A few months ago, I was checking my reviews to make some more social media posts, and I stumbled across a 4 star review written in Danish. My curiosity got the better of me and I chucked it into Google translate. In essence, a Danish book club found my book on Pinterest and read it. They all bought a copy of my book.

I did that with nothing but my own marketing. The review tickled me. It really did. Here’s the most significant part of it:

You might be wondering how we stumbled upon this book? Well, a Pinterest post recommended it alongside masterpieces like *The Haunting of Hill House* and *The Yellow Wallpaper*. We really need to work on our source evaluation, though, because it turned out the post was created by the author herself. Oh well, we wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on it. And honestly—brilliant marketing.

The review overall really spent some time focusing on how it was a self-published, print on demand book, and then of course, they mentioned how they came across it. I—me, little author from nobodyland—had the audacity to market my own book and encourage strangers on the internet to buy it, read it and (I think?) enjoy it.

But did you hear that? ‘Brilliant marketing.’ Compliment of the year.

Some authors do their own marketing. Others would rather not.

This book is my own work, and nobody cares about it as much as I do. That’s why I’m good at marketing it. But could I do the same for your book? Absolutely.

I’ve been writing SEO copy, blog posts, creating graphics and social posts for years. Before I was selling books, I was selling craft supplies. Before that, I was an English teacher. If you don’t know what the relevance is there, every September I had to sit a class of 30 disillusioned, angst-ridden resit students down and convince them that it was worth trying for the English GCSE a second time. Teenagers. Their initial failure was the end of the world, but I got them to try again. I was good at that.

If I can convince a disgruntled seventeen-year-old to sit an exam, I can convince strangers (who actually like books) on the internet to consider buying your book.

Marketing is marketing.

Passion is one thing, but I know the fundamentals of what gets readers to stop the scroll, read, and investigate further.

Is it really like The Haunting Of Hill House and The Yellow Wallpaper though Hanna? Is it?

It was certainly inspired by those works, and if you looked at other reader reviews (from other people who bought the book) you would see that other reviewers do in fact compare it with The Haunting Of Hill House and The Yellow Wallpaper. It was those readers who mentioned it before I did!

All I did was pitch my book in with comparative titles. This is not a crime. It’s good marketing. The comparative title doesn’t have to be an exact match (why would we want that anyway?) but it definitely helps to show the reader if you enjoyed these, you might also like this. I presented an eye-catching, well-crafted carousel of book covers to browse through. Here’s the original Pin:

The thing about marketing and reviews is this: it is all subjective.

Whether readers agree with each other that my book is like any of these other books is out of my hands. These are just books that are themed similarly. They contain similar elements, belong in the same subgenre, or have similar character arcs. This is all open to interpretation. You know what else? Big name publishers do this all the time.

Dress for the job you want.

So where am I going with this? What can I do for you?

I know social media marketing. It’s fun for me. It has its ups and downs, but it’s good work. Playing around on Canva for hours is what I do to wind down. Let me help you with the side of the business that is far less fun than writing the book: the marketing.

Below are my social media packages and prices.

This isn’t just a ‘once and done’ package.

That would be unsustainable, and quite expensive, don’t you think?

As well as custom-made material for you to post on your channels, I also show you the ropes. Every package comes with my guide to using social media as an author. Inside, you’ll find some simple marketing reminders as well as tips and examples of how to foster community, find readers and most of all, promote your work! Think of this social media package as me helping you get started. Once you get a feel for what works, you’re riding without stabilisers, and maybe I’ll be shedding a tear as I watch you ride off into the sunset.

I don’t want you to depend on me for the rest of your career. If you want to work with me on your subsequent books, great! But I am more than happy to get you started and push you in the right direction. I’m a teach a man to fish kind of teacher, not a give a man a fish teacher.

I look forward to working with you!

FAQs

Do you use AI?

No. I do not use generative AI. I use licensed photos, videos and graphics through Canva Pro software and Unsplash. I do not use LLMs in any part of my process. Your captions and graphics will be human-written based on my expertise and keyword research that I have used for my own work.

Are the Instagram posts just for Instagram?

No. All of these posts can also be used on Facebook and Tiktok, as can the reels. You can also cross-post them to Pinterest if you have it linked up with your Instagram.

I don’t know how to use Pinterest. Do you cover this in your services?

I can run you through the basics of using Pinterest to market your work as part of the package, yes. My tips for social media marketing include all of the social media sites.

Will I go viral?

Truthfully, no matter what anyone says, there is no guaranteed way to go viral. Going viral can actually hurt your book sales. If you went viral for a throwaway comment you made about your latest diet, would that help you sell your collection of ghost stories? It’s not likely. I don’t believe in virality. Always aiming to ‘go viral’ is a quick way to burn out and find social media more exhausting than you already do. I cannot promise that you will go viral, but I can guarantee that you will have everything you need to get started with promoting your work on social media. An enduring, sustainable marketing strategy that lasts years is far more valuable than a handful of posts that rewarded you with 500k followers who aren’t interested in your work or you.

Will I get more followers?

If you follow the methods we cover in your content package, it will be easier to be discovered by new followers. It’s more important that your posts are seen by interested parties (you don’t need any followers on Pinterest to have a successful pin or account) and that you create an online presence and an author brand than it is to have thousands of followers, but they happen as a side effect of a good strategy.

How do I purchase a package?

Send me a message here telling me which package you would like. I want to work closely with you and address your needs, so I can only take on one client at a time. I will talk through time frames with you. If we agree on a way forward, I will send you a form to fill in and then upon receipt, I will send the invoice for the work. The completion time will depend on the package. The Instagram and Pinterest packages will take 5-10 working days. The complete package could take 10-15. The first day is the date of payment. All payments are invoiced via Stripe or Paypal.

How do I access my social posts and copy?

I can either share them with you on your Google Drive or Drop Box, send you the Canva link for you to download, or email them if they fit (it’s better to have a shared drive I can save them to for space reasons). Your files will be yours to keep in your own folder. You can download them whenever you like.

What do I need to provide?

For each post or set of posts, I need a picture of your book and a detailed synopsis. I will also need some comparative titles (ball park is fine) and some quotes you would like to include. I may also request that you share photos or video clips of your everyday surroundings or photos of you for more community-orientated posts. Note: If you would rather have a faceless approach, we can work with that too.

I don’t see a package that suits me. Can you still help?

Send me a message on Substack and we can discuss custom packages.

What is your refund policy?

Cancellations are accepted within 48 hours of commissioning the work. I cannot accept cancellations once the graphics have been made, but I can edit or change anything you’re not happy with during the processing time. Talk to me if you have strong ideas on how you want it to look.

This headline is from this BBC article written about a year ago. You can find it here. This is a little bit about author Vicky Ball who posted a throwaway tweet and it gained millions of views.

Vicky Ball, a former Suffolk school teacher who lives in Colchester, Essex, proudly posted on X, external after selling two of her books at an event in Chelmsford.

Since then the post has garnered more than 24 million views, been shared 31,000 times and received over 740,000 likes from people across the globe.

As a result of the extra attention, one of the 48-year-old’s books, Powerless, shot up Amazon’s teen and young adult fiction chart – much to her surprise.

Vicky became an Amazon bestseller overnight. This was fantastic and she was thrilled to see there were so many readers out there, but as for the day-to-day after the media buzz wore off, things went back to normal.

“Obviously, if you look at the 25 million views on the post, if everyone had bought a book then that would have been amazing.

Vicky sold a ‘few hundred copies’ which is amazing, but it only lasted for that period of virality. I thought this story was a really inspiring story but not just because one viral note or post will boost sales.

It taught me that playing the long game, the slow game, the one where everyone else gives up… that’s the one to work on.

Where does that leave us as authors?

I’ve been doing a lot of research on other social media apps at the moment, looking for:

• What drives engagement.

• What the purpose of the app is.

• What are people looking for on this app?

I was shocked to see that in the three years since I used it for my craft business, Tiktok has changed dramatically. What was once really well known for trends and lifestyle content has now opening up a new avenue: search.

These are the latest search analytics for the last 7 days. I’ve only had my account for about 60 days, give or take. I’ve published 102 posts in that time.

Some other interesting things about Tiktok:

Followers are great and all, but they don’t have to be your main focus. I’m focusing on coming up in search results, and you can see why:

As you can see, the majority of my content is shown to people who don’t follow me. Therefore, most of my posts are made with ‘cold traffic’ in mind. I’m creating videos and images that will hook passers-by and tell them:

• What this post is about

• What genre I read/write in.

This is all they care about. They’re looking for new thrillers to read, new Gothic mysteries, Anne Rice books, book reviews, book recommendations etc. What they’re doing here is: discovering me in the main feed > heading to my profile > watching more of my videos.

What they’re also doing is searching for my stuff in the first place. I am coming up in search more than in my followers’ feed.

This is the area that I need to focus on, and because I know my way around Pinterest, I am applying the same method. There’s no need to go viral, and there is no need to keep up with trends. Your videos will still be searchable in months or years from now.

Tiktok is competing with the likes of Google and Pinterest to make itself where people come to search^.

Another very interesting thing about Tiktok is Booktok.

While I have seen plenty of videos highlighting how rubbish the books recommend to people via booktok were, lets not overlook the fact that people are talking about books. Yes, I am absolutely sick of the same 5 books coming up in my feed, but there are still thousands of Tiktokers talking about other books.

This is a space where people are talking about books. Not just trendy books, or viral books: all books.

This is exciting for the authors among us.

