12 ways to use Pinterest for your nonprofit

image005 12 ways to use Pinterest for your nonprofit

Following is a guest post from my good friend Noland Hoshino, who catapults nonprofits and small businesses into the social good space.

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There is a new darling in the social media world and her name is Pinterest. A virtual, interactive bulletin board where individuals, businesses, and nonprofit organizations can pin their interests and drive traffic to their website.

What is Pinterest?

Pinsterest is basically a vision board or scrapbook that you put together while surfing the internet. According to the website, “Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Pinterest allows you to organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. You can browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.”

Although, the main demographic of Pinterest users are women, between the ages of 25 and 44, there are increasing number of unique visitors to the social platform — 3.3 million users logged in and over 421 million page views in October to over 4 million users today (Mashable).

I know what you’re thinking, “Argh, not another social media platform I have to manage. I can barely keep up with updating my Facebook page, or Twitter account, or the trendiest social media thing.” But, Pinterest is different, which is extremely important to their success because the field is already crowded with so many social networks, apps and widgets, and soon-to-be copycats (MingleWing, Piccsy).

How does Pinterest work?

You build a collage of images by pinning them to your Pinterest board. It can be done in three ways: Use the Pinterest “Pin It” bookmarklet while perusing the internet, upload your own images, or repin other user’s images to your Pinterest boards that you’ve created and organized. For example, I’ve created several Pinterest boards: Social Good Marketing, Good Designs That Shine , Hugs My Soul (Motivational Quotes), Pinterest for Nonprofits, to name a few.

image006 12 ways to use Pinterest for your nonprofit

What makes Pinterest so pinteresting?

Pinterest can generate a lot of traffic to your website because pins link back to their original source. 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).

Social broadcasting by repinning other user’s images in Pinterest, tweet pins to Twitter and “like” pins
to your Facebook wall. You can also embed pins onto your website or email them to a friend.

You can pin videos too

Women, who are usually the retail buyers in a household, have flocked to Pinterest to share decorating ideas, crafts, cooking recipes, bargain products and much, much more.

12 Tips to Pinterest Your Nonprofit’s Interest

Create Pinterest boards with a specific purpose in mind. Example: Humane Society of New York Woof – Adopt A Dog.
Follow Pinterest users with similar interests with quality pins on their boards, like, Nonprofit Organizations, National Wildlife Federation, Water.org, Jokolna Foundation. You can follow all boards or specific boards, such as Jennifer Windrum’s SMAC! Sock Monkeys Against Cancer, Sylwia Presley’s Nonprofits and Social Media, Miranda Carter’s Cause, Jenn Howard’s Sayings or Sevenly’s Get Inspired.
Follow back influential people who follow you. The trick is to click “Follow All” on the individual’s profile, then unfollow specific boards that aren’t of interests to you.
“Like” pins or repin items that appeals to you. This action will show up on the user’s sidebar. It will also send an email notification to the user (if turned on).
Use the pin comments section to engage in conversation and leave your mark.
Collaborate with co-workers or team members to help build your Pinterest board by using the board edit feature “Me + Contributors.” Let’s 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.
Use eye-catching images to get people’s attention and repins. The more repins, the more chances you’ll have people clicking to the source website.
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.
Use the search box by typing in topics, people’s names, businesses, etc. Then filter search by clicking pins, boards, or people.
Use the @ feature in the comment box to tag specific people (like other social networks).
Use keywords to name your Pinterest boards, board descriptions, and pin descriptions for search engine optimization (SEO).
Add a Pinterest share button to your website and URL on your business cards.

What I like most about Pinterest is that it’s visually-appealing and easy to use. If I’m perusing the web and I come across a really cool image, I can “pin” the image to my Pinterest board. Like creating my very own lifestyle catalog with the things I’m interested in.Plus, all of my friends can see what appeals to me, which is useful when buying gifts (hint, hint).

Tip: If you highlight the web context with the left button of your mouse, then click the “Pin it” button, the highlighted text will show up in the Pinterest description box.

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.