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This article is from May 3, 2013, and is no longer current.

More Pinterest Pointers

The world keeps spinning, and pinners keep on pinning. In the weeks since I wrote my article Pinterest Pointers: 9 Tips for Using the Third-Largest Social Media Site Professionally back in January, Pinterest has continued to cement its position as one of the top-tier players in the social media world.

Research shows that Pinterest’s traffic and market share are still trending upward, and that it continues to excel as a shopping medium. While Facebook is great for building awareness of products and services, Pinterest is better at getting users to actually buy what they’re looking at. (And if you’re thinking that an effective social media marketing strategy should incorporate both sites to take advantage of those different strengths, then you and I are on the same wavelength.)

Pinterest has also given itself a facelift this year. In March it unveiled a new look and new features, in addition to rolling out analytics tools for business users.

Figure 1: The new design Pinterest announced in March features bigger pins and new discovery features.

So I’ll start with an overview of the new updates to Pinterest, and then round things out with a few Pinterest tips and tricks that didn’t make it into my previous article (including a couple I’ve discovered since I wrote it).

What’s New, Pinterest?

First off, in the new version of Pinterest the pins themselves have gotten bigger. When you click on a pin to take a gander at it, Pinterest will now goose up the size dramatically, to a maximum width of 735 pixels (as compared to 600 pixels previously).

Figure 2: In this example of an enlarged pin, in the right-hand column you can see other pins from the board it belongs to (“Around the world”) as well as some images that were pinned from the same site (travelchannel.com).

At its best, Pinterest is all about discovering new things. So in this update, Pinterest has also enhanced its “discovery features.” When you look at the enlarged view of a pin, you can now see and scroll through the entire board that the pin belongs to, as well as a selection of pins that point to the same website, and a roundup of other pins shared by users who pinned the one you’re currently looking at.

Figure 3: Down below the enlarged pin, Pinterest shows you a sampling of other images pinned by the people who shared this one — which might help you find other pinners who share your interests.

Another nice convenience that’s been added with the redesign is that you can now rearrange the boards on your profile just by dragging them, whenever you want — no more having to click a special icon before you’re allowed to move things around. (Of course, you still can’t rearrange the actual pins within a board — they’re still locked in chronological order, with the most recently posted pins at the top.)

For the data lovers in the crowd, Pinterest is now offering numbers for you to crunch. If you’ve got both a Pinterest account and a website for your business, you can access web analytics.

Figure 4: When you link a verified website to your business account on Pinterest, you’ll be able to see all kinds of data.

With this feature enabled, Pinterest will provide you with data on how many people have pinned images from your website, how many have seen your pins, and how much web traffic Pinterest has directed to your site. In order to get access to web analytics, you just need to make sure that your Pinterest account is linked to a verified website. (If you haven’t already verified your website, here are some helpful instructions on how to do it.)

Be a Pintrepid Adventurer — Use Pinterest to Explore and Discover

Speaking of Pinterest’s new discovery features leads me to an essential point about Pinterest that I didn’t make in my earlier article. As I mentioned above, Pinterest is all about exploring and finding new things — and it rewards you when you branch out beyond your own network. But it might take a little effort and patience to nudge yourself toward the real payoffs in pinnerland.

When you first join Pinterest, you’re offered the option of automatically following the pinners that you’re already friends with on Facebook, or whom you already follow on Twitter. (And can add them later on as well, by choosing Find Friends from Pinterest’s dropdown menu.) Which is great for making sure that your Pinterest home page is filled with pins to look at right from the start.

But for me at least, Pinterest became more interesting when I ventured beyond my existing contacts from Facebook. One of the reasons that Pinterest didn’t engage me when I first joined was that the subset of my Facebook friends who were using Facebook at that point had very different interests than I did. My friends were mainly pinning images of home furnishings, shoes, clothing, and food that made me gain weight just by glancing at my computer screen. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of that, but my own interests tend to be — well, geekier and quirkier.

Fortunately, with a little bit of searching and a willingness to follow the best pins back to the people who originally pinned them, I was able to find pinners who were more up my idiosyncratic alley — sharing everything from inventive surrealist collages to photos of obscure new wave and punk bands. I found boards devoted to Doctor Who and Mad Men, vibrant photos of unusual sea creatures, dazzling images of Saturn’s rings and interstellar nebulae, social media infographics and inspiring writing tips, and recipes more in line with my own vegan approach to the kitchen.

So the moral, to paraphrase Don Draper, is that if you don’t like what’s on your Pinterest home page, change the conversation. Start by making active use of Pinterest’s search field. Type in the names of favorite artists, designers, musicians, TV shows, movies, authors, travel destinations, or whatever else appeals to your obsessive side.

Figure 5: Putting Pinterest’s search field to work can turn up all sorts of treasures. Here I searched for “Cubist painting.”

When you find pins you really love, don’t just repin them — click on the names of the people who pinned them to go check out their Pinterest profiles. Chances are you’ll start finding kindred spirits to follow this way, and they’ll liven up your home page with lots of great eye candy that makes your time on Pinterest feel worthwhile.

Sleuth or Dare: Here’s How to Track Down the Source of a Pinned Image

Speaking of discovering, it’s time to share a fun little trick I’ve discovered that will allow you to exercise your inner sleuth.

