Thursday's Links to Writing & Marketing Blog Posts

WHY WASTE TIME ON PINTEREST?

By: L.A. Lewandowski

Why should authors care about Pinterest? I considered this question as I stared at the blank Word document. Should I try to convince you that fifteen minutes a day several times per week pinning and interacting on the site could find you new readers for your work? I have always liked a challenge.

The last time I looked I had 1783 followers on the main page of my profile. This isn’t a huge number by Pinterest business standards. I am connected to pinners who have over fifty thousand followers. You must admit that is a big number. How did they gain so many followers? Are they celebrities? No, they are business people who recognized early on the unique draw of this social media site.

For authors, Pinterest provides the opportunity to add a visual aspect to the written one, and attract a new group of readers to your books. You can create a board that contains video and pins of places your characters visit. You can post the recipes they eat. You can use these boards to attract a different set of readers to your work.

Pinterest is like any other social media site. A new user needs to take a little time to understand what works and what doesn’t. One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen on author profiles is having only one board, My Books, for example, with the cover of the book repinned every time the book is reviewed or promoted. At a minimum a main profile page should contain three boards so that the first line of boards is filled out. This is visually pleasing.

What type of boards are popular and will help an author’s pins to be repinned?

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Read the full article HERE!

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If you missed my writing & marketing tweets and retweets yesterday, here they are again:

1. Why Waste Time on Pinterest | Indies Unlimited http://ow.ly/BB2oL
2. And You’ve Gone Too Far ‘Cause You Know it Don’t Matter Anyway* | Confessions of a Mystery Novelist... http://ow.ly/BB2tb
3. Bookstore Shelves, Gatekeepers and the Brave New World: Why I’ve Decided to Self-Publish http://ow.ly/BB2xV
4. How Do You Define Credibility and Legitimacy as an Author? | Indies Unlimited http://ow.ly/BB2D7
5. A Newbie's Guide to Publishing: Nonsense United http://ow.ly/BB2Gv
6. Anne R. Allen's Blog: The Biggest Mistake New Writers Make and 5 Ways to Avoid It http://ow.ly/BB2NJ
7. HarperCollins Thinks There's No Such Thing as Too Much DRM, Adds Another DRM Layer to eBooks - The Digital Reader http://ow.ly/BB2RF
8. Most Common Writing Mistakes, Pt. 33: Telling Important Scenes, Instead of Showing - Helping Writers Become Authors http://ow.ly/BB2Vr
9. Writing flashbacks: how to write them well - with examples http://ow.ly/BB34E
10. Accents, narrators and total silence: how you hear voices when you read | Books | theguardian.com http://ow.ly/BB3ad
11. David Farland’s Kick in the Pants—Setting Your Own Standards of Excellence http://ow.ly/BB3h6
12. The Kill Zone: POV 102 - How to Avoid Head-Hopping http://ow.ly/BB3k8
13. Ask the Agent: What are the new trends in publishing? - Chip MacGregor http://ow.ly/BB3ni
14. Kill me now – what do I do about a negative review? | Nail Your Novel http://ow.ly/BB3CE
15. The New Pinterest Analytics Tool: How To Use It for Business | Social Media Examiner http://ow.ly/BB3GE
16. Which of These New WordPress Themes is Right For Your Audience? - Copyblogger http://ow.ly/BB3KI
17. Four Ways to Crush Your Email Challenge and Build the List : @ProBlogger http://ow.ly/BB3Oq
18. The Book Designer — Practical Advice to Help Self-Publishers Build Better Books http://ow.ly/BB3SI
19. Author, Jody Hedlund: Is Writing Under Inspiration Just a Huge Myth? http://ow.ly/BB3VW
20. Will Bookstores Sell Your Indie Books? A Self-Publishing Series Case Study - Where Writers Win http://ow.ly/BCDAN

Happy writing and running, Kathy