Three reasons writers should use Pinterest

Pinterest has a weird reputation. To some people, it’s a pointless photo-sharing app for people with nothing better to do to use for posting pictures of their food. To others, it’s a way to network, learn, or even make a living.

For writers, it’s a great tool we should all be using.

Now, when I started this blog, I’ll tell you I was more than skeptical when my wife suggested I start using Pinterest. I was like, “Uh, why would I subject myself to that?” Fortunately, she persisted and sent me a couple of links on how to use Pinterst to promote your blog.

And I’m very thankful to have taken her advice. Check my lifetime stats for Write Good Books, the top traffic source is, you guessed it, Pinterest. In fact, Pinterest generates three times as much traffic to this blog as search engines, and more than four times as much as Facebook and Twitter. When I started this blog in 2015, I would have never believed that possible.

But this post isn’t supposed to be about blogging and Pinterest, it’s supposed to be about writing and Pinterest.

So here are 3 reasons writers should be using Pinterest

To learn more about writing.

Write Good Books is only one of hundreds, maybe even thousands, of writing blogs posting article to Pinterest. The vast amount of writing tips and publishing advice a new writer can find on Pinterest is nearly unlimited. Seriously. Go there and search “writing”. You’ll be amazed at the content. And just for fun, you may even find a couple of my posts 🙂

To get ideas

Another great thing about Pinterest, is that with it’s focus on visual material, it’s a great place to get idea for your writing. Search “writing prompts” and you’ll find a screen after screen of links providing either prompts themselves, or links to other prompts. For fun, you can even add a genre. For example, try “horror writing prompts” and see what pops up.

And you know, while those writing prompts are very useful, there is another (perhaps more preferable) way to use Pinterest to help give your creativity a boost. Instead of search out writing-related stuff, try searching on your genre. Search “fantasy art” for example. Every one of the images returned is a potential story idea.

To connect with other writers

Finally, like most social media, Pinterest is yet another way to meet and interact with other writers going down the same path as you. Go ahead and follow people. Check out their blogs, and say Hi. You’ll be happy you did. After all, the more writers you meet, in real life and online, the better. You never know what you might learn from another author, or what opportunities a friendship will bring.

So if you’re not on Pinterst, go give it a look and see what you think. I’m on at https://www.pinterest.com/writegoodbooks/ with boards on writing, horror, and fantasy/science fiction. It’s fun stuff and worth putting the time in.

That’ll do it for now. There’s no podcast this week, so check back Friday for a new round-up of links, and until then, if you can think of any other benefits Pinterst can bring to writers, leave a comment and let us know!