There are plenty of social media networks out there and as an artist, you may wonder whether you should Pinterest to promote your artwork. In fact, Pinterest is one of the best sites for creatives to drive traffic to their website or online shop. These 15 tips for artists using Pinterest show you exactly how to use Pinterest to make the most of it for your artist business!
Is Pinterest for Creatives?
Being successful as an artist depends, to a huge part, on getting your art out there for people to find it. Some art lovers may come upon your work in an online gallery, read about it in a blog post, or find your website through Google.
Related: → Learn everything to build your own artist website.
To create exposure and drive sales, many artists upload their works to special art website like DeviantArt and Behance, or social media platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest.
Pinterest can be one of the best marketing tools for artists. Why is that? Because it’s all visual! In fact, one can argue whether Pinterest is an actual social media network, as it works more like a visual search engine, which includes social networking elements. Pinterest itself describes its platform as a ‘visual discovery engine’.
That’s already perfect for displaying artworks! But what’s even better is that all images posted on the platform link back to the website they came from.
That makes it super-easy for fans and potential buyers to find your art and go directly to your website to connect with you or make a purchase. In terms of Pinterest vs Instagram for artists, Pinterest has surely an edge in that respect!
Why you should be using Pinterest as an artist to promote your art
Pinterest was launched in 2010 by a San Francisco-based tech company and is used by many different types of people to save, share, and search for images they love.
Pinterest is now the third-most-popular social media platform, right after Facebook and Instagram. Here are seven good reasons why you should consider using Pinterest as an artist to market you art:
- Pinterest has 400 million monthly active users.
- People who use Pinterest start the planning and buying process two times earlier than other consumers.
- The average order value of sales that come from Pinterest is $50.
- 73% of pinners have purchased something after seeing it on Pinterest.
- 89% of pinners use the platform for purchase inspiration.
- An outstanding 47% of Pinterest users log onto the site specifically to shop.
- 97% of searches are unbranded. (People search for the best product that suits their needs, instead of searching for a specific brand. That’s a big advantage for you to find buyers that are genuinely interested in what you are offering!)
How to use Pinterest as an artist?
Pinterest – as its name suggests – is all about pins. Pins are images with rounded corners that make up Pinterest’s user interface. Every Pinterest user can add pins to the platform. As an artist, you can pin images from your own website, web store, any art website or other social media network.
Related: → How To Upload Digital Art To Instagram?
If you see a pin that you like, you can save it to one of your Pinterest boards, or comment on it. If you like to find out more about the product or service that’s mentioned in the pin, all you need to do is click on the pin and it’ll take you to the original website.
Pinterest Boards allow you to organize your own pins and other people’s pins that you share. Each time you upload or save a pin, you can choose the board where you want it to show.
You can also create Pinterest boards that other users can join and share their content on. This is what Pinterest calls a Group Board.
Secret Boards, on the other hand, allow you to save your own private ideas and inspirations that only you can see, and whomever else you choose to share it with.
Apart from that, you can follow other Pinterest users, individual Pinterest boards, or certain topics (like following hashtags on Instagram). Your home feed will show you the pins that the people you follow saved.
In the search bar, you can type keywords and look for pins and pin boards that you find interesting.
How should an artist use Pinterest?
15 Must-Know Tips For Artists Using Pinterest
So, how exactly does it work, and how should an artist use Pinterest?
Here are the best 15 tips for artists using Pinterest to help you get more eyeballs on your works!
– Set up a free Pinterest business account
Number one on our list of tips for artists using Pinterest is setting up a free business account. Having a business account is essential if you want to promote your art on Pinterest, because you will get all the important analytics that you need to track the performance and engagement on your account.
Pinterest Insights lets you see what people love the most on your profile and what kind of users engage with your art pins. That way, you can pin more of what your followers love and help your art business thrive!
If you already have a personal Pinterest account for your art, you can easily convert it into a business account here.
– Create a branded Pinterest profile
It’s important to give your Pinterest profile a professional look that reflects your artist brand. When visitors come across your Pinterest account, they are more likely to follow you if your profile is well-branded.
It’s helpful if users see immediately who you are and what your are about, because it allows them to get a better understanding of you as an artist.
That’s why you should set up your Pinterest account with the name you use for your artist brand and your art website. Upload your logo or a photo of yourself that you also use on your other social media networks or art websites. That way, people will be able to recognize you the moment they come on your Pinterest profile!
Add some details about yourself and what you do as an artist. Don’t forget to use keywords in your description that relate to your artist brand. That makes it easier for people to find you in the search results when they search using relevant terms.
Also make sure to include a link to your website or online shop, or any other network you’d like to redirect your visitors to.