There are five apps I’ve been studying over the last 60 days:

• Pinterest

• Tiktok

• Instagram

• Lemon8

• Bluesky

They all have their uses, but the pain in the proverbial is how they’re all so different. This makes it tricky to simply duplicate your content. Here’s a summary of each one and where I am (or where I am not) finding success:

• Pinterest - Success. SEO-friendly pins are getting a lot of engagement, as are boards. It’s easy to engage with things you like without feeling bogged down. No instant gratification here. Everything is slow and careful. People are actively searching for their next read, their next idea, their next purchase. I like building my TBR or saving book pins and essays to themed boards. I share Instagram posts and some Tiktok videos (only relevant ones with captions) to my Pinterest.

• Tiktok - Success. SEO-friendly videos are getting good engagement. I started my account on 6th October and I have about 95 followers, with videos averaging 250 views. The views and followers are secondary to the engagement, which is quite high. Videos and photo galleries are bringing in about 10% engagement. I post a lot about being a reader rather than ‘buy my book’ which is exhausting and a quick way to burn out. There are a lot of readers who, when they discover they like the same genres as you, will engage and have a chat about books! Very promising. They also comment to say they like the sound of your book when you do post about your book (note, there are interesting ways to do this without being salesy).

• Instagram - Success. This is offering a mix of post options: you can post reels, single images, carousels and longer ‘series’ videos. The hashtags are just for search really, but there is good engagement if you’re focusing on your followers. You can also search-optimise your posts as Instagram are also looking to compete with the likes of Tiktok and Pinterest. I personally enjoy being able to go behind-the-scenes with my lifestyle in stories, or being able to joke around with fellow writers. It’s less veneered and more real, and if you keep your content real, you will do quite well on there. I am focusing on what I am delivering to my audience. What am I giving them? It’s not about the algorithm. It’s about giving my audience something interesting or entertaining to look at and letting them get to know me.

I’m not setting any traps here for engagement on Instagram. I’m just sharing things I’m interested in, engaging with content I’m interested in and having conversations. All worthwhile stuff.

• Lemon8 - Moderately successful. One troll. A bit like what Threads is to Instagram, Lemon8 sets up an account for you if you have a Tiktok. This is the lovechild of Pinterest and classic Instagram, focusing more on saves and high quality content. I have had success so far by sharing reader-related content, and I’ve been about to carry my carousels over from Instagram and Pinterest to Lemon8. It also lets you arrange your post as a slide video for Tiktok, but I’m not too bothered about that. Nothing is happening at the moment, but I am enjoying that I’ve started building it. Nothing may happen for 6 months or so, but with this kind of app it’s good to at least start posting consistently. I post about 1-2 times a week.

• Bluesky - terrible for engagement. I have two bluesky accounts: a craft one and an author one. The craft one has really high engagement because I’m mostly posting about free patterns and other hobby-related information. There seems to be a thriving craft community on there. I schedule most of my posts and bring traffic to my blog.

  As for the writer account: awful. It is 99% other writers who would rather squeeze a pineapple out of their anus than like your post. Sorry for the graphic, but it is. There is a lot about ‘if you engage with others, you get engagement too’ but this just doesn’t happen. If you know me, you know I’m a team player. I’ve handed re-posts out like confetti, but it’s like there’s no one out there. Perhaps the most damning reveal was during one of the dedicated horror writers chat hours when most admitted they don’t read any indie books. Says enough. Unlike Twitter back-in-the-day, getting any traction on there is hard. Harder than it needs to be, tbh. There are a lot of people sharing their photos of books they’re reading, but they’re not actually engaging in any discussions. It’s a dump-and-run platform at best. You can share funny memes until the cows come home, but you won’t get any comments. You also find that the minute you follow an author back, they are in your DMs pressure selling their books. It’s so bad.

What does this mean for Pinterest?

If all of these other apps (apart from Bluesky which is disappointing and lost) are scrambling to compete with search engines, they’re competing with Pinterest.

Pinterest has something special that these apps want a slice of. This is such a fun, interesting time to be a creative on Pinterest. When businesses are competing for your custom, there are only benefits awaiting you. You don’t have to sign up to all of these if you don’t want to. I picked out the top 5 to help you see how you could transfer some of your Pinterest content to other apps.

If I’ve made an interesting bookish video on Tiktok, I’ll share it to Pinterest. If I’ve made an interesting Instagram post, I’ll share it to Pinterest. If I’ve made an interesting carousel on Instagram, I’ll share it to Pinterest and Lemon8. It’s only duplication with the odd tweak, but it’s doable.

Chopping up your essays and blog posts into videos or carousels is a time suck, but it is worth doing.

I hope that this has been of some use to you. Thanks for sticking with me while I’ve been beavering away behind the scenes.

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I have been using Pinterest as a small business owner for 5 years, and I am still seeing growth and new referrals through pins I made a long time ago.

I use Pinterest to market my fiction substack and my novels, too. As I write this, I have over 100k monthly views on my author account. This will only grow over time.

What Pinterested is all about:

Pinterested is about me helping authors and bloggers to grow their audience. I am a small business owner and a novelist. I am also a qualified teacher. I am not trying to sell you a course, nor am I trying to sell you a ‘one size fits all’ Pinterest master plan.

Here’s what I am here to do:

• Demiystify Pinterest, helping you to understand why it is a great marketing tool.

• Show you simple ways to build your audience outside of your peer support group.

• Help you create engaging pins that will get clicks and saves for months, and even years.

• Help you make the most of the pins you already have, and help you to design new ones.

• Help you organise your Pinterest account and optimise it for more clicks, more visits and ultimately, more sales.

What free subscribers get from Pinterested:

• A free bi-weekly newsletter on Substack with general tips and advice on how to maximise results on Pinterest.

• An invitation to network with other Pinterest authors and bloggers, helping you to grow organically.

• A weekly pin thread where you can share one of your latest pins, and have others save it.

• An invitation to join my free collaborative Pinterest boards to aid your growth.

What paid subscribers get from Pinterested:

Monthly paid subscriptions:

• A free, full Pinterest MOT worth £30. This is an in depth analysis of your Pinterest account and a development plan highlighting what’s not working and what you could do more of to optimise your boards and profile.

• Email/DM Pinterest support for as long as you have a subscription.

• 20 Pinterest templates made for you with your brand in mind. I’ll take a look at what you write, who your main audience is and design the pins to maximise your reach and engagement.

Yearly paid subscriptions:

• The same as above, with me checking in every month to review your analytics with you. This is via email or DM to accommodate the time differences (I am in GMT) but if you want to, we can meet via video call when and if it is achievable.

Founding member subscriptions:

• All of the above plus 20 freshly made pins sent to you every month (240 over the year). A free copy of The Pinterest Handbook is also included.

Other services

If you would like me to consult with your business on how Pinterest can work for you, my hourly rate is £50 per hour and it will include a full Q&A plus development notes. Please DM for further information.

If you’d like to hire me as your Pinterest manager, we can discuss details further via DM or you can email info@hannadelaneyauthor.com

I also have a ko-fi shop where you can download the ready made Pinterest pins and other social media templates.

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Have you ever heard that Rule Of Seven theory?

The Rule of 7 asserts that a potential customer should encounter a brand’s marketing messages at least seven times before making a purchase decision. When it comes to engagement for your marketing campaign, this principle emphasizes the importance of repeated exposure for enhancing recognition and improving retention. Repeated exposure is vital because it builds familiarity and credibility, fostering trust and influencing your audience’s behavior.

This works beautifully for Pinterest. No, you don’t want to end up like a broken record showing the exact same pinterest pin over and over again—that would bore everyone, including you. What you do need to think about though is how you can make several pins about the same one blog post, book review or book. Not everyone is seeing the same pins at the same time, but with these tweaks, you can keep even the oldest stuff current.

Pinterest looks like a lot, but it’s not.

A couple of weeks ago, I tried to recommend Pinterest to other authors on social media. They find themselves fishing in a small pool, and engagement is generally quite low when you’re trying to sell a book on social media. I thought I’d try and help by mentioning Pinterest. One observer had a look at my profile and made this interesting point.

Yes, I am active (in that I do check my Pinterest boards at least 3 times a week. I might be on there to shuffle things around, save an older pin to another board, or to add a new pin from goodreads or something. Active on Pinterest does not mean what it does on Instagram. I don’t have to spend hours on Pinterest to see any results.

I repeat pins. Why do I do this? I actually think repeating your content/posts on social media is really important. Instagram, for example, is quite linear. The freshest posts are at the top for a few seconds, and then they’re replaced by something else. Other feeds prioritise only the posts with the highest views/comments/shares, so if your post didn’t strike lucky in that 10 seconds it was on the feed, you’ve sunk down to the bottom. Have you ever used a hashtag on Bluesky or X? Seconds pass by and what you just posted about a book has gone, drowned out by the thousands of others using the same hashtag.

I am only having results on Bluesky with my other business now because I’m scheduling 10 posts a day on there to drive traffic to my blog.

There has to be another way.

Repeat yourself. They didn’t hear you the first time.

Repeating posts is useful. Only 1% of your followers might have seen the Bluesky post, Facebook post or Instagram post that you posted two weeks ago. You may have gained new followers since, and they haven’t seen anything, so why would they know about that fun article you shared 6 months ago?

Stop assuming everyone has push notifications set up for your every move.

The reality is this: You posted it, and now it’s gone. It’s forgotten (Ok, maybe it stays on your grid on Instagram but still, it only has 3 likes). The social media overlords demand that you keep posting new things to stay relevant, and be in with a shot at finding an audience.

This is exhausting.

Marketing books on Instagram and why it’s so hard.

What I find particularly difficult about marketing books on Instagram for example, is trying to market an older book when there’s a newer one that’s coming out, or one that has just been released. How do I encourage people to buy the new book but also make sure that the other books I’ve written don’t fall by the wayside? How do I post about a short story I wrote in the middle of a marketing campaign for my latest book?

