How to Upload Your Own Photo to Pinterest 2018

April 13, 2022 Post a Comment

One of the many challenges for photographers is keeping upwards with social media. If you're anything like me, your relationship with social media is bittersweet.

It can be incredibly rewarding and provides a fantastic opportunity to promote your photography while being inspired by others. At the same time, it tin can be a huge fourth dimension-waster, tin make you feel inadequate, and can even get something of an obsession.

Then, if you're going to share your photography to social networks, which ones will give the most render on your time and energy? After years of experimenting with diverse social networks, I've establish that Pinterest is the well-nigh underrated platform for photographers.

I'one thousand going to show you lot what I've found from my own feel as well equally how to utilize Pinterest for your photography business.

Why Pinterest For Photographers?

The first affair that helped me to make the most of Pinterest was changing the way I think of it. Pinterest is really not a social network. It's a social bookmarking site. There'south a difference.

People don't generally use it to follow their friends and contacts the fashion they do on Facebook. People don't share photos of their kids or true cat videos. People utilise Pinterest to find inspiration, to learn new things, plan events, and to buy.

Yous probably think of Pinterest being for women, and on the one manus yous'd be correct. Pinterest is a dark, mysterious world of fashion, crafts, recipes, and home decor. It's a scary place for men like me.

On the other manus, with over 200 million agile monthly users, in that location are plenty of men on the platform, and they're growing. Equally a photographer, the gender of my audience means little. The world of photography is, for the nearly function, blissfully gender neutral, and I love information technology that way.

So what does matter to a lensman? Reach. I desire to know that my efforts to network and share my piece of work will go in front of eyeballs. I haven't found a platform that allows me to do information technology anywhere nearly as effectively as Pinterest.

Instagram can exist hugely powerful, but y'all demand to have a pregnant post-obit to encounter the benefits, which takes fourth dimension. With Pinterest, even so, you tin can see results almost overnight.

When y'all share to Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, the life of your post is crazy short. Information technology will prove upward in feeds for hours or days (7 minutes on Twitter). Pinterest is the opposite. It takes 3.5 months to get 50% of a pin's date. That means it'due south good for at least vii months! Pinterest has been designed for longevity, so your hard work has a cumulative consequence. I still see some of my pins from a few years agone repinned occasionally.

Search

Another feature that makes Pinterest unique is search. It's basically a massive search engine, which presents massive potential for photographers to promote their work. With the ability to add titles, descriptions, and hashtags, you tin make your pins far more searchable than with other platforms.

Almost half of Pinterest users will turn to Pinterest before Google to notice what they're looking for. Y'all may call up that's only useful if you lot take a product to sell, only think over again. Couples are searching for wedding photographers. Travelers are searching for locations for their next Instagram selfie. Parents are searching for someone to photograph their children. Foodies are searching for photos of dishes from new restaurants. Photographers are searching for inspiration and photography tutorials.

Photos

Pinterest is a visual platform. What photographer wouldn't love a website that wants to share your photos in all their glory to anyone who want to meet them? You can share your photos to diverse boards based on genre, style, subject, location, outcome, whatever you want. As a travel photographer, my boards are mainly based on location.

The large limitation of Pinterest for photographers is the vertical pin. I don't know many photographers who shoot all their photos vertically. I love to photo wide landscapes, particularly panoramas. I exercise become a little frustrated at times knowing that those photos won't look so good on Pinterest, but I accept to remind myself that my photography is first and foremost for myself.

I practice love to shoot vertical as well, though, and Pinterest has encouraged me to do it more, so I'thousand grateful for that. I have to admit, I've learned to love the look of the Pinterest feed with it's vertical images, so I've gotten over it.

Referral Traffic

If you have a blog (and you should), this is where Pinterest shines. Remember what I was saying about search? Imagine a search engine that takes your beautiful photos with links to your website and spreads them far and wide for thousands of people to click. No throttling of your achieve to make you pay to promote your content. No sharing to less and so 10% of your audience. Simply gratis, organic achieve. Pinterest drives about 5% of the internet's referral traffic.

I've been using the platform for a few years, just more than as a personal pivot-board than a tool to promote my photography. Since I decided to give Pinterest some serious consideration a couple of months ago, I've been blown away past how much traffic is possible in a relatively curt time.

It took a fair bit of work to make the necessary changes. Switching to a business business relationship. Changing personal boards to secret boards. Archiving others that I had no utilise for anymore. Updating all my profile information. I hadn't realized what it would entail, just information technology was worth it.

Since I started taking Pinterest seriously I've seen my boilerplate monthly viewers steadily climb from around 1k to 300k. Many of my pins have received hundreds of repins. The all-time part is that all those eyeballs are being converted into real engagement. I've gone from getting virtually no referral traffic from Pinterest to getting on average lx clicks per day. In just two months Pinterest has become my largest source of social referrals.

