1stwebdesigner

Pinterest for Photographers: Increase Your Photographer’s Mojo

Posted: 01 Aug 2012 06:00 AM PDT

Do you know what Pinterest really is? Pinterest is the most rapidly growing social media network. Since March 2010 when its beta version was launched Pinterest has grown to approximately 12 million users. Pinterest is a fantastic, super innovative, and fascinating place to have fun and to find something new. It’s a place where you can lose your mind for hours.

A year ago few people knew about this social network and probably even less of them thought that Pinterest was on the edge of great success. Now millions of people upload, save, comment, vote and repin photos, images and videos every day. And those particular users do business and earn real money on the basis of Pinterest. Photographers can do it even easier than other freelancers because they own the most powerful Pinterest tool: photos.

So if you’re a photographer who’s thinking about creating an account on Pinterest or an ordinary photography geek with a great passion to share your experience with the whole world, then welcome here! We’ll try to tell you some secret tips on how a photographer can gain a success on Pinterest. So let’s start with defining the reason why people use this social network.

Why do People use Pinterest?

Instead of Facebook – the most popular social network which is aimed at communication and sharing your own content – Pinterest was created to help people discover new inspirational things. So everything people want to find out on Pinterest is entertainment. Common people are not interested in doing business on Pinterest or stealing your photos (they don’t even mind it), they just want to have some fun.

How to Make Your Photos Stand Out on Pinterest

If you decided to start promoting your photos on Pinterest then you probably need some tips because this social network is quite new and we know little about it. Here are several tips which I read about on the web and some I know from experience.

Try to pin photos that are as close to 554px wide as possible. Smaller pics won’t probably be pinned at all and wider ones will be resized (this can cause a quality loss).
Be careful when cropping and resizing photos. Visual attractiveness is a key point on Pinterest and it’s very important to show people the best photos you can.
When pinning photos, make sure that all photographed objects are easy to discern. When you enter Pinterest you browse through small preview images which should pique your interest (at least pinners aspire to it), but most photos stay unnoticed because of a bad thumbnail.
Don’t pin stuff from your site only. Remember that on Pinterest people are looking for various materials and your promotional boards can irritate them. Mix your content with that which you find on the web.
When repinning photos taken by other photographers don’t crop watermarks even if it can improve their look! A watermark means that the person does care about his/her author rights, so don’t break them.
Upload your own photos and repin existing ones. It will allow you to look like an interesting and worth being followed user.
Take care about keywords because Pinterest pages are well indexed by search engines. There is little text on Pinterest pages, so you have to optimize them with proper keywords. Pay attention to filenames of photos you upload. (FV000256.jpg is a bad filename for both people and search engines; you should use several keywords to describe pics), images descriptions (up to 500 symbols), boards’ titles and descriptions (create several different boards with targeted names like "Still life photography by New York photographers").
Like, comment and repin photos of other people, so that they get to know about your existence.
Follow the leaders of your niche, people whose photos inspire you and common people who appreciate your photography (if you follow someone it means that you follow all his/her boards). Don’t be too haughty and unattainable.
Add the "Pin it" button to your website and/or blog.

Ok, now you know almost everything about what Pinterest for photographers can bring, but in case you think that it’s not worth trying Pinterest, and if you don’t want people pinning your work, you still have control over it by just following some easy steps.

How to Block Pinterest

Pinterest is a great social network for everybody who works with graphics. It can bring additional traffic to your site, but it can also hurt your author rights (at least many people are concerned about it). So if you’re going to block Pinterest from bookmarking photos from your site you can do it in two ways:

If you want to save all your photos and website pages from being pinned on Pinterest you can use the following code:

<meta name="pinterest" content="nopin" />

Just paste it into your website’s header file and it’ll disable pinning from your website.

If you want to block Pinterest on selected WordPress website pages or posts then you should use Pinterest Block plugin. Thus you’ll be able to choose which stuff to protect from being pinned and which not.

10 Photographers to Follow – Pinterest for Photographers:

Here are some photography-related accounts on Pinterest. They can be a good inspiration for you or teach you how to take photos and to pose in front of a camera.

Jamie Swanson - Jamie is a wedding photographer with a good collection of posing guides for couples, parents, children, etc.
Photoshop Tips - Probably there’s no need to explain what Photoshop is :). By the way, this account is not run by Photoshop but by Virtual Photography Studio that knows a thing or two about photography.
Klaus Herrmann - This photographer created different boards for photos of different colors. The idea is simple, but at the same time it’s very impressive and inspiring.
Jim Harmer - This photographer presents really nice photography tips and ideas. He runs a photo blog, where he shares many interesting things, including tips and tricks.
Kari Pryplesh - This user has many boards of different subjects. But starting from the second line of boards there are amazing photo ideas which you can try yourself.
Zach Prez - It’s a strange thing, Zach has only 3 boards with 156 pins, but the Pinterest community is crazy about him. This guy knows a secret about Pinterest.
Scott Kivowitz - This New Jersey photographer doesn’t have as many followers as previous pinners, but his photography stuff is precious.
Jodi Friedman - Don’t know how to edit your photos? Here you’ll find many creative photo ideas and tutorials.
Tray Ratcliff - This account is run by a travel photographer. His photos from all around the world are fantastic. And you can hardly find something more inspiring than his Pinterest profile.
Photodoto - This young account belongs to a photo blog with a long publishing history. Thus, you’ll find some interesting stuff there.

Now it seems that everything has been said and everybody’s pleased: me, because I’ve shared my experience with you, and you, because you’ve gotten to know something useful from the post (at least I’d like to think so :) ). Now I wish you happy pinning!