– Link back to your Pinterest account
Once your account is set up and well-branded, it’s time to spread the word! That’s why #3 on our list of tips for artists using Pinterest is linking back to your Pinterest account. Let people know that you’re now on Pinterest and help your account grow!
Include a backlink to your Pinterest profile on your artist website and other social media channels, so your followers can come over and catch up with you on Pinterest.
– Install a “Pin It” button to your browser
How to put your work on Pinterest?
One of the easiest ways to add pins to your Pinterest profile is by installing a ‘Pin It’ button to your browser. You can get the ‘Pin It’ button here.
It’s easy to add the button to your web browser, just follow these instructions.
With the ‘Pin It’ button installed, you just need to tap the button when you’re on your own art website and a pop-up window will appear where you can pick the image you want to pin and the board you want to save it to. It cannot be more convenient!
– Pin your own artwork
Pinning your own artwork is an important tip for artists using Pinterest. Many reasons! First of all, it helps your artwork get out there to be seen.
Related: → Best File Type To Save Digital Art
Second, you can add your own description to the artwork including those keywords that will actually help your work to be found. This can be information about your art style, medium, and your artist name. You can also add keywords of the colors or elements used in the picture. Anything that will help your art pop up in the search results when potential buyers are looking for a product is fine!
If you pin from your website using the ‘Pin It’ button, the link to your website should automatically be included. If the link is not there, you can click on the pin, select ‘Edit’, and add your website URL manually.
With all the information in place, users can repin your artworks. Then more people can see your art and click right through to your website or online shop!
– Create a board exclusively for your art
As we discussed above, you can create different types of boards on Pinterest – boards for a specific topic, group boards, and secret boards. But why is creating a board exclusively for your art an important tip for artists using Pinterest?
Because it will bring you a couple of benefits. Creating a board exclusively for your own content will:
- let visitors understand immediately what type of art you’re about and make them more likely to follow, if they share the same passion;
- help you organize your art for easy repinning;
- show more of your pins among the related pins recommendations.
When visitors come to your profile, your art board is what they should see first. To make sure your board is up first, you can reorder your Pinterest boards.
It’s also a good idea to brand your pins and boards consistently, so it’s easy for people to recognize that it’s your pin. For example, you can use the colors of your brand, add a small logo and your artist name.
Some artists feel frustrated when they see their pins being shared around without giving proper credit to the author, or – even worse – somebody else claiming to be the creator.
To not let this happen to you, there are a few things you can do to prevent your art from getting stolen online.
– Enable rich pins
Rich Pins are a special form of pins that contain more information than regular pins. This information is stored within the pin’s metadata. It’s not visible and it cannot be changed.
In order to be able to use Rich Pins, you need to have a website or a blog.
Enabling Rich Pins is also a way of protecting your pinned artworks online. As the metadata cannot be altered, unlike pin descriptions, all your information will stay available and correct.
What’s more, setting up Rich Pins will increase your click-through rates. Which is absolutely great as you’re likely to have more visitors coming to your website!
There are 4 types of Rich Pins: for apps, articles, products, and recipes. As an artist, the ones you’ll be using the most are product pins, and article pins in case you’re promoting your blog posts.
If you have your artworks and blog posts on a WordPress site, the easiest way to enable metadata is to install the Yoast SEO plugin.
Once you’ve added the necessary metadata to your site, you can go to Pinterest’s Rich Pins Validator, add you website URL, and apply for Rich Pins!
How should an artist use Pinterest to create the greatest possible exposure for their artwork?
How to use Pinterest as an artist to gain maximum exposure is surely a question that’s dear to your heart, if you’re planning to promote your works on the platform.
That’s why the second half of our tips for artists using Pinterest focuses on exactly that!
– Repin other people’s content
Tip #8 is an important one on our rundown of tips for artists using Pinterest. Repinning other people’s content is as key as pinning your own artworks. Why?
After all, Pinterest is still a social media network. So being social by pinning and commenting on other people’s work will help you significantly in establishing a larger network and increasing your own outreach as an artist.
But you will not only get higher engagement from resharing and commenting on other pins. It will also give people an idea what kind of art you are passionate about, what inspires you, and which other artists you admire.
This makes your profile much more interesting to follow, plus it helps you to keep your account active, even on those days when you don’t have new artworks of yours to pin!
– Follow other artists and art boards
Just like repinning other people’s content, following other artists and art boards will help you increase your own audience reach and build your network!
Have a look around in Pinterest’s art community, follow your favorite artists, the most popular art on Pinterest in your genre, and any other artists or boards you like or find inspiring.
You can also follow specific art boards or art-related boards, such as interior design, ceramics, dolls, diy home decoration, etc. Anything you enjoy is fine. You never know what will lead the next curator to your profile or give you your next brilliant creative idea!
– join active group boards
Group boards can be best described as huge collections of images on a particular topic or theme. Each group board is a dynamic community of like-minded people where content is constantly being shared and circulated.