The way Instagram grids are set up can make it look messy and out of any order if you come off that IKEA path with the arrows and start talking about something else. You have to stay linear with whatever book it is you’re marketing at the moment.

Some publishing house marketing teams want authors to keep promoting their book launch for a year. A year of talking about the same book? Spare me. I’ve written 3 in that time.

The worst thing that can happen on Instagram (and it does happen) is that you go viral for something that is nothing to do with what you’re on there for! 120k people liked your reel about your cat? Are they going to buy your book now? Is your book about cats doing funny things? Absolutely not. What does Instagram say you should do? They say you need to create more content like this to grow your audience. Fuck.

Don’t do it. Stay true to what you’re doing on there. Sure, post about stuff you’re reading, or things you’re watching, but do not jump on a trend to find yourself with thousands of followers who don’t give a toss about your fiction. They’re just here for the cats. By all means, use it, schedule it, recycle your older stuff, but you don’t have to dedicate that much time. You need to give some time to Pinterest.

Pinterest is different.

What I posted 18 months ago on Pinterest might randomly go viral today. People often think they need to keep things new and constant and while that’s useful, not every pin has to be completely new. The best thing about Pinterest is that older pins are just as important. They all turn up on the feed, no matter how old they are. Your ‘new’ pins might not get any eyes on them until 6 months later. It really takes the stress out of it for me and I don’t feel I’m juggling.

I can post about all my books and short stories at the same time, and they all get an equal shot at views and engagement. My boards help me to organise different pins in different places. For example, I’ll have Oceanus—my sci fi novel—on boards that are completely relevant to that. It doesn’t have to try and find space on my Instagram grid sandwiched in between Gothic Horror and Fairy Tales.

Older pins are fine

For Pinterest, I swear by bringing up older pins and saving them to new boards. That way, I’m not just repeating the content over and over. I’m actually bringing it to a fresh audience, and that could be for one of these reasons:

• I saved an old pin to a new board.

• I changed the URL of the pin or copied it and re-pinned with a new URL.

• I changed the title and description with new, relevant key words.

This is why you need to check your boards and make sure your pins go where you want them to.

• Paywalled a short story recently? Edit the caption or description if you’ve been saying it’s free to read.

• No longer using that website/platform? Change the URL.

• Is that not what the book’s cover looks like any more? Might be time to delete.

• Posted a pin ages ago but didn’t have time to add a title or description? Add it now. It’s never too late to edit.

These are just little tweaks you could make once a month, to make sure your pins stay relevant and link where you want them to. Generally speaking, you do not need to delete pins if they’re older. Just freshen them up if necessary.

Ideas to get more pins out of one post:

• Chop the review up. Blow up one sentence, or part of a paragraph. Rather than share a wall-to-wall review in a single pin, chop it up and spread it out.

• Create 5 different hooks, or areas to focus on when it comes to what your book is about.

• Chop up the extract you want to share from the book or blog post. Try and choose something that looks good by itself ie not something that heavily relies on the text that comes before it to be able to make sense.

• Vary your pin links. The image might be the same, but Pinterest will recognise the fresh links.

• Make up to 10 images from the one short story, blog post or book you’re promoting. If you need help with this, I have a Pinterest template pack for authors that you can buy to take the pain out of it.

What is marketing?

The most basic definition is that marketing is the practice of promoting and selling products or services. Marketing involves advertising and market research.

What does this mean for an author? How does an author market their work?

It means that you are the brand. The products you promote belong to the brand (you) and there will be a certain standard expected as your brand grows.

Your marketing ultimately is about your brand and the books you’re hoping to sell.

How to kill your brand in 3 easy steps:

• Share political posts all over your socials. Although people who agree with your viewpoint will be positively disposed to you, it won’t necessarily make them customers. What you will also do is set yourself up for hours of arguing with people on the internet. It’s a waste of time and you could be writing books instead.

• Badmouth other authors and/or artists. Taking someone else down e.g. ‘Stop reading that trope-filled trash by _____ and read my books instead,’ is not only divisive but you’ll end up with a rabid gaggle of superfans who scare away any potential readers. They’ll gang up on reviewers who didn’t quite feel the book they enjoyed was a 5 star read, and you’ll be the figurehead of this toxic tribe. Punk is great and all, but it doesn’t make you a six-figure self-published author, or not that I’ve seen anyway.

• Declare on your socials and in your newsletters that you’re better than everyone else.

  I see this often, either directly (they just come out and exert their perceived superiority) or insidiously (through their tone, their engagement or the stuff they write) and you know what? People aren’t stupid. They will sense that something is off, and they can’t bond with that. I don’t care if you read Proust or the Russian classics. I care about whether you’re a good person or not. I care about whether you’re writing a good story. I can’t be the only one who thinks like this. If your mission is to exert your intellectual superiority over others at all costs, you don’t want to be an author, you just want to be worshipped.

Social media for authors in the 21st century

I hate the fact that authors ‘back in the day’ didn’t have to worry about being cancelled on Threads for getting their puppy from a breeder rather than a rescue centre (you know, things that have nothing to do with their books, but end their career anyway). No drugs, no rock and roll, no infidelity—just the choices they made when getting a pet. Social media can be toxic, it can be scary and it can seem like a pointless endeavor.

When everything seems to be agenda-driven or whipped up by activists (who are paid to be activists, just so you know) it’s hard to know where you fit in.

As some people will rightly point out, social media isn’t really for you. It’s for the massive corporations who own it. They make their money from advertising. It’s like a little human farm where you’re advertised to all day, or told to get angry about things, or offended.

Saying this, social media is a great way to introduce readers to who you are. No, you don’t have to go full ‘Tiktok family’ and share every aspect of your life, but you should have some sort of personality and you should want to share it with strangers to some extent.

Hiding away and being a superstar thanks to your words alone is a pipedream. Let it go.

What to use social media for:

• Building your email list. That’s a tangible, solid thing that social media companies can’t take away from you.

• Finding likeminded individuals who are interested in what you do.

• Moral support from those who are also in the trenches.

• Keeping up to date with the latest whatever, if you want to.

• Making friends. It’s possible.

• Attracting potential customers to your brand.

Using social media as a way of attacking potential readers is a no-no. “Oh, I don’t write about fairy-fucking do I? None of you will read my books because you’re all troglodytes anyway,” is just your insecurity talking. No one was ever attracted to a Costco sample table because the lady behind the counter was spitting on all the cups.

My tips for thriving on social media as an author:

• Relax. When you put pressure on yourself to sell a certain number of books or get a certain amount of likes on your post, you’re setting yourself an impossible task, and you will feel the failure. Relax. Expect nothing.

  Study your posts and engage with comments by all means, but don’t demand. Your stuff is interesting or it’s not.

  I had 10,000 followers on X with my craft business. I remember cringing every time I saw someone’s ‘My shop is at risk of closing down if no one buys from me!’ or ‘I’m so far away from my goal of 10 orders this month 😢’ Guilt tripping isn’t a good sales tactic.

  This is not the customer’s fault. If you have no customers, that’s on you to do some market research and make whatever you’re offering worth having.

  Also, stressed people are no fun to be around.

• Show something from behind the scenes. I do not have an insta-perfect writing space. My desk is a mess and half of the stuff on it isn’t even mine. I don’t hide away from the mess though. I show it on Instagram because I’m like ‘yes, this is real life. This is my reality.’ and you know what? People love that. You don’t need to have a mid-century writing set or a massive Dormer window overlooking a lake to be thought of as a proper writer. You are a proper writer because you write stuff and hope to earn a living from it. You don’t even have to have a cat. Just be real. Be you. Show your reality. Instagram is full of veneer—fight back with some gritty realism!

• Engage with others. This can feel like the weirdest, most awkward thing in the world if your inside voices are screaming buy my thing buy my thing buy my thing but honestly, you just need to relax and engage with others. Find conversations you want to be part of, or pictures you want to comment on, or articles that interest you (but remember what I said about politics) and engage with them. If you want to, you can read the work of other authors in a genre you like and recommend their work. Just make sure it’s stuff you’re actually interested in, and it will come naturally.

• Be a nerd. We all have something we’re really, really interested in. Sharing a little bit about it will actually attract people to you. Is it your warhammer collection? Birdwatching? Your latest spiritual retreat? What you collect, do and are interested in will be of interest to others, but you won’t know that unless you show them.

• Focus on organic outcomes. You won’t be an overnight success. I believe that kind of activity could actually ruin you or your love of writing. Imagine if you couldn’t post or publish anything without thousands of people having an opinion on it. It’s a double-edged sword. Focus on the growth that comes without you feeling burned out. That’s the good stuff. We live in an age now where people have a direct communication link to you. Think about how easily that could become overwhelming.

• Remember that people buy from people. The more human you are, the more humans will engage with you. Using Chat GPT to write all your social posts might be tempting, but people aren’t stupid.

• Put a human to the name. You don’t have to use a selfie or your real name, but for me as a person, it’s really hard to engage in a conversation with an anonymous person using a logo. I don’t know if it’s my brain or what but if someone’s just using a logo but they’re a one-person brand, I can’t remember them. It’s so hard for me to remember their name if they don’t have a face… or a name. I know some of us have to be anonymous for personal or work reasons, but there are ways to be more human. You could share photos of your world without your face in it. Remember back to what I said about being a nerd. You could also write something more personal in your newsletter (as in, not fiction) to connect with people. Your personality is what people bond with.

