Welcome back to another week of the social media and sex writing series (as part of the overall marketing series Erotic Promo Tips). Last week, it was Twitter, this week, it’s Pinterest.
I’ll be honest. I spend more time having fun on Pinterest (when I’m even there) than I do promoting myself. Because it’s a very popular site and sales are being made – at least in the world of crafts, shoes, and other goods, it’s worth discussing.
Follow Other People
This is sort of “Social Media 101” for any site. Find other people to follow. What I love about Pinterest is that I can follow individual boards instead of someone’s entire account. Maybe I love their quirky book humor but really don’t care about their love for all things cheese. Book humor is followed, cheese is ignored. (Except who am I kidding? I love cheese!)
Pin Interesting Stuff
This is a nice way of saying, “Don’t pin just your blog posts or your book covers.” For me, I use Pinterest as another way to express myself. I’ve got a BDSM board and a board about sex, masturbation, and porn (oh my!), but I’ve also got one about writing, being a Scorpio, and several others topics. You never know what will help you connect with someone, so just be yourself.
It’s not just enough to pin the good stuff. You also need a pin-worthy image. Canva (my personal favorite) makes this easy. They’ve got templates for Pinterest images – already sized correctly and everything. Don’t steal your image from Google Images, y’all. Not unless you know exactly where it came from and can give proper credit. Either use the stock images from Canva (free or $1 each) or subscribe to a stock image service. I use Kozzi because it’s $4.95 a month. They’re a little light on kinky images but if you need sexy, they’ve got it.
Watch Out for Nudity
And by that I mean, don’t let too much show. No nipples, no cocks, no pussies. Pinterest is definitely PG-rated when it comes to sex. They’ll warn you once, maybe twice, and after that, you’ll lose an entire board or your account. It happened to me.
I pinned every Masturbation Monday post to a special board to help drive traffic to individual blog posts and the main page. Of course, most of those images were filled with nudity. After a few weeks, the board was deleted.
Just because you get away with it once or twice doesn’t mean you wouldn’t get caught. Be careful, y’all.
Advertising Isn’t an Option
Pinterest just recently opened up their promoted pins to just about anyone. Well, anyone except a very specific list – and of course, sex bloggers and erotic authors can consider themselves included.
From Pinterest’s Advertising Guidelines:
We never allow ads for these products and services:
Weight loss products and services
If anyone has managed to make ads on Pinterest work for your blogging or books, please let us know. I know they allow sexier images to be pinned but I can’t imagine how they’d let a book or a blog post filled with sex slide through.
As a sex writer, Pinterest should be used as a way to share content and make new connections. If you happen to find the magic formula for pinning the right images that get shared and generate clicks to your website, wonderful! But if all you do is find some laugh-out-loud images and new recipes for all natural everything, that’s good too.
Have you found success on Pinterest for your sex blogging or erotic writing? Share in the comments below!
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Did I miss the link to your Pinterest board?
And that’s what happens when you blog and publish in a hurry.
Here’s the link, but I’ll also update the post: https://www.pinterest.com/kaylalords1/