14 tools for better Pinterest marketing

Tools are what makes social media marketing a valuable marketing strategy that most entrepreneurs can use besides their day job. Most of us cannot afford to spend all day on social media to keep our accounts active and responsive. And while using tools for Twitter nowadays is already a very common method, using Pinterest tools for automation and marketing, seems to be still not overly wide spread.

Still, there are some really valuable tools that can easily help you stay active throughout the day and week, tools that can help you react to activity on your pins – and even help to find great boards you can use for your own purposes.

Without tools we all would be missing out on the best times to pin, we would be flying blind, and many of us would struggle to create pinnable images for our websites and content.

Here are 14 tools to help you get your Pinterest on track and speed up your success:

1. Pinterest Browser Buttons

Before we turn to the more fancy apps and tools for Pinterest, let us start with what Pinterest has to offer: The Pinterest Browser Buttons. These make pinning from any page much easier.

Pinterest offers browser buttons for most internet browsers like Chrome, Safari Internet Explorer, Firefox. If you have not done so yet, install them in your browser which you use for pinning. Once you have them in place, you can directly pin to your Pinterest account from any website you visit: Your favorite blog or magazine or any other place on the web that you visit.

On your own blog, you should make pinning for your audience as easy as possible. The least you should have are share buttons that include Pinterest. A plugin that makes directly pinning an image easy can also help a lot.

By hovering your mouse over an image, a red Pinterest button shows in the middle of the image and by just clicking it you can choose your board and pin without opening your Pinterest in the browser.

2. Buffer

Most of you probably already know Buffer. Most likely you have used or are using Buffer to schedule your tweets for Twitter. Did you know that Buffer can just as easily schedule your pins? Unfortunately, it is not on the free plan. But for as little as 10$ you get the option to buffer your pins, and you can try it 7 days for free.

You simply put in the URL of the website and choose the image you want to pin. The browser extension for buffer makes it even more comfortable to upload pins into your Buffer.

3. Tailwind

Tailwind is another tool that allows you to schedule pins for Pinterest. The first 100 pins count as your free trial. Tailwind is designed for Pinterest, and that is something you will notice when using it. It is very comfortable and easy. Tailwind suggests you a schedule for your pins based on your activity and following. You can add more pin times anytime.

Apart from scheduling and tracking the performance of your pins, Tailwind can also provide you with Analytics like Follower growth, likes and (re-)pins. It can show you which of your pins are trending and who are your most engaged followers

As with Buffer, I strongly recommend installing the browser extension, which allows you to pin images directly from websites into your Tailwind schedule.

4. ViralTag

Viraltag is a platform for sharing visual content with social platforms like Instagram and Pinterest. You can schedule your pins – again us the browser extension to make scheduling even easier.

Apart from scheduling, you can also manage your images from Dropbox, Google Drive, and Flickr and use the provided tools to modify the images that you upload.

5. ViralWoot

This tool offers some more than scheduling. You can buy or earn so-called “seeds,” which in return you can offer to other pinners for pinning your images.

If you are looking into ways to push your follower growth and pin visibility, ViralWoot is worth looking into.

6. IFTTT

IFTTT is a tool that lets you set up “recipes” for what should happen if a certain action takes place.

Now IFTTT is certainly not commonly known as a Pinterest tool. However it can help you setting up some automation for your pins, that can help you save a lot of time. Especially if you are active on more than on a visual social network, you can think about connecting the two by some IFTTT recipes.

An easy to do and fitting recipe would be: IF I publish an image on Instagram automatically publish it on Pinterest, too. Here are some great IFTTT recipes for Pinterest.

7. Pin Groupie

If you are new to Pinterest marketing, you may not be familiar with the power of group boards, yet. Group boards on Pinterest are boards where multiple pinners can pin to. You can join Group boards, get invited to join – or even set up your own group board and invite your favorite pinners to join.

The power of group boards lies in the additional exposure the pins of such boards get.

However to get the most out of group boards you need to find the best group boards for your niche. And that is what Pin Groupie does

8. Pin Alert

Especially when you are starting out on Pinterest and growing your first followers, it is important to you to know what happens with your pins.

Pinterest itself can email you when someone re-pins your pins. But as a blogger or website owner you want to know what happens to your images on your site.

Pin Alert can email you whenever someone pins your images or even your competitors images. This allows you to react to this activity: You can either re-pin the pin or comment – hopefully, some of this activity will results in the pinner following you.

Unfortunately as of today, PinAlert is down for “Innovating and Renovating”.

9. Canva

The tool for people like me: Marketers that have no design skills, but still need images for their marketing purposes on a daily basis. Tons of templates and designs help you get started and learn some basics of design on the fly.

You can easily upload your own photos and start your design from there.

10. Snappa

Snappa is a little like Canva: A tool for non-designers to help you create beautiful images in the right size. Snappa provides image sizes, some templates, and efficient tools to create your own images.

11. Pablo

For everyone who finds Canva or Snappa still too complicated can give Pablo a try. Pablo was created by Buffer to enable their users to create images for their social media on the fly. Choose the “tall” picture format for Pinterest.

12. PicMonkey

PicMonkey is an online picture editing tool similar to Photoshop but not as extensive. You can change contrast, ratio, direction, color, or brightness of any image. You can add different filters. And you can even get started without logging in.

13. Pinstamatic

Are you visiting a website you would like to pin but which does not offer any pinnable image? Pinstamatic may be able to help. It lets you create images out of almost anything, for instance, a website, some text, a tweet, or even your Twitter profile.

14. Piktochart

What would Pinterest be without Infographics? And they are often a hassle to create. Again, I am not a designer; I need help with Infographics. Pictochart is there to help you create beautiful infographics. To get you started, it offers multiple templates, but it also comes with a ton of icons, shapes, and objects you can use to create your own Infographic.

With so many useful tools you can easily take your Pinterest to the next level.

This article was first published on The Social Ms.