I was very excited when Pinterest hit the scene. Being a visually oriented person, I loved the idea of having a place for saving all the great images I ran across on the internet.
Everyone else did, too. Pinterest grew fast in popularity. People started using it in a variety of creative ways. The Foodies love it for pinning recipes, Fashionistas enjoy creating boards filled with their dream fashions. Wendi and I like using it for color palettes, vision boards and our all time favorite, our Bonds of Blood & Spirit Dream Cast, where we pin all the actors and models we envision in our novels when the movies are made.
Pinterest goes beyond playtime and dreaming. This social network seems tailor made for photographers, designers, painters and other visual artists.
But what if your business isn’t graphically oriented? Then you have to get creative.
One commonly used blogging strategy is to include images in your post. People like pictures. Images enhance the articles, help capture attention, and illustrate your point.
There’s an easy way to take the pretty picture a step further, and improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimization). All it takes is a little Photoshop, or similar program, if you know how to use it—or asking your designer to do it for you.
You may have noticed that we’ve changed our blog post format. The images accompanying the blogs aren’t just pretty pictures anymore. They serve a purpose. They’re like little covers for each post. We’ve enhanced the image with the blog post title, made it larger and centered it over the text. Then we make sure each image has the same Title and Alt Text (the text that shows up when you mouse over the image). This is what will help you in the search engines.
The best part? Each little cover image is PINNABLE! Yes! Now you, or anyone else can pin your post cover image to their boards on Pinterest, right along with an automatic link right back to your site!
How cool is that? And you don’t have to be a graphics or gallery website to enjoy the benefits!
Go ahead and try it. Get creative with your images, have fun with them.
But Deb, I hear you say, I can’t do this myself, I don’t have photoshop, I’m not an artist, and I have no clue how to make one. That’s okay, that’s what Blue Sun is here for. Give us a call, let’s talk solutions.