Send to KindleAlrighty, checking over my traffic stats for the last few weeks it seems that everyone has gone more than a little Pinterest crazy.
I thought I’d hunt down a few of the tools and apps that will make your blogging life better, your board look cool and tools that will help you promote your Pinterest boards. Yes, you have to send traffic to your boards, it’s not a one way street.
First up is the follow me on Pinterest button.
If you click the red button you will be taken to my boards and you can see if I pin the type of content you enjoy looking at. If you like me, then by all means follow me. You can find the follow me on Pinterest button on the Pin Goodies page.
Whilst you are on the Pin Goodies page, check out the Pinterest iPhone app 
I love this, I have it installed on my phone and there is nothing more therapeutic than laying in bed, watching Frasier and pinning pics of Charlie Hunnam to my Sons of Anarchy board. If you have an iPhone, go check out the app. Apps for other devices are in the pipeline, but not available at the time of writing this post.
Have you added your Pinterest “pin it” buttons to your share bar or sharing buttons section of your blog yet?
No? Really Simple Facebook Twitter share added Pinterest in, all you have to do is update the plugin and tick the box to show the “Pin it” button. You can add the pin button code to Sharebar and Digg Digg, so there really is no excuse not to have one on your site.
You can also choose to blog certain photos from being pinned with the Pinterest Block plugin. This plugin will help protect your privacy if you share the occasional family photo on your blog. The last thing you want is the photo of your daughter inspecting her boogies going viral on Pinterest.
Top Pinned Posts is a premium (paid for) plugin that will allow you to display your most-pinned posts in the sidebar of your site. Personally I don’t use it but if Pinterest is a big part of your blogging and marketing strategy then this plugin is worth investigating.
Remember Jamie Swanson from my getting started on Pinterest post? She had a terrific idea and took it to a developer and wow, a WordPress plugin that pulls through the description and the images to pin . Giving you, the post creator, more opportunities to control what gets pinned and how it gets described. Take a look at the video from the developer, the talented Flaunt your Site
You can download the Pin-it-on-Pinterest plugin from WordPress.org or from the site direct or search the plugins section of your dashboard. If you have a craft / design / photography blog then you need this plugin.
Want to manage all your Pinterest activity from WordPress?
WP Pinner is free and currently in beta.
It’s well worth a look. The ability to track and schedule pins means it will make life a little easier , as well as being able to see at a glance what your most popular pins are.
Want to add Pinterest to your widgets and your sidebars?
Of course you do and here’s the plugin just for that, the aptly named Pinterest Pinboard widget.
The Super Simple Pinterest plugin displays your most recent pins in a widget, that could get a little dangerous for me. Charlie Hunnam would take over my sidebar 
Which leads me nicely into… don’t go adding every frickin’ plugin under the sun unless it serves your purpose. Unless the plugin allows you to choose a board that is relevant to the blog you have, I wouldn’t bother. There are only so many “Game of thrones” pins your blog readers will put up with
Got any favourites? Any that I missed, that you can’t live without? Let us know in the comments
Sarah Arrow
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Hi Sarah.. I have tried those plugin and it works well but do you know any code or plugin for pinterest that shows the Pin It counts?
Hi Herbert, The Really Simple Twitter Facebook share plugin shows the pin counts on the button once you have one. It looks like a normal button until someone pins it. Hope that helps
Thanks Sarah, though im manually placing the button on my blog but I will gonna try the plugin you mentioned. Thanks
Happy Weekend
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Herbert recently posted..Build Blog Traffic with Commentluv
Did you try this tutorial from WP beginners on how to add it directly? http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-add-pinterest-pin-it-button-in-your-wordpress-blog/ I find their tutorials are very good. I don’t know if it will show the pin count though.
Have a great weekend
Sarah thanks for this post, found it really useful. I need to spend more time on PinInterest as it seems to be getting more and more popular:)
Looking forward to 30 Pininterest 30 day challenge – if it’s like your other challenges I’m sure it will be awesome:)
Twitter: lilachbullock
I think you’ll love it Lilach, a few aptly named boards and you will be away
http://www.saraharrow.co.uk/30-day-pinterest-challenge-day-one/
I have done day one of the Pinterest Challenge… you can grab a sneak peek here
Hi Sarah,
It seems like Pinterest has started to take off, no other social network has been growing that fast before and so unexpectedly.
