I am trying not to be intimidated by marketing my book. Trying is the keyword here. I did lots of research, as usual, and feel like marketing is not exactly a concrete concept with clear directions. Many sites say: pay for marketing, never pay for marketing, try to get your book info out everywhere, specifically target a few social media platforms and your target audience…etc. The conflicting information never stops.

I decided to start with an easier, passive marketing approach, which for me is Pinterest. Since I already had an established blog that I used to post both textual information and pictures, it seemed easy enough. I simply used the existing information to redirect people to my blog. In theory, readers will learn about me and my book by clicking on the pins.

I began by creating a Pinterest board specifically for this blog called “A Journey Of Writing Blog.” Next I took the most recent blog post (prior to this one) and created an image reflecting the essence of the post. I accomplished this by taking the image I was already using for the blog and adding text over it. Hopefully, the information will catch someone’s attention enough to click through to that post.

It is also important to add relevant information within the Pinterest pin. When adding a new pin, it asks for a title, description, alt text, and destination URL. I figure consistency and completeness is the way to go. I use the picture text for the title and provide additional summary info about the blog post for the description. Alt-text is used by screen readers to read aloud a description of what the specific picture looks like. I describe the background image and text used in the picture. Lastly, I add the URL to the blog post. All of this great and relevant information will mean your pin is searchable and more likely to show up correctly on people’s Pinterest feed.

Now, I need to go back and add as many old blog posts to the board as I can.