Everyone loves Pinterest, right? In case you didn’t know, Pinterest is a digital pin-board social media site where you can browse images and save your favorites to your own personalize boards. If you’re a writer, here are five great ways that you can use Pinterest to help with your writing.

Pin Pictures from your Blog or Website

Shameless plug for my newest book!

This is probably the most important one for increasing your online exposure and boosting traffic to your website. If you have pictures on your website and blog posts, then when people find those images on Pinterest, there will be the automatic link back to your website. Have you ever found a cool new website because you followed a link on a pin? Well, others can find your website the same way!

Use Secret Boards for Research and Ideas

Do you have a place where you collect images and links for inspiration? Pinterest offers something called “secret boards” that only you can see, so you can now create boards for research or WIPs (works in progress) without making everything public. When the time is right, you can make the secret board public if you want, or transfer some of the pins to a public board.

Have a Board (or several) for your Books or Other Writings

If you’ve published a book (or even articles on other website or blogs) you can pin these. Pin your book cover from Amazon – then the link will take users right to your book. If you’re working on a project that you do want to share with the world, then a Pinterest board of your research and inspiration will help you gain followers and fans even before the book is out.

My “Dieselpunk Jazz Age” board, featuring inspiration for my current decopunk historical fantasy series.

Have a Board (or several) for Stuff besides your Writing

Your fans want to get to know you as a person. They may love the gritty thrillers that you write (and they follow all of your related pinboards), but they’d probably also like to know that you love dogs and that you enjoy hiking. There’s nothing wrong with having non-writing boards, as long as it’s part of the public image that you want to share. I write sci-fi and fantasy, but on Pinterest you can also view boards that feature my love of music and my love of cute bunny rabbits.

Make Sure your Profile is Up-to-Date

This goes for any social media. Make sure your profile picture on Pinterest matches your profile picture on your Facebook fan page and your picture on your website. On Pinterest, profiles are pretty bare-bones, but there is space for a link to a website. Ideally, you should link all of your public/professional social media accounts to one another and keep them all up-to-date.

Do you use Pinterest for your writing? What’s your favorite thing about Pinterest?