The about incredible matter is that all this is with very few followers. Pinterest is so skilful at feeding my content to the right users that having a tiny audience doesn't affair. I have virtually x times as many followers on my Facebook page, yet my organic reach is so sorry that I'm lucky if 1% of my followers actually click through to my blog. This is becoming a very common complaint.

In instance I haven't fabricated it clear, using Pinterest has huge potential for your photography. No matter your genre or specialty, whether you take a photography blog or not, Pinterest wants to share whatever you're creating. You can't use Pinterest they same way the boilerplate user does, though. Yous also can't use it the same way yous utilize other platforms. It takes a unique approach.

How To Utilize Pinterest For Your Photography

Your Pinterest Profile

The first thing you need to do is switch your personal account to a business concern business relationship. There are many benefits to doing this, the main one being access to Pinterest'due south rich analytics. In that location are zippo reasons non to. It's complimentary. Get do information technology at present.

Y'all then need to spend a bit of time working on your profile. Make sure your profile pic sends the right message about yous and your photography. A photo of you or your logo is great. Not your babe or your cat.

Your profile proper noun and description are also very of import. When Pinterest analyzes the pins you share, it doesn't but expect at the pin'south description. It likewise looks at the proper noun and clarification of the board it was pinned to and the profile it was shared by. Your contour name and clarification should tell Pinterest equally much as possible virtually who yous are and what kind of content you'll be sharing.

My Pinterest contour makes information technology very clear who I am and what you can expect me to pivot.

Boards

Boards are Pinterest's most unique feature. They give you the ability to carve up your pins up by various subjects and niches. This ways your followers tin decide which of your boards to follow. They don't have to choose between following all your content or none of information technology like other platforms.

Where boards smoothen for photographers is the style you lot can carve up them upward based on what yous photograph. For a wedding photographer, this could be split boards for each element of a hymeneals, such as engagement sessions, dress, rings, ceremony, reception, etc. Portrait photographers might create separate boards for headshots, families, children, studio, location, etc. You get the idea. I wouldn't create boards for individual shoots considering people take no reason to follow that lath one time you lot're washed pinning to it.

I base my boards around travel destinations and photography tips and tutorials. I have one board that I pivot my tutorial articles to and zip else. This board has the highest engagement of all my boards as I only pin quality content there. My location-based travel and photography boards are based on a specific country, like "New Zealand Travel and Photography". I pin my own photos and articles to these boards every bit well as re-pinning other people's pins.

You'll demand to spend a little scrap of fourth dimension thinking about how to gear up your boards based on your photography specialty. Take a expect around at a few other photographers in your niche for ideas. Remove any personal or off-topic boards past making them secret or archiving them. They'll concenter the incorrect type of pinner and will confuse Pinterest about what you lot pin about.

Pinterest feeds your pins to your followers offset to measure out how engaging they are before feeding them to other pinners. If your pins are being shown to people who followed you for your DIY or recipe pins, they're unlikely to engage with your photography pins.

You want to tell Pinterest as much about your boards every bit possible. Give each board specific names with dandy, keyword-rich descriptions. Pinterest looks at the context of each pin (lath name/description, profile name/clarification) to effigy out what that pin is about, and so make it clear. Also don't forget to categorize each lath.

Group Boards

The verdict is still out on the value of group boards. Every pinner you lot talk to will tell you something different. Some say they're invaluable, some say they can harm your profile. I'one thousand non an expert on the matter, then I can merely speak from my own experience. Grouping boards have been hugely helpful for me in gaining traffic and new followers. Some of my most engaging pins have been on group boards.

The i affair that nearly experts seem to agree on is that if you lot're going to utilise group boards, brand sure it'south the correct ones. You want to find boards specific to your niche. Avoid "pin anything" grouping boards. They don't help anyone. Also exist conscientious of boards that accept a huge volume of pinners because your pins will get diluted and they are often poorly moderated.

In one case you've found some group boards that relate to your niche, have a wait at what'due south existence shared and make sure information technology'due south good quality. And so contact the board owner and ask them to add y'all. Many group boards volition take instructions for doing this in the clarification. If not, find the owner (their profile name is in the board's URL), and send them a message or an email with your profile URL and ask for an invite. Don't be offended if you don't hear back. Decent group boards get a lot of requests to join.

When you've been added to a group board, start adding your best relevant pins. Don't be spammy as this will likely get you kicked out. The board clarification volition often have rules. Make certain you respect them. Pivot to group boards regularly and share pins that other people have added. Grouping boards work best when everyone shares the love.

Don't presume that a group board is working for you. You need to be analyzing each of your boards to see if they're helping or pain your efforts on Pinterest. Sometimes information technology volition exist obvious, equally your pins will be re-pinned like crazy. Other times information technology volition be more difficult to know.

