Freelance Tips: How to Promote Your Content on Your Website with a Pinterest Widget

Freelance Tip: Pinterest How to Promote Your Freelance Work on Your Own WebsiteBy Kaley Perkins

http://www.kaleyperkins.comP: 302.570.0750T: kaley_perkins

This tutorial is for you if… you want to promote your published work

on Pinterest.

you want to embed a Pinterest board on the side bar of your WordPress blog.

you want to embed a Pinterest board with links to your own articles in the sidebar of your WordPress blog.

This tutorial assumes… you know how to copy and paste URLs. you know how to use Pinterest. you have a WordPress.org blog. you know how to modify widgets. you know how to work with text HTML

boxes in widgets. you can do basic resizing of elements with

HTML code tweaks. You have a Pin It widget installed in your

browser.

Who You Are:You are writing content and you have a website, but you don’t have income yet. You can write for other online platforms and hopefully get paid.

All your work goes to build their sites and not your own traffic. You wonder how, or if, you can create compelling content for your online publisher and still brand yourself too.

Why Promote Your Own Work Build your freelance portfolio. Find your audience. Attract followers. Drive traffic to your online publishing

partner. This creates good will. Repurpose your elsewhere-posted

content on your own blog. Show potential employers what a

smartypants you are with promotion.

Start a new Pinterest Board

This is going to drive a professional audience to you. Be aware of your brand. I put this on my personal Pinterest page. Best idea?

Title your new Pinterest board

Maximize the reach of your content by cross-promoting your social media reach. Include Twitter links, websites, phone numbers.

Behold your new, naked Pinterest board

Find your online content

Grab content you want to pinCopy the URL of your first article into your clipboard (CTR+C on Mac).

Hit your Pin It button in your browser.

Select which image to pin

Choose a nice visual that has your title already added

Pin your article to your new board

Add the URL from clipboard into pin’s description

Yay!! Your first article is pinned

Some thoughts on descriptions The idea is to promote. Promote your article with compelling text. Promote your other social media profiles. Promote your article to people you think might

benefit from the content. Promote to people who are featured in the

content – they might spread it to their networks. Provide a URL. This reminds people this is

someone’s work and lets them click straight to your content in case Pinterest gets wonky.

Embed #hashtags or @twitterhandles Be bold and creative with this!

Lather, Rinse Repeat You have made a pin of your first article. Repeat these steps and pin all of your

articles to Pinterest. Write supercharged descriptions. Think SEO keywords, hashtags, and

@people to attract search traffic. Provide a link to each article, so people

will click through and give you traffic.

Now you have your Pinterest boardNow that you have your Pinterest board built and populated with your articles, grab the URL and let’s make a Pinterest widget.

Now Embed Your Pinterest Board on Your Website All of your articles are posted to

Pinterest. Copy the URL of your Pinterest board to

your clipboard (Command + C on Mac). Go to Pinterest Embed Widget builder

site. (http://goo.gl/oh1aaS) Enter URL into widget builder.

Pinterest widget builder

Select ‘Board Widget. Then select ‘Side Bar.’

Enter URL of board, tweak settings

Check widget, make modificationsHow many articles you have on your Pinterest page will determine the height of your widget. I only have nine articles so this dimension will look goofy on my page.

If this happens, scroll back up, modify settings and refresh the widget. When you have the right height, grab the embed code and copy it to your clipboard.

Embed widget code into HTML text box in widget area

View your site and see how you like it

Write more, fill up the white space!

The white space here tells me that I need to write more articles for my publishing partner so that we both have more content.

An added bonus of emedding content on your own site is that gives you more control over how your content appears.

Stay tuned for more information on how to embed your articles on your own website without violating copyright!