  Some people write with initials and logos and I’m like… I don’t know the person behind the logo. Are you an author or a global corporation? Make your mind up. You can’t complain about AI and bots all the time but at the same time, be completely unapproachable because people don’t know who or what they’re talking to when they engage with you. Just imagine 50 years from now a class of English students looking at a textbook. Oh look, it’s a logo and the initials you used to write your books right next to a photograph of Virginia Woolf and Sally Rooney… not. In a world where every online interaction seems to involve an automated chatbot, be human.

  Pinterested is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Author marketing made easy:

1. If you died tomorrow, what would you like to have achieved?

I think of this every time a great actor dies. What are they remembered for? What do I want to be remembered for? What would I have wanted to achieve by the time I’d spent my last day on Earth?

What you find after asking yourself this question will drive you.

2. Who is your target audience?

What do they read? How old are they? What do they like to watch? Knowing these things will help you think about who your target audience is and where you might find them. If you’re your target audience, think about all the things that influenced your work. Share that with people.

3. What do you want them to do?

Do you want them to sign up to your newsletter? Why? What’s in it for them? Do you want them to buy your book? Why? What’s in it for them? You don’t have to make outlandish health claims or promise your book will change their life, but you do have to consider showing them what they’ll get out of it.

Marketing is customer-led.

It’s not about you, even though you’re the brand.

I’m not saying ‘write to market’ at all here. I’m saying that you should think about who your ideal readers are. Don’t be scared to do market research e.g. google forms and throw them out into the social media feed. Find out what’s going on out there. Stalk reddit. Read book blogs. There are readers out there for everyone.

This is the hardest part and it won’t come to you overnight. When Nosferatu came out, I thought ‘yesss, people who love this will like my book,’ because there were a lot of similarities with genre and themes (Horror/Mystery). Seeing it do well in the box office was a little boost for me and my marketing goals. Look out for things like that.

Remember these key things about marketing:

You are the brand.

Social media is not for sales.

People buy from people.

Be human.

Leave a comment

1. Necromancy

2. Invisible

3. White noise

4. Spectre

5. Grave

6. Ghoul

7. Asylum

8. Corpse

9. Apparition

10. Nightmare

11. Witching Hour

12. Grimoire

13. Casket

14. Harvest

15. Mirror

16. Revenant

17. Garden

18. Gallows

19. Trail

20. Wild

21. Insomnia

22. Beast

23. Sleep

24. Howl

25. Hollow

26. Funeral Home

27. Remnant

28. Shadow

29. Voyeur

30. Water

31. Window

These are 31 prompts provided by myself and to help you come up with 31 pieces of microfiction for October.

How many words does each piece have to be?

Try and keep it under 100 words. There’s no minimum.

How do I share them on Instagram?

Just upload the post or schedule it with a tool like canva. Simply tag myself and Miguel and we can see them and share them.

Find me here and Miguel here.

Can I share the stories as a reel instead?

Of course you can. Do what works best for you and your account.

Which hashtags should I use?

#Spooktober is the most important one, but you can use any other horror themed hashtags you like.

I don’t have time to make these posts all from scratch.

It’s a good job I made some templates that you can easily customise. Some of them only require a cut and paste of your title and story. Others, you may like to play around with to suit. They’re all ready to go and you can edit them and download them via the link in the PDF.

You can download the entire pack of templates done for you. There are also templates in this pack for ‘about the author’ and where people can find more of your work:

Get Templates

FAQs

I don’t write microfiction, but I’d like to take part. What else can I do?

What about a horror story summary/blurb for one of your short stories every day, or a poem? You could also mix it up and include posts about your horror film reviews and horror essays.

Do I have to use the templates you’ve provided?

No, you can make your own graphics for your Instagram posts. I’ve just made templates to save you time. They’re fully customizable so you can edit them to suit your branding, or the theme of your story.

Do I just post a microfiction every day? What time is best?

Whatever time is best for you. Generally, posts published early in the morning get good engagement throughout the day, and weekends prove more popular than midweek, but it really doesn’t matter. You’ll be posting a new story every single day.

Do I have to write a new microfiction every day?

No, not at all. If you have a lot of micro stories already published on your substack newsletter or on your blog, share those!

Do I have to stick to the prompts?

No. These prompts are just for when you’re stuck for ideas. You don’t have to use them. Some people will be creating new microfiction for each day of the month, so the prompts will be useful for them. You don’t have to share something that matches any of the prompts—the only requirement is that it’s horror-related.

How does this challenge benefit me?

Firstly, the challenge encourages you to post more frequently on Instagram, and also Pinterest. This is great for your growth as an author, as you’ll want to build your following and point more readers towards your newsletter, blog or books! This is supposed to be an enjoyable, horror-themed activity that helps you showcase your work with audiences outside of substack.

What hashtags should I use for my Instagram posts?

Obviously, #spooktober is the most important one, but you are welcome to use as many hashtags as you like on Instagram. Authors also like to use hashtags relevant to the horror genre.

Other useful articles:

3 Great Reasons To Claim Your Instagram Account On Pinterest

For the Pinterest sceptics: Why you should claim your Instagram account on Pinterest.

Instagram for writers and authors.

How to schedule posts directly on Instagram.

How to schedule Instagram posts on Canva.

In case you didn’t know, you can now claim your Instagram profile on Pinterest.

In this article, I’ll cover:

• How the Spooktober Instagram challenge works.

• What it has to do with growing your Pinterest presence.

• How to claim your Instagram account on Pinterest.

• Best practices for pulling Instagram posts through to Pinterest automatically.

• How to take part in Spooktober.

How does it work?

Schedule or live-post 31 pieces of micro fiction to your Instagram for the entirety of October.

What does this have to do with Pinterest?

If you’ve claimed your Instagram account on Pinterest, the posts you shared on Instagram will pull through to your chosen Pinterest board. Here’s how to claim your Instagram account.

Quick tutorial for setting up your claimed account:

1. Go to your profile icon in the top right corner of Pinterest on your desktop, and click on it. Scroll down the menu on the right and find ‘settings’.

   

   

2. Click ‘settings’ and you’ll see a menu on the right of the page. Click ‘claimed external accounts’. It is highlighted in grey in the image below.

   

   3. Click on ‘Claimed external accounts’ and check your Instagram details. You can then choose what board your pins are going to auto post to. If you don’t want to auto post, you can move the toggle and switch it off. You can save to a topical board if you want but given what I’ve said in this article about changing keywords, links and descriptions, you might want to auto post to a private board and fish them out when they’ve been edited.

   

About my auto post method

My chosen board is called ‘social’. Notice how I haven’t used any key words for this one? It’s almost like a private board, and I’ve done this because Pinterest breaks up carousel posts and then they just look messy on your Pinterest profile. You may also want to change your pin descriptions and links to change from Instagram to somewhere else ie your substack newsletter, or your book landing page, or blog. You need this little buffer to be able to get to the posts before the world sees them.

It’s good to have your Instagram posts pulled through to a private Pinterest board because:

1. You might post some more personal-life content on your Instagram feed that wouldn’t really work on Pinterest. I don’t want people saving pins of me and my kids on a family day out, for example. It’s amazing what some people post on their feed, and I can understand why they do. I’ve also seen some small business owners randomly post photos of their broken foot, as they’re explaining why orders will be delayed. Again, this is current and relevant to their following or customer base but if it’s going to become a Pinterest pin, do people need to know about your broken foot 4 months from now? Pinterest content is evergreen!

   I mostly share personal things to my Instagram stories (which do not become pins) for this reason. Some artists are a lot more ‘behind the scenes’ and personal on Instagram, and that is absolutely fine but you might want to filter that out before they hit your Pinterest boards. Those kinds of posts will be safe on a private board. You can either keep them there or delete them. You do not have to change what you do on Instagram, just make sure you’ve got that safety net of a private board.

2. You might want to change the title and description to match keywords in your niche. Pinterest is a search engine and the keywords you use on Instagram may not be relevant.

3. You might want to edit the link, changing it from the default Instagram link to a website link, a shop link or your newsletter.

4. You might want to change or add hashtags. If you’ve used a lot of hashtags on Instagram, I recommend trimming them down for your pinterest posts. Tailwind advises that Pinterest pins with 3-6 hashtags do OK compared to pins that use fewer or more than that.

5. You can save your private pins to a public board whenever you want. You can save the pins as many times as you want, too.

Now… back to the challenge.

Do you have a back catalogue of horror-themed microfiction? If you’ve had anything to do with you may well do. I certainly have.

Every single day in October, you’re going to share a piece of microfiction. Keep it under 100 words so that it will fit in a single Instagram post.

Here’s the image you can share to tell your followers that you’ll be doing #Spooktober. It’s a canva link, so you can download it to your device.

Best practice: Use the 4:5 size for Instagram posts. Instagram has a rectangular option now, and this one works best for posts that will become pins. I have some templates you can use to make life easier.

Do you need prompts? Stay tuned for the list of prompts coming in the next newsletter!

You can download the entire pack of templates done for you. There are also templates in this pack for ‘about the author’ and where people can find more of your work:

Get Templates

FAQs

I don’t write microfiction, but I’d like to take part. What else can I do?

What about a horror story summary/blurb for one of your short stories every day, or a poem? You could also mix it up and include posts about your horror film reviews and horror essays.

Do I have to use the templates you’ve provided?

No, you can make your own graphics for your Instagram posts. I’ve just made templates to save you time. They’re fully customizable so you can edit them to suit your branding, or the theme of your story.

Do I just post a microfiction every day? What time is best?

Whatever time is best for you. Generally, posts published early in the morning get good engagement throughout the day, and weekends prove more popular than midweek, but it really doesn’t matter. You’ll be posting a new story every single day.

Do I have to write a new microfiction every day?

No, not at all. If you have a lot of micro stories already published on your substack newsletter or on your blog, share those!

Do I have to stick to the prompts?

