1 | P a g e PINTEREST GUIDE for NONPROFITS by Kristin McGinnis, MBA about.me/kristin_mcginnis

2 | P a g e Pint Background on Pinterest _______________________________________________________ 3 Demographics of Pinterest___________________________________________________________ 3 Benefits of Pinterest________________________________________________________________ 3 Followers ________________________________________________________________________ 4 Pinterest Basics & Tips _________________________________________________________ 5 Basics ___________________________________________________________________________ 5 Tips on Boards ____________________________________________________________________ 5 Tips on Pinning & Images____________________________________________________________ 6 Tips on Following & Followers________________________________________________________ 8 Tips on Liking Images, Repining, & Comments ___________________________________________ 8 Tips on Searches___________________________________________________________________ 8 Integrating Pinterest with Your Website________________________________________________ 9 Syncing Pinterest Account with other Social Media Websites_______________________________ 9 Pinterest How-To ____________________________________________________________ 10 Pinning 101______________________________________________________________________ 10 Creating Boards __________________________________________________________________ 10 Community Boards________________________________________________________________ 10 Adding Images to Boards Manually (without use of Pin It button) ________________________ 11 Best OfPinterest Pinners and Boards ___________________________________________ 13 Examples of Other Non-Profits on Pinterest____________________________________________ 13 Inspiring Green Boards on Pinterest __________________________________________________ 13 Other Successful Pages (not nonprofit)________________________________________________ 14 References _________________________________________________________________ 15

3 | P a g e Background on Pinterest Demographics of Pinterest Pinterest is now on the top 10 list for social media platforms (Buck , 2012). Most social media platforms are populated by men ages 18-44 (Kaplan, 2012), however Pinterest reaches a different demographic, with the predominant user being women ages 25-44 (Haydon, n.d.). Most of these women are product and market-loving, being the main purchasers for their households. Pinterest grew 4,000 percent in six months and had over 32 million visitors in November 2012 (Waters, 2012). Benefits of Pinterest Pins on Pinterest are linked directly to their website source. This can generate a lot of traffic to the your website, if the images are pinned directly from the website. For example, if you pin an image of a product from your business website onto your Pinterest board and a person clicks on the image, they will be directed back to your website (huge SEO bonus points), as Haydon explains (n.d., para. 6). Pinterest can also be used for creative marketing strategies. For example, Lands End held a contest and gave away a $250 gift certificate for the Pinner who created the most unique holiday pinboard. More benefits from Waters (2011): Do you have an interesting or compelling story to tell with images? Every cause does, but believing you do is half the battle. Pinterest is a natural site for museums, historical sites and cultural institutions. Maybe your nonprofit helps needy kids and you have a pinboard called "happy moments" to capture all the great things you're doing for and with kids. (Waters, 2012). Is your cause considered hip, trendy, or do you just want to be? Pinterest users are looking for cool, trendy and hip things. I think organizations such as Goodwill and Shelter Scotland could pin fashionable used clothes available in their stores. Conservation International could post images of the beautiful and endangered frogs they are trying to save. (Waters, 2012). Are you engaged on other social media platforms? Despite my enthusiasm for Pinterest, it's not a standalone platform. I wouldn't start with it unless I already had an active blog, Facebook and Twitter. It's win-win. You'll gain traffic from visitors to Pinterest but your social media platforms can drive traffic to it as well. (Waters, 2012).

4 | P a g e Are you looking to reap the rewards of local SEO? I've talked about the benefits of your nonprofit being easily found online. Pinterest can give your SEO a big boost because the links posted there - every image links to a real web page - are being posted by REAL PEOPLE and not marketers and spammers trying to game the system. This won't last forever so get busy now! (Waters, 2012). Followers Just like Twitter, Pinterest is a social community based on followship and thats why you must be very interested in offering users what they really wantfollowers. So, by following others people will notice you and as a sign of appreciation they will follow you back in no time. Now, Im not saying you should start following like a freak, but try to find people with similar interest and try to build a bond with them. (Cosmin, n.d.).

