Marketing Meetup Recap: Using Pinterest to Market Your Store

The latest Marketing Meetup hosted by the American Booksellers Association covered the different ways booksellers can use Pinterest to market their store. Last September, Pinterest announced it had reached a new milestone: 250 million users. That paired with the expected rise in visual search in 2019 means there is a lot of potential for marketing opportunities within Pinterest.

The February 28 Marketing Meetup — one of the biweekly online video conferences hosted by ABA on Zoom.us — featured guest speaker Suzanne Droppert of Liberty Bay Books in Poulsbo, Washington, with additional information provided by Bookworm of Edwards, and Porter Square Books. Here are some highlights from the meeting:

• Decide how often to post – daily, weekly, monthly
• Organize boards by genre, new releases, staff picks, book club picks, local interest, etc.
• Create a board to keep track of signed copies of books
  -Share the link to this board through other social media channels
• Post photos of in-store displays
  -Try to time these posts with themes such as Valentine’s Day, Women’s History Month, etc.
• Post non-book content to create a mood, which makes the platform more dynamic
• Post to the Book Community Board to help posts get more traction
• Link to websites to encourage click-throughs and create potential customers
• Use Pinterest internally among staff
  -Create genre-specific boards that booksellers can reference when recommending titles
  -Create a board for staff members to post what they’re currently reading, so galleys and customers can be directed to the appropriate person

Booksellers who would like to participate in the next 30-minute Marketing Meetup, which will be held on March 14 and will cover marketing via Twitter, can send an invite request to ABA’s Phil Davies. All ABA members are invited to join. Meetups are held at 11:00 a.m. EST on two Thursdays a month.