No. These prompts are just for when you’re stuck for ideas. You don’t have to use them. Some people will be creating new microfiction for each day of the month, so the prompts will be useful for them. You don’t have to share something that matches any of the prompts—the only requirement is that it’s horror-related.

How does this challenge benefit me?

Firstly, the challenge encourages you to post more frequently on Instagram, and also Pinterest. This is great for your growth as an author, as you’ll want to build your following and point more readers towards your newsletter, blog or books! This is supposed to be an enjoyable, horror-themed activity that helps you showcase your work with audiences outside of substack.

What hashtags should I use for my Instagram posts?

Obviously, #spooktober is the most important one, but you are welcome to use as many hashtags as you like on Instagram. Authors also like to use hashtags relevant to the horror genre.

Other useful articles:

3 Great Reasons To Claim Your Instagram Account On Pinterest

For the Pinterest sceptics: Why you should claim your Instagram account on Pinterest.

Instagram for writers and authors.

How to schedule posts directly on Instagram.

How to schedule Instagram posts on Canva.

Prompts and further information about Spooktober:

An Instagram challenge just for authors | part 2

Getting to grips with Tailwind

It’s a scheduling app for Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook. I have used Tailwind before for my craft business, and once you get into the hang of scheduling pins and social posts, it makes life easier. I was passively earning money for my knitting and crochet patterns thanks to Pinterest pins. I wasn’t earning enough to make a living, but it proved to me that Pinterest was a platform worth using.

Now, I mostly pin my free patterns on Pinterest, because I realised the model just doesn’t work with paid patterns. People will pay for knitting and crochet patterns, but more people will happily read a free pattern on a website full of ads, so that’s what I do now.

With fiction, it’s different. I’ve serialised 3 novels for free on Substack. I still sold books. If people like your writing, and they like you, they will pay to support you. They might have to wait until your book is on offer, but they will get it if it interests them. As for Pinterest, this is a discovery tool to help you find more readers. These readers probably don’t want to sign up to Substack—they just want to read a book they’re interested in.

When you’re a fiction author, you have to start seeing Substack as a gateway rather than the be all and end all.

Promote your newsletter on Pinterest as well as your books. Some of your short fiction may never become part of a book, but it will serve as a taster for strangers to sample you and decide if they want to engage with more of your work. None of your effort is wasted.

Tailwind can make all of this less overwhelming.

I tried Buffer. It’s too manual. I have to go back to pins to find them and then reschedule them. It’s a lot of work. Tailwind is different. For example:

• I upload a pin. This could be a book cover image, a substack image or a pin I made on canva.

• I then write a title and a description for the pin. They have an AI ghostwriter, but 9 times out of 10 it’s rubbish, and goes too hard with the hyperbole and the emojis. I do not recommend relying on it if you want your pins to stand out. No one will be able to ‘elevate [their] reading game’ by reading your book. Let’s keep it real.

• I then choose which boards I want this pin to be saved to. I can choose several boards at the click of a mouse. Have lots of boards on your account to help you spread your pins out.

• Tailwind then pins that pin to all the boards with a 5-7 day interval, so they count as new pins each time. Saving the same pin to lots of boards in the same day or week can look like spam, so it’s best to give a few days or more between pins.

• It does all of this for me, and depending on the amount of boards I’ve decided to save the pin to, that same pin can keep reappearing for weeks!

• I then do this with lots of different pins, so by the end of my scheduling session, I could have an entire 6 week period taken care of.

Tailwind recommends that you share 5 pins a day. I know this seems like lots, but once you have a backlog of pins, it’s amazing how much you can schedule. This also doesn’t take into account the pins you might be organically saving when you’re using the app e.g. books you want to read yourself, the pins of other authors, and other pins you might be interested in.

Above is an example of my Pin Scheduling page. You can see that I have a few pins ready to schedule. Once I’ve written the descriptions and titles, all I have to do is choose boards and add a link. tip: Vary your links. Use a substack url, or an amazon url, or link to a blog or landing page. Keep them varied so Pinterest doesn’t think it’s the same content each time. They reward fresh content. Slightly changing an image or adding a different link counts as fresh.

Making several images for the same pin:

Here’s an idea: You’ve got your book cover. Now what about the blurb? What about the hooks? What about the reviews? Each one of those things could be its own pin. You’d be amazed at how much you can make out of one review, for example.

Get insights into boards and specific pins.

Tailwind has access to your analytics and audience just like Pinterest does. This is so it can help you tailor your pins to what your audience is engaging with. I had a look at my boards this morning:

If I know those boards have a lot of engagement, or a lot of impressions, it’s worth me spending more time making pins for those boards.

I recently upgraded to the advanced plan

It’s not cheap, but it’s cheap compared to the other scheduling apps out there. I paid £228 (it’s about $299 USD) and for a year, it’s money well spent. There is also a free plan where you can schedule up to 20 pins, which is so handy when you’re just starting out.

They now also have a Canva integration, and with Canva being the better designer (you can make pins on Tailwind but they’re a bit generic for authors IMO) this is a game changer. Look at this:

In that left-hand column, I have to put my pin title, pin description and url, but it takes just minutes to port all this over to Tailwind and schedule all the pins I’ve made. This is with my Canva pro account, so I’m not sure if it is available on the free plan. I have found that this helps me keep my pins unique whilst not taking up too much of my time. You can schedule pins on Canva, but it doesn’t let you duplicate descriptions, and you can’t schedule more than one pin at once. This integration speeds things up, and I’m looking forward to my marketing being much easier now.

So that’s Tailwind for you!

In my next email, I’m going to introduce you to tailwind communities. They’re free to join and they can help you massively.

Pinterest Templates

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I chose a pin that was already doing quite well. By ‘well’ I mean has more than 100 impressions in the last 30 days. This pin was created less than 30 days ago, so it was a safe bet when it came to knowing what to promote.

Let’s do an analysis of the pin:

• It’s clear from the colour scheme and the text what this pin is about. It’s about a Gothic Horror novel. Remember, Pinterest is a visual search engine. Colours and fonts do a lot for you here. Someone needs to know what genre the book is just by looking at the pin. That’s the gateway to getting them to explore further.

• The image clearly shows a book being held up. It is the focal point of the pin. It’s like my hand is saying look at this book!

• The text is simple and straight to the point: Gothic Horror Comes To Liverpool. In the UK (where this pin was heavily promoted) people will be looking at that and observing how Gothic Horror and Liverpool are rarely in the same sentence. British historical horror, murder mysteries and Gothic Horror are always somewhere else so this was a bit of a hook for me to use on my audience. It’s unusual, and it might make them want to explore more. A narrative hook would work in the same way.

• It says Out Now which is something I want people to know, so I chose to feature it in red to stand out.

I believe this is why the pin was doing well to begin with. I’ll show you what happened to it when it was promoted below. Before we get to that though, here is what I basically think of when I’m coming up with pins.

The basic rules for an ad pin are this:

• What?

• Where?

• How?

As long as your pin and the title/description cover this, you should be able to find readers.

• What do you want the pin to do? What are you trying to tell people?

• Where can they find this book, this blog post, or more information?

• How do they obtain this thing?

The information on a pin is going to appear on someone’s feed and you have seconds to grab their attention. It’s a busy airport and you’re waiting to pick someone up. How big is your poster?

The ad campaign results

More KU page reads. All of a sudden, page reads shot up and went into four figure territory. This has never happened before.

As my main audience on there seems to be 24-35 year old females, perhaps they also have a Kindle Unlimited subscription because they’re avid readers. Perhaps they signed up to a special KU offer just to read The Spider and The Ring. I don’t know the full details, because this traffic data is shared with amazon rather than me, but I can do some analysis and come up with theories!

How did I find my audience of readers?

There are two ways to do this:

1. Create engaging pins that will attract readers who are interested in your book.

2. Use advertising to help pinpoint people who will be interested in your pin.

Thankfully, Pinterest has started using its own tech to handle the target audience for you. It doesn’t automatically go wide and leave you to stare at thousands of impressions and no sales. Rather, it looks at the pin details (we’ll get to key words in a moment) and shows your pin to pinners who are already engaging with pins like yours. For example, they could be horror readers, or book bloggers who love horror, or people who have been pinning mystery novels etc. They will find the right people for you based on habits and interests. You don’t have to sit there scratching your head thinking ‘am I down with the kids? Would Gen alpha read this?’ This is a new thing—I used to run pin campaigns and not know who exactly I was trying to promote my pins to. This new automated system saves you from having to run several to see what sticks, I suppose.

The pin description and title were already loaded with key words ie Gothic Horror, Horror books to read, New Gothic Horror Novels, Supernatural Suspense for example. I didn’t list them like that! I blended them in to sentences but making sure you have key words means you’ll appear in the right places. If you want to know what key words might work for you, just use the search bar to see what comes up. You’d be surprised!

Anyway, all that was done and I was good to go.

1. My impressions jumped to 1.1k after 1 day, reaching 31k on day 7.

2. My sales rank went from 114,497 to 85,067 after 2 days.

3. I could see that my pins had been saved on boards. You can’t see all boards as some are private, so don’t panic if you see ‘saves’ showing a few but no boards. I started out with 2 saves. It’s now sitting at 5, but outbound clicks went from 6 on day 2 to 119 (4th August).

4. I could also get a bit of insight into who was engaging with my pins. Mostly 25-34 year old females. That’s great because it helps me know who my main reader base might be on Pinterest.

The Spider has been enrolled on Kindle Unlimited since the end of June, along with my other two novels. The second peak on this chart definitely coincides with my Pinterest campaign.

Could the footer images advertising my books that I send out in my fiction emails every week have helped with this? Absolutely, but Pinterest gave it another boost.