5 | P a g e Pinterest Basics & Tips Basics 1. Give the job to someone who has an eye for aesthetics. Not everyone has a good eye for pictures -- that includes me! Just look at some of the images on Pinterest. They're beautiful. Yours should be too. (Waters, 2012) 2. Learn from these 15 Pinterest superusers. I found this article on the habits of 15 superusers very helpful on what Pinterest is for and not and how to use it wisely. This post made me laugh as there is only one guy on the list. Yep, Pinterest is for the ladies. (Waters, 2012) 3. According to Moth (2013) Greenpeace is running their Pinterest very well, with over 1,000 images to 46 boards and over 6,000 followers. Most of the boards focus on a particular campaign or initiative, such as saving the arctic or protecting rainforests, while others make use of Greenpeaces celebrity endorsements.As with other charities and brands most of the pins link back to Greenpeace's own website, but the overall mix of nature, animals, fashion and celebs is perfect for Pinterest as its all content that people like to shareGreenpeace has also made use of Pinterests community feature by creating boards that allow other users to post their favourite images related to environmental issues. (Moth, 2013) 4. Food is Pinterests most popular topic. Oxfam has clearly done its research on the kind of content that tends to get shared on Pinterest and as a result eight of its 23 boards are food related... These include boards named Cook smarter and Less meaty meals, which tie into Oxfam campaigns around sustainable living but also cleverly target Pinterest most popular topic. (Moth, 2013) 5. Oxfam is one of the few charities that isn't shy about pinning content from third-party sites (Moth, 2013) Tips on Boards 1. Create Pinterest boards with a specific purpose in mind. (Haydon, n.d.) 2. Collaborate with co-workers or team members to help build your Pinterest board by using the board edit feature Me + Contributors. Lets say your organization has a project to build a house. You can call the board The House That Love Built and invite team leaders to post photos of tools needed, progress of the build, and volunteers. (Haydon, n.d.) 3. Create an online fundraising catalog. Add $ symbol and the amount of an item in the pin description, i.e., $7.95 or $5.00. A grey banner with the price will be displayed on the upper left corner. Your pin will automatically go into the gifts tab located at the top of the homepage. (Haydon, n.d.) 4. Use keywords to name your Pinterest boards, board descriptions, and pin descriptions for search engine optimization (SEO). (Haydon, n.d.)

6 | P a g e 5. Create categories that reflect what users are looking for. If you run the Paul Revere House and want to post pictures of the furnishings and silver work call it "Early American Decor" or "Silver Teapots." (Waters, 2012). 6. Community boards are great way to increase traffic (Moth, 2013) o Oxfam disclaimer on their community board: Please add to this board pins related to title theme. No spam, No nudity, No advertising! Do not pin more than 10 pins at a time. If you would like to join group boards, you send me board name you want to join and your Pinterest address at facebook message. I don't want to add your friends to this board no longer. Happy Pinning! 7. Moth (2013) recommends not having empty boards, ensuring each board has amply pins 8. Amnesty UK has an excellent collection of boards, with content including its various campaigns, celebrities, recommended reading, Christmas cheer and images of staff members. (Moth, 2013) 9. Boards should have no less than 10 pins/images each, to show professionalism and to engage/excite followers (McGinnis) Tips on Pinning & Images 1. Use eye-catching images to get peoples attention and repins. The more repins, the more chances youll have people clicking to the source website. (Haydon, n.d.) 2. Like the other social media networks, Pinterest is not a place to blatantly promote your organization. You will turn people away if you constantly push your cause. Instead, pin images that capture the lifestyle and essence of your organization while building a community of potential donors and volunteers who share the same interests. (Haydon, n.d.) 3. Be useful. Pinterest users are looking for ideas and inspiration. Speak to that muse. Just don't pin a picture of the new lobby area of your school. Highlight an architectural detail that makes it interesting, unique and inspiring. (Waters, 2012) 4. If youre an environmental organization: Pin images of endangered species; Pin pics of unique beach trash your volunteer teams clean up; Build a collection of innovative recycling in your community (Kaplan, 2012) 5. If youre a foundation: Pin images from your grantees' projects; collect images that demonstrate the problem you are trying to solve; Community foundations can pin things they want to celebrate in the community (Kaplan, 2012) 6. Action Aids Pins contain a huge amount of text describing whats taking place, which can discourage other users from sharing the image (Moth, 2013) 7. Amnesty UK includes far too much text, according to Moth (2013), but good use of hash tags promoting certain campaigns 8. National Trust pins often include a massive amount of text which serves to break up the flow of the boards and make them look a bit messy, but in most cases the images are strong enough to hold your attention. (Moth, 2013) 9. Unpinnable Images:

7 | P a g e a. Problems arise when a site just isnt optimized for pinning. You cant pin anything from a Flash site, which is still a favorite of many high end retailers, so that is a completely missed opportunity. b. More subtle problems arise with product sites that offer nifty image preview tools. In this example on Schumacher, a provider of high end textiles and wallcoverings, they have a javascript image tool that prevents the images from being detected by the Pin It bookmarklet. If you are a savvy user, you can click on switch to JPG view and be able to pin that image, but most people will not know to take that extra step. (Kinney, 2012) 10. Hashtags: a. Sanchez (2013a) states: From my research on Pinterest, #s used in board titles or in board descriptions seem to have no impact on making boards easier to find in Pinterest searches. I was able to find only 1 board named #Inspirational quotes and it was way down on the list. b. Where #s really seem to show their muscle on Pinterest is in pin descriptions. The # is clickable within the pins description and when clicked, it searches and pulls up the other pins that use the the same # or words in their description. It seems to be a shortcut for using the search box. (Sanchez, 2013a) c. For a short time, while Pinterest was making the big transition from the old look to the new look, hashtags stopped functioning but now theyre back. Within Pinterest, as in other social sites such as Twitter and Instagram, hashtags serve as a shortcut to performing a search for other pieces of content. (Sanchez, 2013b) d. There are several places that I have seen hashtags used in Pinterest including, board titles, board descriptions, account descriptions and profile names. Sorry to disappoint Pinterest users who have used them in these places in hopes of making their accounts or boards easier to find but, hashtags DONT work in these areas, they are not clickable. In Pinterest, hashtags are only clickable and searchable in pin descriptions and they work a bit differently than they do in Twitter or Instagram. Clicking on a hashtag in a pins description will not only result in pins that include that hashtag but also in pins that include the same word or phrase in the description. (Sanchez, 2013b) e. Clicking on a hashtag can also result in pins without the word or phrase in the description at all. I came across the hashtag, #babyclothes and when clicked on, some of the pins didnt contain the phrase or any of the words in the description. For example, when I clicked on #babyclothes, one of the pins that came up in the search was of a rubber duck. Duck was the only word in the description but the reason this pin appeared was because of the link attached to this pin. The URL tied to this pin had the phrase babyclothes in it. This is something to keep in mind when naming your images, blog posts and product pages. Even though Pinterest is an image based, search results are still based on words. (Sanchez, 2013b) f. To make the most of hashtags the best approach would be to make one that is unique. This technique is often used in Pinterest contest where participants must pin items with a specific hashtag as part of the entry process. However, it may take a while for you hashtag to be searchable. As a test, I included #pinterestingtips in a few of my