Adding your works to a group board creates even more visibility for your art. The group board appears on the profile of every user who joins it, increasing your chances of getting more eyeballs on your work!
How do you find group boards to join?
Go to the Pinterest search bar and type in a keyword that relates to the type of art you’re looking for. Then add the words ‘group board’ to your search string. For instance, if you’re interested in digital art, you can search for ‘digital art group board’.
Once you hit enter, you will see a list of relevant pins come up in the search results. Go back up to the search bar and select ‘Boards’ instead of ‘All Pins’ the dropdown. This will show you group boards related to digital art that you can request to join!
– create your own group boards
Creating boards related to your niche or artist brand is number 11 on our list of tips for artists using Pinterest. Just like joining other people’s group boards, creating your own group boards will allow you team up with like-minded artists and help all of you multiply your exposure!
There are endless possibilities of art-related group boards you can create. For example, if you’re a digital artist, you can make a group board for digital art, Photoshop art, mixed media art, your favorite pop surreal art or inspirational quotes about art.
The main idea behind a group board is to have a place that you and your audience enjoy and that helps all of you amplify exposure.
Once you’ve created a group board, it’s time to spread the word and find artists to join. You can invite artists via other social media platforms you use, talk about your new group board in a blog post on your website, tweet a link to your Pinterest board, or start a discussion about it on Facebook.
With a nice amount of beautiful works put together in your group board, you can begin to send out the board to other Pinterest users – which brings us to the next point of our tips for artists using Pinterest!
– Send pins and boards directly to users
Pinterest features a Share button that allows you to send pins or boards directly to other Pinterest users who are interested in the topic. This may be art lovers that like your specific genre of art, curators, online galleries, designers, people looking for wall art or for something to gift to their loved ones.
It’s super-easy to send pins, boards, or even your entire profile to other users via the Share button. To send an individual pin, tap the pin to open and then click on the Share icon on the bottom left of the screen. Pinterest will suggest a range of users to send it to. You can also search your contacts by tapping the search bar. Once you’ve found your person of interest, simply click Send.
Sending a board works very similarly: click on the board to open. Then tap the three dots on the top right of the screen and select Share from the menu. Choose a contact and click Send. That’s all!
If you have a website with a list of subscribers, you can also share pins and boards via email!
– Create secret boards for personal projects and inspiration
Tip #13 on our list of tips for artists using Pinterest is rather a fun feature! Apart from theme boards and group boards, Pinterest also lets you create Secret Boards.
A secret board is a board that only you can see, or a few select people that you decide to invite. A secret board is great to collect pins for personal inspiration or new project ideas that you’re playing with.
Should you ever decide to share your secret collection with the public, all you need to do is toggle off ‘Keep this board secret’ in the board settings and your board will be visible to all Pinterest users!
– Pin Consistently
Just like on any other social media network, consistency is key! Especially when you’re first getting started on Pinterest, it’s important to pin as often as possible.
Keep your pinning frequency high so that visitors know you are active. People are more likely to follow you, if they can expect lots of new, fresh content on a regular basis.
On Pinterest, it’s not enough to pin your own images once. You need to repin them many times in order to get them out there to be seen by a maximum number of people. Make it a habit to repin the same image to different boards of your own as well as to group boards. …and be social and also repin the content of other users!
On Pinterest, you need to pin A LOT and consistently. As opposed to Facebook or Instagram, one pin a day is not sufficient.
As a baseline, you should aim at pinning around 10 to 20 images on a daily basis. That’s a lot of work! Fortunately, you can get some help in doing that! Read on to our last tip for artists using Pinterest to find out how…
50 High-Conversion Pinterest Pin Templates
– Boost your Pinterest marketing strategy
For an artist, creating art is what comes first. If you’re running an art blog, you also want to invest some time into content production. Then there’s Facebook, Instagram, and maybe a couple more art sites… With all of that, you probably don’t have too much time left to spend on daily posts on Pinterest.
Fortunately, there are some free and low-cost tools out there on the market that can do the job for you. Tailwind is one of these tools that has proven to do an amazing job on Pinterest!
Related: → What Is Tailwind For Pinterest?
Tailwind is a Pinterest scheduler that allows you to automate pins of your artwork and repins to different boards of your own and group boards. Tailwind analyzes your profile and suggests the best pinning times for your content. Once you’ve set up your pinning schedule, everything is going automatically, without you having to log in to your account each and every day.
Tailwind FREE Trial with No Time Limit
Try Tailwind Plus for as long as you like (up to 100 scheduled pins)!
I hope these 15 tips for artists using Pinterest were able to help you! If you enjoyed this post, please consider liking, commenting and sharing it with others! See you soon, Angie 💞