£10 well spent.

But this isn’t a quick fix. There is no silver bullet for success on Pinterest. It involves developing habits. You can’t just rock up and sponsor a pin when you haven’t even made or saved anything yet. I wouldn’t recommend that.

You can see below how many organic pins (ones I made myself and didn’t pay to promote) I’ve had good engagement with. The ones that I’ve promoted were organic pins that were doing well, so I pushed them out further.

I can’t stress this enough, though: if your pins aren’t already performing as they should ie keywords and images being engaging, then you shouldn’t promote them. You have to do the groundwork and lay the foundations for a great pin.

Also , don’t be afraid of the odd typo. They go viral, for some reason.

Try Pinterest instead of scrolling for hours on Substack and Instagram. We’re all running our own race, so invest in yourself and stop comparing yourself to other writers.

Get into the habit. When you’ve just finished a story or an article on Substack, make a pin for it and save it to one of your boards. That’s 4 pins done if you save one a week. If you switch to 4:5 instagram images and post 7 times a week (and then sync it with Pinterest) that’s 7 pins a week! Just think about where you’re spending your time and what you’re getting out of that. Do you really need to make that reel that gets 50 views in a month, or could that video have been posted on Pinterest and seen by 1000 people instead? Pinterest is a long term investment where bloggers, authors, business owners and even big companies play the long game to build brand awareness. It’s never too late to start, because there’s no 7 day trend bandwagon to jump on.

Food for thought.

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How to get started on Pinterest:

How to make a pin from an image or video.

Guide to creating pins.

Edit or delete a pin

Do you need 1:1 help setting up your Pinterest account? This is something I offer to all paid subscribers. Whether you just need a diagnostic and some pointers of where you’re going wrong, or you need a handy list of key words and descriptions to help sell your books, that’s what I can help with.

So, I’m introducing…

Pin templates.

What are Pin templates?

Canva already has a library of Pinterest templates that you can use, but everybody’s using them. You can just grab them and go, and with so many of them being free to use, you’ll start seeing the same pins popping up on your Pinterest feed. Wow, all they’ve changed is the title or website link.

Your pins aren’t going to stand out if you keep relying on the same templates.

What do you need to do to stand out?

When someone opens Pinterest (mostly on their phone) they’re looking at 4-6 pins at any one time. If they’re all a similar colour scheme, similar message or similar layout, the eyes become blind to anything special about your pin.

There are thousands of templates out there to buy already, but I’m designing templates for authors, not bloggers. I am designing templates that I would use to market my own books. If you’ve seen my Pinterest account, you’ll see that I’m not messing around here. It was only when I was designing my own pins that I thought hang on, there are hardly any pin templates out there for authors. Sometimes I just want to use a template, but I’m often forced to make my own design. I don’t mind doing this—designing stuff on Canva is fun for me, but I know others find it a royal PITA.

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It’s hard to get started on Pinterest when you’re trying to write, too. Nobody seems to have the answers, either.

Pinterest gurus will give you straightforward advice when it comes to designing pins. They will give tips just like the ones below, because they’re generic and apply to almost everyone out there with a blog or youtube channel. These tips are great if you’re a lifestyle blogger, a crafter or a cook, but not if you’re an author:

• How to [something your audience wants to learn]

• Best [tools/tips/practice/products/platforms]

• Step-by-step [guide, video, instructions]

• Tips for [solving a specific problem]

• Beginner’s guide to [a skill or hobby]

• Most effective ways to [do something]

• Strategies [like ‘how to grow on Substack’]

These tips are excellent if you’re designing pins that will showcase your blog posts, tutorials, podcast episodes or other lifestyle content… but what about authors? When I’m designing pins for my craft blog, I don’t have to think twice. If I don’t feel like designing my own pins, there are plenty of templates to help me get started. However, when I’ve been making pins as an author, I’ve found it to be a completely different kettle of fish.

Pinterest is a visual search engine, but searches will start to track the same book cover coming up over and over again.

Why is this a problem?

Would you want your feed saturated with the same, dated content all the time? Probably not.

Changing the images for your links (like, back to your book’s landing page or author website) is a game changer. The algorithm is like ‘this is new!’ when actually, it’s just the same book in a different image. This is a tiny tweak that we all need to utilise to keep Pinterest looking at our pins.

The pins I’ve had the most success with are pins that:

• Showcase the book’s cover. Readers judge books by covers so you really need to use it.

• Add a bit of review text to show that people have read and enjoyed it.

• Show the reader the full blurb.

• Use narrative hooks to try and encourage the reader to want to know more.

You will also need to write a title and description to go with each pin, but as for the basics, the picture really has to tell it all.

That’s why I’ve started making templates for authors to customize and use on their own Pinterest pages.

Fantasy Authors

Sci Fi authors

So far, I have science fiction templates available and fantasy templates available. There will be more! I will also be making templates for other social media channels to help you get more out of your writing time.

Each template is fully customizable, meaning you can change the colours, fonts, images and whatever else needs a little tweak to make it yours.

Not seeing a template pack that’s right for you?

If you’re struggling to find Pinterest templates for your genre/line of work, please let me know in the comments and I’ll see what I can do. I’m going to be making more templates for Substack posts as well as books, so stick around!

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There’s a little pitfall here though: sometimes, a viral pin can lead to paywalled content, leaving you with a massive bounce rate. This isn’t people being mean, or tight with their money. Would you buy a newspaper that had no headlines? Would you buy an album that had no track list? Would you pay for Netflix if they wouldn’t show you what kind of shows and films are available first? Some people would… but not many.

Your most successful pins have to be worth clicking on.

Readers won’t know they’re paywalled until they visit your substack, and that will be disappointing for them.

Imagine you’re on holiday.

You received a flyer from the holiday rep advertising the best theme park in the area.

It says it is guaranteed to be the highlight of your holiday, and all the photos, the features and even the menu for its restaurant look fantastic!

You get in the car and head there.

It’s closed.

Not to worry though, because the second-best theme park in town is next door, and that’s open.

You arrived with the intention of spending the day at a theme park, so this one will do.

Creating pins for only paywalled content has the same effect.

Reserve a curated list of free-to-read posts.

This is your sample menu. This is your table at Costco where people try before they buy. Some just want a free nibble, but others will buy the whole tub before they leave. You have to be there at the table to give them the opportunity to read your work.

I would always recommend that you keep your best work free to read. Whatever seems to be an excellent introduction to what you do should always be there in the shop window for all to see. There are ways that you can identify what is your best work:

1. What was the engagement rate?

2. How many views did it get?

3. How happy were you with the work?

4. Did it get more likes and comments than what you usually post?

5. Did it lead to new subscriptions?

6. Were there a lot of link clicks to the thing you were talking about ie a book, or a video?

These things are all easy to check for when you view your posts. You can see the stats from your dashboard. Your work doesn’t have to tick all of the above. For example, you may have written what you feel is your best work, and it only got about 3 likes. That doesn’t mean it’s not your best work. You don’t have to base the list on social media style popularity. It may not have received a lot of likes, but it had a really high open rate, or it was shared by many. If it was the taster for a book and many people bought a copy, that’s a good sign.

Just make sure that you have a sample menu of posts that are free to read, otherwise you’re turning people away from the door before they’ve had a chance to look at everything.

What about the ‘free to read’ token people can claim for paid posts?

That’s a useful resource, but I think that works great for people who already have a substack account. Asking people from other places on the internet to sign up just to read your 50 word story might be a big ask. Not everyone is ready to part with their email address like that, but they might click a link you’ve posted in the article that leads to a book sale or a tip. The point is, you need to let them choose.

In summary:

• You need to reserve free posts so you can use them as reader magnets.

• Your most successful pins should lead to free-to-read posts.

If you’d like to know more about Pinterest as a marketing tool for authors, you can subscribe below to get the latest advice.

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I have a Canva pro account, and this means I can access all of the media, styles and fonts available. This is really handy for posting on social media, designing graphics and advertising my books.

Canva Pro has plenty of templates for you, or if you’d like, you can create your own!

All I’ve done here is choose a Pinterest pin when scrolling through the designs available. This ensures that I have used a photo size that is the right size for Pinterest.

I would strongly advise authors to think of a brand kit for themselves and choose some fonts and colours that you would like people to associate with your book.

Thanks for watching! If you have any more questions about making pins, please drop them below.

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Before we go any further, you have to remember one thing:

Pinterest is not just another social media app.

Many dismiss it too early or don’t give it a chance at all and there are several reasons for this:

• You’re on too many apps as it is.

• You don’t have the time to learn how it works.

• You don’t have the time to make pins.

• You don’t have the time to schedule pins.

Tips for getting to know Pinterest:

• Start making boards for topics that interest YOU.

• Save pins that interest YOU.

• Start making boards and saving pins that are relevant to your content.

• Spend 30 minutes a day using Pinterest as a user.

February 10 Day Challenge: Pinterested.

Day 1: Set up a Pinterest profile. Come up with a name. See how to do that here.

Day 2: Make 1-3 boards and give them titles that are relevant to what you like to read about, write about or talk about. If you’re not passionate, any potential followers or customers can smell it on you.

Day 3: Spend 30 minutes saving pins to your new boards. Have fun with it, and collect things that inspire you. Find out how to save pins here.

Day 4: Find some new accounts to follow. Simply go to the search bar and look for experts in your subject matter, reviewers, bloggers or fellow artists and see what inspires them. If you type ‘sci fi author’ what comes up? If you type ‘book recommendations’ have a look at profiles that do just that.

Day 5: Set up a Pinterest business account. All you need is a website. You can learn how to set up an account here.

