Hello Trello • The Easy Way to Manage Your Pinterest Schedule

In the last month Pinterest has sent me 14,324 page views. If you would like a slice of this kind of traffic, let me share my pinning strategy using Trello – a free project management tool.

People tell me they don’t ‘get’ Pinterest as a business tool. Let me try to explain. Think of Pinterest as a boutique, user-driven version of Google, but instead of googlebots crawling through your webpage so you come up in search results, you ‘show up’ in Pinterest by pinning your images (or having someone else pin them).

What you are doing is putting a tiny promotional ad (your branded+optimised blogpost image) out into the Pinterest world. My experience is that people won’t save/repin your post pin so much if you’re a story-telling blogger (because story blogs are consumable), but they will click through if you provide a great image with compelling text.

Pinterest users follow streams (boards) based on their interests. The aim is to get your tiny promotional ad into as many streams as possible without looking like a spammer. This isn’t as hard as it sounds as long as you spread your pinning activity across multiple boards a couple of times a day.

Automation

I use Tailwind to automate posting to busy group boards that are general free-for-alls. The program posts a pin scheduled from my complete collection to these big boards once or twice a day. This is a luxury rather than a necessity, and you can do without it when you start out.

Manual Pinning

I pin manually twice a day – at 9am and 7pm Australian time. This catches the morning and evening Pinterest users. I alternate between groups of pins on alternate days – Mon, Wed, Fri, Sun morning and Tue, Thu, Sat, Sun night.

Set Up

(click to zoom in)

The set up in Trello consists of lists.

1. Archive – this is where I keep the template that I copy for each new pin, and pins that have been through the pinning cycle once.

2. Waiting to Pin – this is for new pins that haven’t gone into rotation yet.

3. Morning/Evening Mon | Wed | Fri | Sun am – I usually only work on 5 pins at a time otherwise I forget what I’ve done in a session. Once I’ve pinned these posts I slide them over to the evening list. In the evening, I go through them again and then slide them back to the morning list.

4. Morning/Evening Tue | Thu | Sat | Sun pm– see above.

Cards

I create a new card for every blog post. The card has a list of my main Pinterest board, my smaller boards, and my group boards in a checklist.

This is the back view of the card. (In Trello you get to the back of the card by clicking on it).

The description area I use for the post’s URLs which are clickable. This allows me to pull up a Pinterest pin without having to search for it.

The checklist starts out listing two generic personal boards I call category boards (lines 2 & 3 in the last photo on this page). I change the name of these when I pin – in the above example I’ve pinned to “Sexy Time” and “Love and Romance”. Another post might be pinned to two different personal boards.

The rest of the checklist is self explanatory – once I’ve pinned my image to a particular group board, I tick it off.

When I’ve been through all the boards once, I add the date to the card title (see 1005 in the example above, meaning I finished the first cycle on October 5) and slide it over to the archive list on the left hand side. When the pin comes back into circulation in 3-4 weeks later, I add a fresh checklist and start all over again.

Once both cycles are complete, I change the date and the card/pin goes into retirement.

Process

1. Click on the card in the list applicable to the time of day – eg Mon am. I start with the one with the most items already completed (the highest number on the front of the card) because there are fewer choices.

2. Click on the URL of the pin which should open in a new window. Pin your image to a board you haven’t already pinned it to.

3. Check the board off the list on the Trello card. If you are pinning to a personal board, overwrite the generic title on lines 2 or 3. Slide the card over to the evening or morning list to indicate it is done and have it ready for the next pinning session.

4. Breathe a sigh of relief because you’ve sorted out Pinterest in a couple of minutes without having to fiddle around with a spreadsheet.

Extras

Trello also has a labelling feature and a reminder feature you can use to help keep you organised. I have a blog checklist on my Trello cards which I complete for every new post.

Your Turn

I have made a public Trello Board called Hello Trello for Pinterest by KatieP. You can see what a board looks like in action, and copy the setup and the template from this page.

The number in brackets after the group boards is the number of followers that board has. You can overwrite this with your own information.

If you decide to join Trello (free) please use this link – Join Trello. I don’t get any money, just upgraded to Pro for a while which is a nice bonus.

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Need help? I provide the following services

• Pinterest Content Creation – Create pinnable images from your existing blog posts – from US$3.10 per image
• Pinterest Set Up – Set up your profile and 20 x boards – from US $45
• Full Pinterest Analysis and Strategy – an overview of your current account and a list of personalised recommendations – from US$79
• Full Pinterest Social Media Management – Pin images daily, find group boards to join, grow follower count, monitor analytics, create new visual content – from US$99 a month

See full list of Pinterest Services here or email me at katiep@head-heart-health.com to chat about your requirements.

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What tools do you use to manage your Pinterest strategy?

→ If you would like to join my group Pinterest board “Blogs with Brains and Heart”, please follow the board and then leave a comment with your Pinterest user name.

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