Are you using Pinterest to drive traffic to your website? If not, you definitely should be – Pinterest is one of the largest traffic generators on the web and more importantly, your prospective clients are on there.

Already have an account but not really utilising this social media giant to help your wedding or portrait photography business or just unsure what you should be doing to make it work… like I am.

Pinterest for portrait photographer website traffic

Be aware that Pinterest is a massive search engine and it's important to “optimise” your images to be found. Can you see what these photographers are trying to rank for?

Today's interview is with a Pinterest expert, mover and shaker in the online world and super helpful Cynthia Sanchez from Oh So Pinteresting. Cynthia derives her full-time income working with Pinterest and when I say she's an expert, I'm not kidding… there's not much she doesn't know when it comes to using Pinterest for business.

To prove the point, I literally bombarded Cynthia with questions and covered so much ground, I'll have to re-listen to this episode to be able to implement all the things she taught. I started with the absolute basics, covered every “dodgy” tactic I could think of to beware of and moved into more advanced strategies for the power users.

Some of the topics we cover include:

  • Setting up board to maximise search-ability
  • Where to add links in your account to you your website
  • Pinning your own images for maximum “link juice”
  • Naming and optimising your Pins to make them searchable and more sharable
  • Should you Pin competitors images
  • Altering Pin links to point to your website – can you and should you
  • Bad practices – what you shouldn't do
  • Best times of the day to Pin
  • How much time is required to see good ROI (return on investment)
  • How to measure your Pinterest efforts
  • Where to find more help with Pinterest
  • Pinterest Analytics
  • How to Pin your Instagram photos to Pinterest
  • Facebook and Pinterest – combining the two
  • Making your website “Pinterest friendly”
This episode of the podcast certainly goes into great detail and may seem like “overload” after the first listen. Remember though, taking action with just a few of the topics we cover will see you moving ahead and have you in front of where you were before listening.

Once you get on a bit of a roll, come back and listen again, use this interview as resource.

Things aren't so rosy with every wedding and portrait photographer

Also covered in this episode – I approached Rob, a photographer from the UK for a possible interview on the podcast. Rob was recommended by another business owner that I trust asa successful photographer and a great guy.

watermarking Pinterest images

Watermarking your images is recommended if you are concerned about other photographers passing off your work as their own.

After checking his website, work and Facebook page, everything pointed to him being a fantastic shooter with a great business. Looks however, can be deceiving.

Rob replied to my email with a resounding “no thanks” citing a crap year in business and things not looking good at all.

His candid, honest and brief email was both disappointing but refreshing in an industry where many business owners seem to perpetually on cloud 9 with more bookings than they can handle and business never looking better. True or not… it's difficult to tell sometimes.

maybe you need to be part of a networking/mastermind group of like minded photographers to share real information to get a bette idea and gauge of how you're going. More on that in the podcast.

Links to Cynthia, Oh So Pinteresting and other things mentioned:

OhSoPinteresting.com

Cynthia on Pinterest

Cynthia on Facebook

Cynthia on Twitter

Cynthia on Google +

The WordPress Pin it button for your site: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pinterest-pin-it-button/
How to Pin Instagram photos to Pinterest – http://www.youtube.com/ohsopinteresting

Premium Members

If you are a Premium member (firstly thanks, it's a great help to keep the podcast going) you're in for a special tip from Cynthia on how you can maximise your visibility and share-ability while bringing people back to your site more effectively.
Pinterest to rank wedding photography websites in google

Can you see which photographer is making great use of the term “Sydney Wedding Photographer” – now do the same search in Google and see if they're ranking on the first page. Yes, Pinterest is powerful if used correctly.

The tip is made for photographers (because you need to know a little photoshop to make it work) and I have an example waiting for you in the membership area.

Also, Cynthia has provided a discount code for any premium members that would like to use her services now or in the future in regard to setting up or maintaining your Pinterest account.

Are you enjoying the podcast?

If you're enjoying the podcast, the interviews or learning something along the way, can you do me a favour and tell just one person – another photographer – up and coming or established. The more listeners, the better the community, the better the show becomes.

To let someone know about the show, share it on Facebook, Tweet about it (do any of you use Twitter?) or email a photographer friend.

Don't forget too, if you have feedback, a suggestion, comments or gripes, use the comments below or email me: andrew@photobizx.com. I honestly would love your feedback, don't be shy, if you've something to say, let me know you're out there.

That's it for this week, hope business s going great guns for you.

Speak soon

Andrew