You’ve probably been using Pinterest to pin things like favorite recipes, inspirational sayings, and hobbies. Did you know that you could also use Pinterest to create event boards and then share those boards with others? Lately, I’ve become an even bigger fan of Pinterest, and have been using it to drive awareness and sign ups for my many events for women in business.
Live and virtual events are key to building a thriving business, building community and keeping your clients coming back. Create event boards to increase awareness, excitement and even attendance for your events. All this is accomplished by creating an event board.
Tips for Creating Great Boards to Promote Your Events
Create a Good Description for Your Event Board
Make sure to include a board description and use your key words in that description so your ideal clients can find it. For instance, if you teach speaking, say so in the board’s description. You might also want to categorize your board with something like “Education,” because sometimes people search for a certain category.
Create Searchable Pins
Describe each pin completely. By that I mean, don’t just say “Event #1” under your pin. Nobody searching for your awesome events is going to search that way. Pinterest has an incredibly powerful search feature, so think about how you would search for an event and how your ideal clients can find yours. For instance, “Business women networking event, October, 2014 in San Francisco, California” is more likely to help people find you. What would you search for? Put yourself in the mindset of the person who is searching for you and use those words.
Be Loud and Proud
Be loud and proud about your events. Want people to find your events? Tell people on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and wherever else you are. Pinterest is public, so anyone can find your boards (unless you make them secret, but that’s not recommended here).
Another important way to be loud and proud is after an event share your board on your other social media platforms even more so that the attendees that were there can share them also, and be loud and proud about the value they received.
Create Shared Boards
A shared board is a board that others can also pin to. This is a little more advanced and can be worth the effort. If you’d like more than one person to be able to pin to your board, you can invite others to do so. You could invite all the attendees at your event to not only share the board but to post to the board. This would gain you more viral value for sure.
Create a Community Board
A community board is a board where everyone can post their events. Wouldn’t that be generous of you? You could tell your people in your Facebook community to give you their email address if you do not already have it, so you can invite them to pin to on your Pinterest community board. Pinterest doesn’t have an easy way messaging system, so sending messages on Facebook would be easier.
Clean Out Your Boards
After an event is past, you might want to either delete it, or change the text under the pin. You could say it was wonderful and share the next event for instance!
Upcoming Event Boards Put Up Top
Put your most important boards up near the top of your Pinterest account. Don’t make visitors scroll down to see them. To move boards, just click on a board and pull it to where you’d like it to be. Know that when you first create a board, that board will automatically live near the bottom of your Pinterest account. You have to remember to move it because you want your next event boards to show at the top.
Add a Location
You can use a map board and show people the exact location of your event if you like. However, a regular board without the location is easier to create and maintain.
Get Started!
Remember that you can go back and change the description for your board later. Pinterest, like your other social media platforms, is a living entity that is constantly changing and never stagnant. Don’t feel pressured to make it perfect. The most important thing is to get started pinning.
Get busy creating an event board on Pinterest and posting your upcoming events. You will have fun, have more awareness for the value you bring and best of all it may bring some new clients to you that would have never found you otherwise. Let me know how that works for you!
Caterina Rando is a master business coach and strategist for women entrepreneurs. She hosts over 95 days of her own events a year to support women in building thriving businesses. See her event and other Pinterest boards at http://www.pinterest.com/caterinarando Caterina’s main events to support you in growing your business are The Sought After Speaker Summit http://soughtafterspeaker.com The Business Breakthrough Summit http://www.bizbreakthrough.com and The Enliven Summit that shows you how to plan, produce and profit with your own women’s events and retreats. Use discount code TIWMAG for a 75% discount on all of Caterina’s summits. She would also love to hear from you. Email her at cat@caterinarando.com or ring her at 415 668-4535.