Brunch With Pinterest

 Back in the summer I was invited to a blogger brunch Pinterest held at the Ace Hotel in Shoreditch. It was such an inspiring event and I left all fired up to revamp my Pinterest account and make way better use of it. I wanted to give it a big overhaul and then write up this post and show what I'd learnt. Oh dear, cut to three months later and I've been absolutely swamped, my Pinterest plans definitely sidelined. I've made it one of my 2019 resolutions to get back on board with that platform, but in the mean time I thought I should just let you know some useful tips I picked up.  After feeding us the most colourful and Pinterest-worthy brunch of avocado toast and fruit salad on the Ace Hotel's beautiful balcony, we settled down to a programme of panel talks and workshops.  The opening panel discussion about the current influencer landscape was interesting because not only have I heard this type of debate about 'where we're at' with blogging and influencing many times over the past five years, I've even been a panel member on this topic myself at several events. One of the speakers said he went all the way to a new coffee shop that was raved about online just to take a picture of the outside for Instagram, he didn't even try the coffee, and this he felt is the kind of flow influencers are engaged in - living "for the 'Gram" and loving it, but also living in a way that's half-arsed. It was all so relatable, and it makes you want to do content creation in a more meaningful way. They talked a lot about the ethics of  being paid to influence, as did a later panel - a hot issue right now (and probably also for the past five years).I've heard so many people say Pinterest is their main source of traffic for their blog, and I really need to get on board with this. We had some excellent presentations on what's new at Pinterest that can help us, and ways to use Pinterest creatively to maximise blog traffic. The tips I can pass on are - 

• They recommend having a business account. This allows more customisation and a public monthly unique view count, which is a better indicator for engagement than followers.
• Business accounts also give you access to analytics and pin stats. You can find out the impressions of each pin, including who has clicked through and who has saved your pin.
• If you verify your domain you can have rich pins attribute content to you.
• There's a creator's blog on Medium with specific content for creators. It will dispel any myths, give information, tell you what's trending so you can match your content (for example, turmeric is very hot right now), and shows highlighted stories.
• Hashtags are new but different to Instagram. Keep them broad (e.g #recipe #food) and just use a handful, nothing too niche, no more than ten.

 One of the great things about Pinterest is it's not driven by the need to be followed or liked. It's a platform where you can be as creative as you like and use it for whatever you want. They recommend designing pins as well as using your blog photos to draw traffic to your blog. Other tips from the pros included - 

• Try split testing - this is using a different pin for the same piece of content if something doesn't do well
• Schedule with Tailwind
• Try and use Pinterest every day, use the explore tab to see what's performing well.
• Use keywords for your content and things you blog about
• Try to keep people on your profile. Make a great pin but give it a good home in a good board that people will want to look through
• Don't restrict your content on one board but don't pin it all in one go. Do it on different days
• Add a Pinterest button on your blog, it means people are doing the work for you
• Time of day doesn't effect pinning because of the life span of a pin - 105 days is average
• Create images with impact - use bold imagery and colour, and a bit of text to draw people in
• 2:3 ratio is best, 600px wide 900px high
• Create boards with shoppable content if you use affiliate links, e.g. wish lists, shopping lists
• Look at individual pins on analytics and re-pin them on other boards. A pin might not do well one year, but do amazingly well the next

  I had such a good day and chatted with some brilliant bloggers whose work I've loved but never met IRL, including Disney Roller Girl, Ondo Lady and Rachel Phipps. There was a station where you could grab some one-on-one time with someone from Pinterest to get direct feedback on your account, and some delicious doughnuts to have with tea and more of that Shoreditch balcony view. Such a useful day, and just writing this up makes me want to get cracking and use Pinterest to drive traffic to my blog.