8 | P a g e pins and after 2 days they are not searchable. Its unclear why. To maximize your pins chances for being found be sure to include more than just a hashtag in the description, use common descriptive keywords too. For an extra boost, include key words in the link attached to the pin. (Sanchez, 2013b) g. hashtags are quite popular on Pinterest too, and like on Twitter and Google+, these are the ones helping users to easily find your content. So use them, but try to be relevant and dont overdo it. (Cosmin, n.d.) Tips on Following & Followers 1. Follow Pinterest users with similar interests with quality pins on their boards, like, Nonprofit Organizations, National Wildlife Federation, Water.org, Jokolna Foundation. (Haydon, n.d.) 2. Follow back influential people who follow you. The trick is to click Follow All on the individuals profile, then unfollow specific boards that arent of interests to you. (Haydon, n.d.) 3. Being active is vital in every social community because that shows your followers and other members that you are interested in doing great things. Besides that, commenting on others Pins means feedback for others which in most cases means a lot especially if that person doesnt receive lots of comments. (Cosmin, n.d.) 4. My advice would be to start simple and grow from there. Spend some time on creating or picking a pin that can easily go viral. This will bring you lots of attention and as a result, you will get tons of followers. (Cosmin, n.d.) Tips on Liking Images, Repining, & Comments 1. Like pins or repin items that appeals to you. This action will show up on the users sidebar. It will also send an email notification to the user (if turned on). (Haydon, n.d.) 2. Use the pin comments section to engage in conversation and leave your mark. (Haydon, n.d.) 3. Use the @ feature in the comment box to tag specific people (like other social networks). (Haydon, n.d.) 4. Don't just pin, repin. Pinterest is just like any other social network. It's not all about you. Search through Pinterest and find images that you can repin on your boards. As with most social platforms, this is where the magic happens! (Waters, 2012) Tips on Searches 1. Use the search box by typing in topics, peoples names, businesses, etc. Then filter search by clicking pins, boards, or people. (Haydon, n.d.)

9 | P a g e Integrating Pinterest with Your Website 1. Add a Pinterest share button to your website and URL on your business cards. (Haydon, n.d.) 2. Let your supporters pin for you. Add "pin it" buttons to your blog or web site so your visitors and supporters can create their own pin boards that highlight your cause. (Waters, 2012) 3. Optimizing Your Site for Pinnable Images: a. The best way to test how your site pins is to set up a Pinterest account, grab the bookmarklet tool, and try pinning a few of the things you would like to see pinned and review the results. This is also an opportunity to browse around and see what type of images are being pinned in your market sector or niche. Pinterest is an extremely visual medium, so pinners generally are looking for the largest and most appealing images possible. (Kinney, 2012) b. If you are a blogger, does your post offer some type of featured or lead image? Many list/resource posts typically use many smaller images and lack a good featured image to pin. If you use WordPress, remember that you can create a featured image that is available but doesnt actually have to be used in your post. (Kinney, 2012) Syncing Pinterest Account with other Social Media Websites 1. This is a vital step if you want to obtain best results on Twitter, Facebook and also keep a place open for the new Pinterest. You can easily synchronize the Pinterest account with Facebook and Twitter by going to: Your Account -> Settings -> Simply Click on to Link Facebook or Twitter to your account. You can also add Pinterest to your Facebook timeline as long as you dont decide to post the same story manually. 2. Once you synchronize Pinterest with Facebook and Twitter, you get access to many possibilities including the friend messaging/following option which allows you to send as many Pinterest invites you wish and also to follow your Facebook friends who are already on the platform. The following process is almost instant and since they are your friends, its a huge possibility to follow you back in no time.

10 | P a g e Pinterest How-To Pinning 101 Instructional Guide from Pinterest site on how to Pin, Create Boards, Follow, UnFollow, & More http://about.pinterest.com/basics/ Creating Boards Title Description Category Who can Pin? (used only for community boards) Community Boards Can be set up when creating the board initially, or you can edit a board to convert to community board Use Who can pin? option within edit or create You must be following the person/organization before you can invite them to pin Helpful Videos: How to Create a Pinterest Group/Community Board: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5NRQmQU4gM What is a Pinterest Board? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hds8J6Gtxk4

11 | P a g e Adding Images to Boards Manually (without use of Pin It button) 1. If images are not pinnable from website, download the image to computer. After image has been downloaded, go to the Add+ button at the top on the Pinterest page. You will be prompted to upload a the image by locating it on the computer: 2. You can then add description text.

