 million members
and 10 million unique visitors a month.
The
most recent studies indicate that nearly 20 percent of women using
the Internet are on Pinterest, 72 percent of Pinterest users are
female, and 66 percent of those are age 35 or older, and the average
amount of time visitors spend surfing the Pinterest site is an hour.
Karen
Leland, author of the new book “Entrepreneur
Magazine’s Ultimate Guide to Pinterest for Business,”
has created a comprehensive and easy-to-use guide to hitting the road
running and quickly making Pinterest into a valuable source of
prospects, promotion and profits.
“Great
business brands are about telling compelling, congruent stories, and
Pinterest is at its core about storytelling in pictures,” says
Leland. “Pinterest has tapped into this visceral lover of visuals,
and no small business, entrepreneur or corporation can afford to miss
the boat on bringing what they offer beyond words and into images.”