I mentioned in my previous article that ideally, pins should point somewhere. After all, when you click on an intriguing image to find out more about it, it’s frustrating to arrive at dead-end image file with no information or context. Maybe the image was just uploaded to Pinterest with no link whatsoever. Or maybe it was pinned from a Tumblr blog that doesn’t include any useful info about the image. You’re left to wonder who took that spectacular photo, or what kind of fascinating sea creature you’re looking at, or where you can buy that fabulous vintage brooch, if it’s even for sale.

For example, a few weeks ago I came across a pin of the gloriously eye-popping collage image shown below. I immediately wanted to know who created it, and hopefully see some other work by the same artist. But the pin didn’t link anywhere, and the description field for the pin just said “Stag Spaceman.” Curses, foiled again.

Figure 6: Who made you and where did you come from, Oh mighty Stag Spaceman?

Fortunately, when you run into this kind of dead end, there’s a great solution. If the original image is lurking out there on the web somewhere, you can put on your detective hat and track it down using Google Image Search. Here’s how it works.

First, go to Google and click on Images in the menu bar at the top to open Google Image Search.

Figure 7: Click the word Images in the Google menu bar.

Then click on the Camera icon to open the Search by Image feature.

Figure 8: Clicking the Camera icon allows you to search Google by image. Essentially, you can show Google a particular image and ask it to find other instances of that picture online.

Figure 9: The Search By Image field, ready and waiting

At this point you have three choices:

1) You can paste in the URL of the image you’re searching for (in which case you’ll need to grab the URL for the pin on Pinterest)

2) You can upload the image from your hard drive (in which case you’ll need to download the image from Pinterest before you do this step), or

3) Easiest of all, you can simply drag the image from the Pinterest window onto Google’s Search By Image field. (You’ll need to do this from the window for the pin itself. So if you’re looking at it on a pinboard or the Pinterest home page, click to enlarge it before you do this step.)

Figure 10: In this shot, I’m about to drop the Stag Spaceman image onto the Search By Image field, after dragging it over from Pinterest — which I had open in a separate window.

Assuming that the image does exist somewhere else online, Google will serve you up a results page that includes links to all of the exact matches it finds on the web, grouped by size, as well as any visually similar images.

Figure 11: The search results Google returns include exact matches at the top (categorized by size), as well as links Google thinks might be relevant, and a selection of images that might be similar. Clicking “All Sizes” will take me to a view that shows thumbnails of all the exact matches Google found, with links to the pages where they live. “Small,” “Medium,” and “Large” will narrow the results by image size.

Figure 12: Further down on the results page, in the “Pages that include matching images” area, Google lists a couple of pages that mention the name of the artist: Rubbishmonkey.

By clicking through the results you can usually find, if not the original source of the image, at least a page that provides more context or information about it.

In the case of our stag spaceman, I was able to find out that it was created by an artist working under the moniker Rubbishmonkey, and that it’s for sale as a $16 art print entitled “Without Words” via the artist’s online store on Society6.com.

Figure 13: The online store on Society6.com where the original art print by Rubbishmonkey is for sale.

When I repinned t
he image, I made sure to include the artist’s name and the proper title of the piece in my text description, and I linked it to the online store, so that others could easily find their way to it.

How to Link a Pin to a Facebook Page

You may have noticed that you can’t pin an image directly from Facebook. If you try, you’ll get an error message.

This can be a little frustrating, to put it mildly. Since Pinterest is such a great driver of traffic, it’s natural to want to use it to direct your audience to your Facebook content — especially if the image you’re pinning is part of a Facebook album full of related images, or belongs to a Facebook page with lots of other relevant postings.

But don’t despair. The fact that you can’t pin directly from Facebook doesn’t mean that your pin can’t still point your audience toward your Facebook page, or to a specific posting on your Facebook page. After all, when you click on one of your own pins to edit it, one of the options you’re given is the ability to edit the URL that the pin points to.

So: If you want your pin to link to a destination on Facebook, all you have to do is tweak the link for the pin after the fact.

Using this workaround, you’ll need to create your pin by uploading the same image from your hard drive that you want to link to on Facebook. So start by choosing Add Pin from Pinterest’s dropdown menu. Then browse to the image on your hard drive. (If you don’t have the image in question on your computer, you can always download it from Facebook.) Choose which board you want to add it to, enter a description, and then click Pin It.

At this point, your pin has been created, but it doesn’t link anywhere yet.

So in order to fix that, your next step is to grab the URL for the Facebook page or posting you want the pin to link to. (Remember that you can get the permalink for any posting on Facebook by clicking the timestamp next to the posting.)

Then find the new pin you just created on whichever pinboard you added it to. Or click the Pins button at the top of your profile to see it at the top of your recent pins. Move your cursor over the pin and click the Edit button.

Figure 14: To edit a pin, click the Edit button that appears when you move your cursor over it.

In the edit dialog, paste your desired URL into the Source field, and then click Save Changes.

Figure 15: The Edit Dialog lets you choose where the pin should link by entering or tweaking the URL in the source field.

Pinterest will update the pin, and it’ll now point to your chosen destination on Facebook.

That’s it for this roundup. But if you’ve got Pinterest tips of your own, feel free to share them in the comments. If I use them in a future piece, I’ll be sure to credit you.

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