Pinterest is a new and a very easy way (and also a fun way) in which an artist can market and promote their art to a growing audience of interested people. What is Pinterest and how can you take advantage of it? Pinterest is a new social media platform that is by all means visual in nature and content for all its participants. Pinterest is extremely easy to use, and is actually fun to work, visit and to be a part of.
Caution: Pinterest is addicting and it is very easy to spend hours exploring and looking at what people find interesting and then taking their ideas and images of your own.
Think of Pinterest as your very own personal bulletin board. It will contain all of the things that you admire, love, want to have or day-dream about will be pinned on this board. I have also heard Pinterest described as an “Online Collage” or as it is termed on the Pinterest website, simply as a “Board”. Now take this concept one step further, your “bulletin board” is open to the public, and anything that you pin on your board then shows in a stream (much like a Facebook, Twitter or a Google+ stream). People who like what you have pinned, are also able to take what you have pinned and re-pin that image or post on their own board. As you post your pins or collect and post re-pins from other people, these pins can be put into separate boards for better classification, administration, and better collective viewing.
Though Pinterest is considered to be an “upstart” it is already proving that it can drive a lot of traffic to an owner’s website and some claim more traffic than Facebook, Google+ or Linkedin.
Artists, being who they are (that being extremely visual people), find that Pinterest is the perfect vehicle for an artist to post and showcase their art. The Pinterest platform makes it is very easy to accomplish this too, right off the artist’s own website. How is that accomplished? Pinterest will provide each member with a “bookmarklet” for your browser’s toolbar. When you are on a webpage that you like or are interested in and you want to pin a post or an image, the bookmarklet takes you to your Pinterest page and that image can now be posted to any of the topic boards that you have created. It will also allow you to provide a small description of what you are pinning, in order to help people understand what it is that you have pinned. Also, descriptions of pins will help when people do a search on a subject as well.
For the gallery Pinterest page, we created boards for the Light Space & Time (LST) “Art Gallery Posts”, “LST Artist Press Releases”, “LST Helpful Marketing Articles. When these boards get updated or added to or re-pinned they than become a part of the Pinterest Stream. The art that is showcased and featured on the gallery website will also become featured posts that will get pinned at Pinterest too. It is a simple, visual and low key way in which to promote our artists, art competitions, and art exhibitions.
As an artist how can you use Pinterest to market and brand your art? An account at Pinterest is by invitation only. Find people through your current networks that are already on Pinterest and ask them for an invitation. It should only take a day or two before you get an invitation to join. After you open your account, thoroughly complete the profile information, related to your art, your art website and make sure you provide your Facebook and Twitter account information, as you will be able to instantly share your pins on these two websites as well. One other thing, always use a graphic, logo or good profile picture, as you are “visually” marketing yourself and your art. Now you are able to begin to create a board of your art directly from your website.
As I stated earlier, it is very easy to pin posts and images with the Pinterest Bookmarklet, directly from your website to your Pinterest Board(s). When pinning, always have a description of the art, pricing and create a link back to your website too, in order to make it easy for someone to get additional information about you and your art. You also want this information on your original pin, because when your post gets re-pinned by someone, that information will also be shared.
Artists can create a board for their press releases and art events. Just make sure that each press release contains a great image of your art. It is the image that will get noticed, pinned and the image will create the interest for people to look, like and re-pin that post. Create a board of the art that you like or the style of art that you are interested in. Make a board of subject matter that you like to paint, photograph or create. With your boards and pins, always try to stay within the realm of your art, your style and the brand that you would like to project.
All of these boards are related to your art and these boards will help to create interest in your other pins, posts, and images. Pinterest is a community of people, who through the sharing of images that they like and find interesting, make it very easy to decide to re-pin and share those images with others. The better the image, the more looks, likes and re-pins that the image will produce. The more that you are active on the site, the more you will get back from this platform, in terms of exposure.
Make sure that you not only stay active on the site but also share, re-pin, like and comment on other’s images too. When you start out on Pinterest do not post all of your art all at once as you will then lose the impact and the ability to attract more people to follow you. By spreading the posting of your art, you will be placing and presenting your art to different people, at different times, who in turn will re-pin and share that art with others as well.
As with any social media platform there is etiquette to follow and in future articles, I will detail this etiquette for you and I will also provide hints and suggestions on how to maximize your involvement in Pinterest to market and promote your art. http://pinterest.com
NOTE: Recently, there have been some copyright issues raised concerning the posting of other artist's work. This is the link to their terms of service for account users http://pinterest.com/about/terms. We suggest, when posting or pinning (other than your own work) someone's art to always credit the artist and to have a link to their website.