Creating Pins

Pins can come up in many forms. Text quotes, product images, infographics, GIFs, videos, and of course, photos. What you choose to pivot is upwardly to you, only if y'all're using Pinterest for your photography, you lot're going to want to share your photos in ane form or another.

If y'all're merely sharing photos, keen. Make sure they're your best work. Pinterest is your portfolio, and so show what you tin do. Vertical pins work best, but you can still share horizontal pins if you desire. Pinterest recommends dimensions of 600×900. Taller pins upwardly to 600×1260 will withal piece of work, merely anything longer like the 'Giraffe Pins' that used to exist crazy popular, will be cropped. Pinterest has fifty-fifty suggested that really tall pins may not be shown as much as shorter ones.

Text overlays work really well on Pinterest as long as they add together something to the paradigm. This works all-time if the pin is linking to an article on your blog. Less is more when adding text. Make it short and sweet, just plenty to catch the viewer'due south attending and make them want to know more. Add together a watermark if you desire, but keep information technology subtle.

You tin can create beautiful designs with costless services similar Canva. You don't need to exist a designer, y'all but need a picayune creativity. I've created templates in Photoshop that speed upwards the procedure of creating pins and allow me to keep a consistent theme.

As a search engine, Pinterest needs equally much information about your pins as possible. If yous write great pin descriptions that include relevant keywords and search terms, they'll exist more likely to prove upwardly in search results. Hashtags haven't been a big role of Pinterest in the past, just that'south irresolute, so add together a few relevant ones to each pivot.

Finally, make certain every ane of your pins links to your website. Even if you're not pinning a specific blog post, each pin is an opportunity for pinners to click through to your site, then link to a relevant page or your homepage.

Tailwind

If there'due south one tool that has helped me to realize the potential of Pinterest, it'south Tailwind. Equally 1 of the only canonical scheduling tools for Pinterest, Tailwind has created something that can make a massive deviation to pinners wanting to abound their post-obit and traffic.

Tailwind'southward principal feature is scheduling pins. Pinterest has told us that pinning regularly is important for growth, but unless you're using Pinterest all mean solar day every mean solar day, information technology'due south hard to do. If you pin dozens of pins together every few days most of them won't exist seen, as that would annoy your followers. Tailwind lets you schedule pins days and weeks in advance, so fifty-fifty if you only accept time to practise it once a week, your boards can encounter a nice steady stream of pins each day. Y'all can utilise Tailwind'southward optimized schedule, or customize your ain.

Information technology doesn't stop there, though. Tailwind has a powerful prepare of features for analyzing everything from your profile to individual pins and boards. The Pin Inspector let's you come across which pins are getting the nearly engagement and lets you re-schedule them from right within Tailwind. This is extremely useful for figuring out what's working and helping you decide what content to create more of.

Remember when I said you need to be analyzing which boards are working for you lot and which ones aren't? The Lath Inspector makes it ridiculously piece of cake. You tin see a bunch of stats well-nigh each of your boards. Yous can filter boards past regular, secret, and group boards.

The information y'all want is in the Virality Score and Engagement Score. These metrics tell you slightly different things, and which one you look at volition depend on your boards, but basically the higher the scores the amend. Low scores here are a sign that the board isn't helping you.

Tailwind includes a bunch of other super helpful insights about your contour, followers, website visits, etc. It'south especially useful if you're using Pinterest to drive visitors to your weblog or website. Yous can too link information technology with Google Analytics, giving you even more than valuable information.

Tailwind's clandestine weapon is Tribes. Tribes are exactly what they sound similar – groups for pinners who accept mutual interests. They are communities where yous tin can share your pins with other users on the understanding that y'all and then pin other members' pins to your own boards. It'south an insanely powerful characteristic for discovering new content within your niche, finding new pinners to follow, and reaching a larger audition. It was particularly useful for me when I started over with my Pinterest profile with very few followers.

Tailwind is constantly working on improving and creating new features, so I can't wait to see what the tool will exist able to do in the hereafter. I honey the new SmartLoop feature, which lets you ready up a schedule for re-pinning automatically.

If you lot haven't used Tailwind earlier, I tin't recommend it enough. You tin try it free for a month. Even if you make up one's mind not to use it, the benefits that you'll arrive that month will surprise you.

Detect Inspiration

Finally, don't forget that Pinterest is a identify to observe inspiration and ideas. Its potential for growing your audience as a photographer is massive, just don't just pin your own photos and content. Share the dear by pinning other photographers' images and articles that inspire you.

I use it to research locations, programme route trips and travel, discover new photographers, and acquire new techniques. Any your niche, I guarantee you'll get as much out of Pinterest equally you put in.

I would love information technology if you would follow me over on Pinterest and consider sharing this article. I would also love to hear your thoughts and experiences on Pinterest, or drop your profile URL in the comments and I'll accept a look. Happy pinning 🙂