Day 6: Make 1-3 more boards and give them titles and descriptions that will help others find you. This could be a genre of films, a style of dress, a historical period, a game series, concept artwork… the list goes on!

Day 7: Save a pin from a blog, website or YouTube video to one of your boards. Pinterest has lots of pins you can save, but if it is your substack, or your website, you can save from there, too. New, fresh content for fresh eyes.

Day 8: Use either Pinterest, Canva, Buffer or Tailwind to schedule a pin. Just one is all you need to learn how to do it. All of those tools have a free option. Find out how to schedule here.

Day 9: Leave a comment on somebody’s pin. It doesn’t have to be much—just a simple ‘what a great idea’ or ‘I’m adding this to my TBR.’

Day 10: Have a go at making a pin. Keep it simple and straight to the point. There are plenty of free templates on Canva. If you have Tailwind, you can create pins from the scheduler. It’s the same with Buffer if you’re liked to Canva. The basic Pinterest information is here.

Finally, here’s why you should use Pinterest.

It’s a visual search engine, rather than simply a social media app. You can curate your feed, simply by using it. The more you use, the more you create and the more you engage with, the more Pinterest will understand what you want to see.

In my experience, my visibility on Pinterest has been amazing compared to impressions on other social media apps. You don’t have to have thousands of followers to get thousands of views, saves or clicks.

Pinterest is a free way to generate organic traffic to your blog, business, website or channel. If your pins are informative, engaging or interesting, people will come to see more!

You don’t have to be a beauty influencer or a viral cook to get a foothold in Pinterest. You don’t even have to show your face if you don’t want to! While I would advise a bit of personality and some behind the scenes content, it’s not the be all and end all. Forget popularity contests and 10 second reels—Pinterest pins last forever. What you posted six months ago could bring you new newsletter subscribers today.

Coming soon:

Come and make some pins with me. (14.02.25)

How I schedule my pins. (28.02.25)

How I write my pin descriptions. (14.03.25)

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What does consistency mean in terms of growing my online presence?

Consistency: the quality of always behaving or performing in a similar way, or of always happening in a similar way: They've won a few games this season but they lack consistency. It's important to show some consistency in your work. Opposite. inconsistency.

Case study:

1. Bob posts 1 pin a week. He does it on his Pinterest app and saves 1 thing from his substack account.

2. Emily posts 10 pins a week. She schedules them on her Buffer dashboard and they cover a range of topics, linking to her blog.

3. Riley posts 50 pins a week. He schedules them on Tailwind and covers not just his own content but saves pins that are relevant and useful to his audience.

Question:

Who is the most consistent out of these people?

Answer:

All of them are consistent.

The same goes for how often you post on Substack. Whether you post once a month or once a day—if that’s a pattern you have set and if it is what you’ve told your subscribers, it is consistent.

To be consistent, you just have to stick to what you promised. If you’re over-promising or under-promising, you can’t be consistent. Fix that first. What’s manageable for you in a busy week? Use that as your bar and plan accordingly.

Sometimes, I get really inspired and write a lot of things. I don’t just go and post them willy-nilly, though. I save them for a later date. One week could be quiet, and the next could involve me chasing my tail. You have to stick to what you promised your audience if you aim to be consistent. Saving some stuff for later helps you do that. Scheduling pins for later helps you do that.

Consistency is not synonymous with frequency.

Consistency isn’t frequency. It’s whether or not your pattern is reliable. 1 pin a month is consistent if that’s what you plan to stick to.

I often see people griping on notes about not being ‘consistent enough’ I’m sorry? What? You’re either consistent or inconsistent. You can’t be ‘more consistent’ or ‘less consistent’ if you’re consistent. It’s like ‘immune boosting’ your immune system in health talk. You either have an immune system or you don’t. You are either consistent or you’re not.

Whatever you can do, do it.

Don’t be put off Pinterest because you think you can’t stick to 50 pins a month. Do what works for you. In the early days, that could be one pin a month, but if that’s where you need to be to stay consistent, do that.

This month’s challenge:

Head over to your Pinterest account and create a board. That’s it. You started.

Push yourself: Select some text from one of your recent posts and either save it as a Substack image or copy and paste it onto a graphic on Canva. There you go— you’ve made a pin.

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Social media companies such as Meta rely on you staying on the platform, so why would you pay them to have nobody click on your profile or link? Also, who wants to pay for an increase in dumb comments? Trust me- it happens! You also have the backdrop of Facebook and Instagram users feeling betrayed by the increase in marketing on the platform. They don’t generally take kindly to their feed being full of sponsored posts and some will let you know about it!

Have you ever tried sharing a link on social media on Threads or X? Not only does a post with a link seem to generate lower views than your regular posts but those people looking may not be your target audience at all! What a waste of time and money. You’re trying to be seen on a platform that rewards clickbait and arguments about cream and jam on scones.

Pinterest ads are different.

I sound like a spokesperson here but I am just an indie author who has 4 years of experience using Pinterest (and getting sales and subscriptions) for my other small business. You can even see it here.

There are a few things you have to remember about Pinterest:

Most of the people using that platform are actively looking and are ready to buy. That could be furniture and paint— sure, but the general consensus is that Pinterest users spend more.

In my experience, Facebookers are looking for freebies and Instagram profiles don’t get anywhere unless they already have over 200k followers. This doesn’t work for the busy writer who needs to use as much time as they can to write. There will always be authors and writers who do well on these platforms without a huge following but let’s face it, it’s not most of us.

Pinterest is slower. It’s quieter. It has less shallow and more purposeful user engagement.

The consumers that you care about are using Pinterest to save, plan and shop. With over 522 million monthly active users,¹ Pinterest is where you can turn new leads into loyal customers.— Pinterest

I’ve had hundreds of thousands of impressions from ads that cost me no more than £20. I’ve made my money back at least every time I’ve sponsored a pin.

The highest my budget has ever been has been £1 a day. In Google and Amazon ad money, that would be the tiniest drop in the Ocean. On Meta, that would be 100 likes. This is money well spent for those with a small budget.

Why does this work so well?

Targeting. Pinterest is brilliant at targeting. Rather than show your pin to absolutely everyone on there, it has its own inbuilt targeting that scans your pin and decides who it would be most relevant to.

Gen Z are quickly growing to become Pinterest’s main user base and guess what? They have more spending power compared to Millenials (yeah, IYKYK.) They’re spending on entertainment. That includes books!

Pinterest not only looks at your stats and identifies a user base e.g 18-24 year old females but it also looks at the kind of things they’re pinning to their boards. If they’re into sci fi books, they’ll match with me. If they’re into microfiction, they’ll match with me. You can also manually add fields to your targeting and use key words. It’s all set up to help you. Also, if that’s not enough— you get your own Pinterest rep to help you with ads if you have a bigger budget or want something more than simply a boosted pin. You need to make sure you have a business account to use those services, though.

After the ad has run out

The pin will still be there, being pinned, clicked on and interacted with. You can re-pin it for a later date, save it to another board or pay to boost it again. If you had 300k impressions when you paid to boost that pin, you will never lose those numbers. The number of people seeing that pin will only grow. It doesn’t fall off the face of the earth like it does on Instagram.

Ways to see if your ad worked:

1. Did the number of impressions go up?

2. Did the amount of saves go up?

3. Did the amount of clicks go up?

4. Did you get any comments?

Any one of these things is a success. If that pin didn’t get many saves but the impressions keep going up, it means it gained traction. It may not be a hit this year but Pinterest is a long game. Who’s to say it won’t take off next autumn when whatever you’re doing is trending? The only way to know is if it’s out there in the first place.

Tips for getting the best results from an ad:

1. Only boost a pin that is in your top 5 for impressions. If the pin isn’t already popular, you’re starting from scratch. Choose something that would benefit from a boost.

2. Decide what you want from your ad. Is it conversions? Is it clicks? Is it just awareness? When you have a clear aim, you’ll get a clear outcome. Don’t just cast a wide net and hope for the best.

3. Use keywords. You can even check to see what’s trending on Pinterest via your analytics. If anything is relevant, add it to your lost of words and phrases!

4. Use a link that is evergreen. For example, if I know I’m archiving a post because I’ve released the book, I’m not going to share that link forever. I want people to consider buying the book, so I will give my website link or product page link instead. Think long term.

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This week I’m looking at how Pinterest works as a virtual shop front and why you need to work on that.

Is social media over?

Social media has changed. I don’t think that’s anything new or radical in saying that, and if you’re reading this, you’re probably a well-established Substack convert anyway. Here are some things we’ve learned about platforms such as Instagram, Tiktok and X:

1. You have to pay to play. X have made it incredibly difficult to get your posts seen if you don’t pay for perks. Instagram could show your post to 2 of your 2000 followers but if you want to reach more, you have to pay to ‘boost.’ — these things don’t guarantee anything.

2. If you do grow a following on Tiktok larger than 1000 followers, you get to add your website link. It sounds straightforward, but it isn’t. Getting to this number could take a very long time and making video content is incredibly time consuming, especially if everything has to be a hot take or filtered to death.

3. You don’t own your followers. I realise that this sounds terrible as you don’t and shouldn’t own anyone (unless it’s an argument) but if the app ceased to exist tomorrow or locked you out of your account for unknown reasons, your followers are gone. Poof! What took years to build takes minutes to destroy. They are not signed up with you. They belong to the social media company that hosts the platform.

4. You have to follow the trends to get any traction. I’m talking about cat videos, controversial opinions about Taylor Swift, opinions on ACOTAR and of course, celebrity stuff. People just want to laugh at cat videos. Cat videos are perfect for Instagram because they make the user stay on the platform (where Instagram makes their money from the ads) and are easily shared. Your writing doesn’t fit with that and you shouldn’t have to start making cat videos in the hope that you get a couple of likes. The likes mean nothing.