12 | P a g e 3. The image pin will then show on your screen. Click Edit. It is very important to then add a website link to the image you just added. 4. Then enter in the website link to where you want users to be directed when they click on the image. For more information on this go to the following section in this manual: Linking Images to Product Website vs. Your Website

13 | P a g e Best OfPinterest Pinners and Boards Examples of Other Non-Profits on Pinterest Greenpeace: http://pinterest.com/greenpeace/ Macmillian Cancer: http://pinterest.com/macmillancancer/ Action Aid: http://pinterest.com/actionaid/ Amnesty UK: http://pinterest.com/amnestyuk/ National Trust: http://pinterest.com/nationaltrust/ Oxfam: http://pinterest.com/oxfaminternatl/ RSPCA Little Valley Animal Shelter: http://pinterest.com/rspcaexeter/ UNICEF: http://pinterest.com/unicef/ Wateraid: http://pinterest.com/wateraid/ BC SPCA: http://pinterest.com/bcspca/ TerraCycle: http://pinterest.com/terracycle/ Inspiring Green Boards on Pinterest Organic Logos: http://pinterest.com/holidayorganic/organic-logos/ Green Certified Hotels & Restaurants: http://pinterest.com/jdvhotels/green-certified-hotels- restaurants/ Natural Cosmetics: http://pinterest.com/patandrub/natural-cosmetics/ FCS Certified Products: http://pinterest.com/scscertified/fsc-certified-products/ Leaping Bunny: http://pinterest.com/leapingbunny/ 50 things to do before youre 11 : http://pinterest.com/nationaltrust/50-things-to-do-before-you-re- 11-3-4/ NonProfit Resources: http://pinterest.com/npquarterly/nonprofit-resources/ Green Schools: http://pinterest.com/usgbc/green-schools/ Sustainability Infographics: http://pinterest.com/paolafiore/sustainability-infographics/

14 | P a g e Sustainability Infographics: http://pinterest.com/tracyjean/sustainability-infographics/ Sustainability Infographics: http://pinterest.com/greenmediasite/sustainability-infographics/ Sustainability Infographics: http://pinterest.com/jurlaub/sustainability-infographics/ Sustainability Infographics: http://pinterest.com/sunnycrowd/sustainability-infographics/ Other Successful Pages (not nonprofit) Sony: http://www.pinterest.com/sonyelectronics/ Starbucks Beautiful Objects (board): http://www.pinterest.com/starbucks/beautiful-objects/ Nordstrom: http://www.pinterest.com/nordstrom/

15 | P a g e References Buck, S. (2012, January 8). Pinterest: 13 tips and tricks for cutting edge users. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2012/01/08/pinterest-13-tips-and-tricks-for-cutting-edge-users/ Cosmin. (n.d.). Increase the number of followers on pinterest. Retrieved from http://devstand.com/marketing/pinterest-followers/ Haydon, J. (n.d.). 12 ways to use Pinterest for your nonprofit. Retrieved from http://www.johnhaydon.com/2012/01/12-ways-use-pinterest-for-your-nonprofit/ Kaplan, A. (2012, January 13). Steal these 42 creative Pinterest ideas for nonprofits. Retrieved from http://www.frogloop.com/care2blog/2012/1/13/steal-these-42-creative-pinterest-ideas-for- nonprofits.html Kinney, D. (2012, February 1). Leveraging pinterest: How pinnable is your content? Retrieved from http://www.searchenginejournal.com/leveraging-pinterest-how- %E2%80%9Cpinnable%E2%80%9D-is-your-content/39623/ Moth, D. (2013, April 10). 10 charities and how they use Pinterest. Retrieved from http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/62498-10-charities-and-how-they-use-pinterest Pinterest. (2013). Stories. Retrieved from http://business.pinterest.com/stories/ Sanchez, C. (2013, January 15). Tips for using hashtags on Pinterest. Retrieved from http://www.ohsopinteresting.com/tips-for-using-hashtags-on-pinterest/ Sanchez, C. (2013, April 13).Using hashtags with pinterests new look. Retrieved from http://www.ohsopinteresting.com/using-hashtags-with-pinterests-new-look/ Waters, J. (January 7, 2012). Why and how causes should use Pinterest. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-waters/why-how-causes-should-use_b_1190956.html