Let’s talk Pinterest marketing for authors! Ever wondered if Pinterest can be used to promote a book? Dig into this week’s episode to find out!
In today’s episode, I’m talking to Casey Peeler about how authors can market their books on Pinterest.
Casey writes books for busy moms to give them the escape they need with sweet, small-town romances. We’re going to talk about her story and her journey with Pinterest marketing as an author.
Pinterest Marketing for Authors: How to Use Pinterest to Promote a Book
How Casey Became an Author
She is a special education teacher at a high school as her full-time job and she enjoys the reading and English aspect of teaching. She started reading more after becoming a mom and eventually created a blog focused on book reviews.
A mom at her daughter’s dance studio suggested that she write a book of her own and Casey laughed. She had no idea what was involved in actually writing a book and didn’t even know where to start.
But Casey dove in head first, and completed her first book six years ago.
She believes that she’s great at coming up with storylines, but hires an editor to help her smooth everything out and make the story flow properly.
Self-Publishing Her Book
Indie publishing, or self-publishing, was just becoming popular when Casey was ready to publish her first novel. Casey had a lot of friends in the industry that she had made through her book review blog. These author friends walked her through the process of self-publishing.
She recruited beta readers for her book, one of which was a high school English teacher. This person served as her first editor.
Casey decided to use Amazon to sell her book and used a PR group to help promote it. She had a great release day! After the first book was published, Casey began releasing a new book about every 3 months. She always had a new idea in brewing in her mind before the book she was currently working on was finished.
Pinterest for Authors: An Evergreen Way to Market
Casey had been using social media since the beginning. But Pinterest came into play for her only about a year ago.
After listening to podcasts, Casey knew that she needed to find an evergreen way of marketing her books. She knew Pinterest was the best option. At the time she began using Pinterest to market her books, she had released a total of 12 books.
Casey sends her Pinterest viewers straight to her blog. She creates a Pinterest board for each of her individual books and pins images of what she envisions the characters to look like.
She also creates boards based on keywords that people are searching, such as:
- Books for moms to read and de-stress
- Kindle Unlimited books
Casey’s Genre
Casey’s genre is best described as Clean and Wholesome Romance. Her books are typically small-town, sweet reads.
“Think Hallmark, but a little more realistic.”
Clean and Wholesome was not a recognized writing genre until about six months ago. Until that time, all of Casey’s books had been classified under the general Romance genre.
Casey’s typical reader is searching for books to escape the busy woman life. She’s looking for an easy read; nothing too wordy or difficult to understand. Someone that enjoys Nicholas Sparks would likely enjoy Casey’s books.
Gaining Traffic Through Pinterest
In April of 2018, all of Casey’s website traffic was coming from Facebook, and it was minimal.
She started blogging every other week in May of that year and pinning her content to Pinterest. By August, 99% of her traffic was coming from Pinterest. Last month she was up to over 1,600 users a month.
Up to this point her growth was all organic. Casey just started using ads (promoted pins) last month. Her primary goal in using ads is conversion. She would love for those readers who click through to become an email subscriber and make a book purchase.
Casey creates content for her blog a week or two in advance. She schedules her pins using Tailwind. She also adds pins manually every other day or so, just to make sure she stays up to date on the platform.
Casey’s Advise for How to Use Pinterest to Market Your Book
Casey is very focused on Pinterest ROI. If it’s not making her money or increasing revenue, it’s a waste of time for her. She invests time and resources into Pinterest marketing because it’s an evergreen platform and one that delivers high ROI.
When it comes to Pinterest marketing for authors, Casey emphasizes that you should really dig into your niche and understand precisely what your readers are searching for. This will require you to think outside the box.
Your reader may search “Clean and Wholesome books” or they may just be searching “good books to read.” Make sure you’re targeting them with what they’re looking for.
As far as images are concerned, Casey uses and recommends branded images. She changes the text overlay on her images frequently, using Canva to make the whole process easy peasy.
She has spent so much time honing in on her pinnable image-making skills that she now can predict which pins will really take off. When she created this pin, she knew it would be compelling and lead to a bunch of clicks…which it did!
This post contains affiliate links, which means if you make a purchase through these links, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Click here to read my full disclosure policy.
Where Do I Start?
If an author came to Casey and said, “where do I start with Pinterest marketing?” here’s what she would tell them:
• Create keyword-specific boards
• Make off-brand boards secret
• Work on upping the quality of your images
• Use Tailwind to schedule your pins
• Understand what your readers are searching for
If you are brand new to Pinterest and interested in learning more, we have a newsletter all about Pinterest foundations that you can sign up for.
If you’re looking for more more information and inspiration around using Pinterest as an author, check out this awesome teaching that Kate (CEO of Simple Pin) did with the hopewriters membership community. It’s a great listen with lots of actionable takeaways!
For Further Reading/Listening:
- Pinterest Marketing for Real Estate Agents
- Pinterest Marketing for Personal Finance Bloggers
- Pinterest Marketing for Wedding Professionals
- Pinterest Marketing for Artists
- Pinterest Marketing for NonProfits
- Pinterest Marketing for Travel Businesses
Time Stamp:
Intro
4:39 – How Casey Became an Author
10:20 – Self-Publishing Her Book
15:20 – An Evergreen Way to Market
20:12 – Clean and Wholesome Reads
23:48 – Gaining Traffic Through Pinterest
27:08 – Dig Into Your Niche
32:32 – Where Do I Start?
Thanks for the actionable information. Although I can’t afford your membership site at this time, I love reading your emails!
Debbie, we certainly appreciate having you as a reader. I love that you find so much of the information actionable. That’s definitely our intention!
That was an amazing pin that you mentioned in the show. Thanks for the link!
I was also intrigued by the types of boards you have cross-promoting other authors. I can see myself doing something similar in my niche, but it may take a little while to get there.
So glad the post sparked some ideas for you Devon!
Thank you Kate for this podcast! Great information! I’m an author just starting on Pinterest and it is overwhelming to try to figure out where to start. I enjoyed listening to Casey. Loved her story on how she began writing and also love all the advance she gave!
Welcome Mel!