5. So much pointless discourse happens on quite a lot of social media platforms. Everywhere you look, there are people who want to shitpost or leave antagonistic comments because they’re bored at work and need something to do. None of this is worth your time because none of these people are—or will ever be— customers.

6. You have to sell yourself on social media. That’s a raw deal for an author because you don’t need to sell yourself to make money, you need to sell your product. No one should have to dance, point and jiggle just to get a book sale. No one. You can if you want, but if you’d rather be selling your amazing writing, please do read on.

These vapid, goldfish-bowl methods that these platforms are relying on are dying out. Pinterest is not. This is where the cool kids hang out. This is where brands are established. This is where artists bring characters and settings to life.

Pinterest is completely free to use and you don’t need hundreds of followers to generate thousands of impressions. They want users to explore and click on the external links. They’re a dream come true for bloggers and authors.

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Pinterest is a virtual storefront.

Imagine a place where people can spend hours window shopping, saving, organising wishlists and sharing ideas with friends. That’s Pinterest. It’s slow, it’s quiet, it’s steady. Pinterest is where people can curate boards based on their ideal wardrobe, living room, apartment, reading room etc. If someone is throwing a board together featuring their TBR, do you want your book on there? Of course you do.

There are over 550 million monthly Pinterest users, with Gen Z being the main base. This does not mean that there’s no market for your book that is aimed at Millenials, it just means that the guys who have the most spending power and free time are on there. They’re looking for book recommendations, book reviews and book blog posts. It’s a dream come true, to be honest. Those that have the most spending power and time to browse are also the readers pushing the book market along at the moment. Can you believe we are talking about this in 2024? In a digital world, people are still buying physical books as well as e-books. I think that’s magical.

Tailor to your audience

When you’re making pins for your blog posts, reviews, essays or books, bear the trends in mind. If you have a Pinterest business account, you can actually go and search trends and see what’s going on. I searched ‘book recommendations’ and it is skyrocketing right now. The beauty of trends on Pinterest is that they last a lot longer than trends on Instagram, for example. Pinterest trends is a free, handy tool that anyone can use.

Search trends

The next time you’re making pins, make sure they’re:

Informative

Eye-catching

Clickable

Coming soon:

I know it can be a lot to take in, so I’ve been working on The Pinterest Handbook behind the scenes. This is a comprehensive guide to how Pinterest works and how it can work for you. Hopefully it will be ready for you by January 2025.

Until then, if you have any questions, I’d love to hear them!

Pinning refers to simply saving a pin on Pinterest. It could be a URL that you’ve saved from a site with an image, a pin that you’ve made yourself or someone else’s pin that you have saved to a board.

What is re-pinning?

Re-pinning is saving that pin again because it gains some traction, or it is relevant to another of your boards.

The best pins to re-pin are the pins that appear in your analytics overview. The top 5 are the ones with the most impressions. Leave a week between each re-pin but if you have any other relevant boards for that pin, pin it again! The more pins= the more impressions= the more potential for clicks.

Buffer hack: If you use Buffer, you can schedule re-pins and it’s really easy.

Step 1: Go into Buffer and open the scheduling box.

Step 2: Go to Pinterest and select a pin that is doing well. Copy the link to the pin.

Step 3: Paste the link to the pin in the link box of your Buffer post. It will generate some images for you to use. Select the pin image that matches the popular pin. Now, change the link in the link box to a URL for your blog post or product page.

Don’t forget to change the pin link to a URL! You don’t want people being stuck on the pin. You want the pin to take them somewhere.

Try buffer

How often should I re-pin?

You can add re-pins to your scheduling as often as you like but leave a week between each one. If you re-pin manually (on Pinterest) leave the same amount of time and be sure to save to different boards each time. This keeps ideas fresh! Always remember to make new pins, too.

For more tips and access to the weekly chat thread, don’t forget to subscribe!

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For my fiction, I’m using Buffer this time. I used to use Buffer a lot for my twitter account too, but seen as that’s dead in the water I’m just using it for one channel: Pinterest.

I believe that Pinterest is wonderful for creatives and authors. You don’t have to be a wellness influencer (or a creator of cosy fall recipes or crafts to do with the kids this Christmas) to be a big deal on the platform. Pinterest is a huge search engine and as many people are hesitant to start using it for their business (because they think it’s really complicated.) It’s a perfect resource for those of you who are looking for a way to get ahead of the crowd of “No one likes my posts” people on other social media platforms.

Why schedule?

To stay sane? Seriously, spending an hour a week scheduling will save you so much time in the long run. You can live off that content for years so if you plan on sticking around, keep reading.

Buffer or Tailwind?

It doesn’t really matter which one you use. It will vary depending on your personal budget and how much time you’re going to be able to give it. If you use Canva, you may find that Buffer is more user-friendly as it lets you create pins there and then.

I managed to find a neutral comparison of both of these tools here but Buffer has also written one. Overall, I think if you have a small budget because you’re an indie author doing everything by yourself, I would recommend either of these as they’re both on the lower rung of the price ladder. You can certainly pay more for social media scheduling!

Can I manually schedule?

You can! All I mean by this is manually going into Pinterest, uploading your pins and scheduling them. Slightly more time consuming than using a scheduling tool as you have to upload your photos one by one but it’s cheap and easy. You can schedule pins up to 30 days in advance. This is a slightly smaller window than Buffer and Tailwind who let you schedule months in advance.

How to schedule on Pinterest

You can also schedule to Pinterest via Canva. This is slightly more time consuming than scheduling on Buffer or Tailwind as you can’t easily duplicate pins and schedule them later for different boards. I also hate that when I’ve just clicked schedule and if there’s a problem, it will completely wipe my pin description. A good workaround for this would be to write up a word document template with pin descriptions on it and copy and paste. You can also do this with URLs.

I’m lost! How do I Pinterest?

Pinning isn’t as complicated as people think. Here’s how it works:

Pinterest Growth Challenge: I recommend this. Meagan Williamson is a Pinterest consultant and every year she runs a free training session called Pinterest Growth Challenge but you should follow her on social media and see when the next session is. I have signed up to this every year because there is always something new to learn about Pinterest. Trends are ever changing and as the platform welcomes more video pins and a wider range of content, it’s worth being in the know. The training is completely free and is provided in a series of videos sent directly to your email. You also have the option to purchase any of Meagan’s resources or paid courses to further expand your skills. She’s brilliant.

She also does a paid 1 week course called Pin Potential.

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Share Pinterested

A lot, actually. If you have a business Pinterest profile all set up, but you’re not really attracting much attention yet— have you looked at your bio?

Your username doesn’t have to simply be “John Smith.” Your username could be “John Smith | Fantasy author” for example, or “John Smith- Fantasy and Science Fiction.”

Why does this matter?

Pinterest is a search engine! When somebody is looking for inspiration or ideas for a topic, they look it up on Pinterest. If someone was looking for “sci fi books” there’s a strong chance that some profiles such as John Smith’s may well come up. If John has a few boards that focus on science fiction and themes related to it and also has a profile name explaining what John does, John has a stronger chance of coming up in the search results.

Pinterest Bio

This is the area of text underneath your profile picture and links that tells people what you are about! Doesn’t have to be personal. In your bio, you’re looking to succinctly explain what you do and what you’re doing on Pinterest.

John might say: Science fiction author from London.

That’s ok, but…

If John wants to match up with some key words that his ideal audience are using, John might say: Author of science fiction thrillers. Avid reader of sci-fi and fantasy. New psychological thriller novel coming in 2024.

This way, if someone types in “science fiction thrillers” or “psychological thriller books” or even “new sci-fi books” John has a good chance of coming up in those search results.

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Who’s interested? Probably more people than you think but if you’re getting bored, you need to think of other things to pin.

This morning when scheduling, I was reminded of the range of content that I can pin. I had a look at the fiction digests for theme days that I’m part of and I pinned them. There are several advantages to doing this:

1. The author gets new traffic to their substack and as you know, a rising tide lifts all boats.

2. If you’re associated with that substack e.g. you’re one of the publications that they recommend and the reader subscribes to them, then they might subscribe to you, too!

3. If you are mentioned in that particular post, the reader will discover your story and possibly subscribe.

In summary, you’re helping other authors and publications which helps you, too. This is a great thing to do when you’re bored of talking about your own work.

Today I made this pin (above) to link back to Spooky Season by Shaina Read. If you click on the image, it also takes you to the post. You can create pins using a range of templates on Canva. I’ve only changed the text on this one.

How often should I pin other people’s pins?

As often as you want! A healthy ratio is 80:20 with the latter being other pins. Save pins that are relevant to your content e.g. book reviews in your genre, books in your genre, videos, social media posts, artwork, TV and films in your genre, articles and landing pages. I like to save the pins of other authors that also write in my genre. Not only does it make for good looking boards but it helps other indies too.

Why just pinning yourself doesn’t work.

Pinterest can grow a bit stale if you’re doing these things:

1. Saving pins from the same URL over and over again. If you create and save pins from various URLs (think website, blog, substack, youtube, amazon etc) you’re offering Pinterest new content every time.

2. Posting the same images over and over again. Pinterest is a visual search engine, so it can see if the same image has been used. If it’s not new, it won’t be pushed as new to other users. Even the tiniest tweak on your book cover pin can make it look new.

3. Not re-pinning popular pins. If you go into your analytics (via your business account) you can see what your top pins are. Once a week, you should save them again to a different board. This notifies Pinterest that the pin is still gaining traction and it will be shared again.

If you saved/created 10 pins a day, make sure that 2 of them are pins from another account or a site that doesn’t link back to you.

Happy Pinning!