The previous months everyone was talking about Google+ and how it could become bigger than Facebook but what pinterest has done during these months is just amazing. Just imagine where it would be if it has the resources and exposure that Google has.
Until now even though I join pinterest and I get an invite I wasn’t really active but with all the buzz that I hear the last month I will certainly become more active, thanks for sharing…
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Hi Kostas, Pinterest does look set to eclipse G+ and I wonder if Google will snap it up? It certainly has the user interaction that Google likes. It could easily be absorbed into the G+ family.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
Love it sarah, I am honestly really excitied by Pinterest – it’s so me (LOL) I am like a child in a sweet shop. When I’m on the site I’m giddy with excitement, it inspires me and would spend more time on there if I allowed myself!
I am having trouble with adding the Pinterest button through easy share, it just doesn’t work for me at the moment, so I have had to add an extra plugin…I will try again soon though, I’m sure it’s just a blip.
Now I have the apps, now I just need that iphone LOL
I think you are right to love it Anita, your boards can lead you to bigger things.
If easy share isn’t working it might be worth the move to sharebar. Simply share has never got over a few hundred RT’s I had on a post and since then the Twitter counter doesn’t work correctly. This post has had 23 tweets so far and I am showing 11… if I was on easy share I’d be showing 3.
As to that iPhone… I can’t live without it, have only had it 2 years and
it’s a vital piece of work equipment.
Great post Sarah. Thanks for the tips and plugins. G+ and Pinterest have used one marketing tactic that has helped them grow fast – scarcity. People are curious and don’t want to be left out.
Hi Tola, scarcity plays a big part I think – we are all scrabbling for invitations! Do you have a few chocolate boards set up?
Indeed I do. And Valentine ones too – none chocolate related ones as well. Here’s a link to my boards – http://pinterest.com/chocofavours/
Thanks Tola, am following them now
I FINALLY got approved by Pinterest yesterday. Looking forward to testing out the site in the next few weeks. Thanks for the ideas!
I know you’ll love it Andy
Thanks for stopping by.
I just got my invite the other day and I have been looking around at how to get started on Pinterest ideas. I know it is a relatively new site but it sure seems to be getting popular really quickly.
I ma thinking this might have to do with it being so focused on images. I like to write and I think words are the currency of the web. But I think video and images are what gets shared with the least amount of thinking about it.
On my bookshelves at home I have a couple of shelves of photography collections. I can easily spend an hour or two just looking through my books with a cup of tea.
I really like the idea that it is becoming easier to share images and a lot more fun to see what catches others’ eyes. Thank you for sharing these tools to make Pinterest easy.
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Twitter: alifeoflight
Hi Michael and welcome. Yes images and video do seem to be shared very easily, and the easy sharing is part of the Pinterest fun – it’s very fast to pin an image or video.
Words will be the currency of the web for a very long time, I can’t see the day where images overtake. Already on Pinterest instead of a short meta description we are seeing people adding three or four paragraphs of text in the comments section. I think it’s a natural part of the conversation to want to add more words. Brevity is not our second nature online
I’m in total awe: All this is like a completely foreign language to me!
Twitter: Linda_Mattacks
You should be there Linda, it’s rather addictive
This is one of the best posts that I have ever read over the internet. It has given me a lot of interesting and useful ideas as a webpage owner as well.
I have one more to add. About a month ago I created a “Pin It” button plugin that mimics the behavior of the official Pinterest bookmarklet so far if some people are looking for that. Don’t have the count working yet but it’s in the works.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pinterest-pin-it-button/
Good post Sarah. I just finished a blog post tutorial on how to add Pinterest pins from a single Board. As you mentioned above, sometimes we have to be careful about what we post on our blog sites. That’s the main reason I came up with a way to only show posts from a single board. Click on my username to check it out.
Looking forward to future posts!
-@jesseluna
Thanks so much for sharing the information about the sidebar widget! I’ve been looking everywhere for something like this. Twitter is really taking off with teens and we’ve loved watching the growth & have considered having that sidebar on our website. Much appreciated.
Hi Sarah,
thank you so much for sharing this useful information.
Sharing content/images to Pinterest straight from your dashboard sounds like a very handy solution.
The ‘Flaunt your site’ video is great because you can see how it works.
The Internet seems like a big smorgrasboard to choose from and thanks to your post it makes it easier to do so.
Cheers,
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Yorinda
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