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Use Pinterest Boards for Personal Branding

You may already have a Pinterest account for business where you showcase your products, services, and blog posts. But you can also use Pinterest boards for personal branding, where you show a little bit more about you as a “person” through topics you’re interested in or passionate about.

To show a little bit more about you, add a few boards that are not directly related to your business. Use them to round out your personal brand with lifestyle themes. This may give your followers and target audience another way to connect with you.

For example, my Terry League Pinterest account is a business account. But I have several boards that don’t relate directly to my social media business. Here are 3 of my more “personal” boards:

My Quotes & Inspiration board shares some of my favorite quotes (you probably know by now that I’m kind of a nut about motivational quotes! 🙂 )

I have a Home Office Help & Décor board for inspiration when it comes to organizing and decorating a home office.

My College Dorm Ideas board has a few of my most re-pinned Pins (one Pin has been shared over 1,000 times!). This board started out as my own collection of useful links and resources when one of my daughters was preparing for her move to college. I never guessed it would get so much traffic! But it serves a common need for a lot of parents and college students: how to find great deals and ideas for living in a college dorm.

These 3 boards won’t necessarily drive traffic directly to one of my business sites, but they do give people a look at some other areas of interest to me.

You may find it fun (and rewarding) to create a board based on one of your interests or passions. To make it even more appealing, try creating a community board – where you invite others to add Pins on the chosen topic.

To create a community board:

1. Add a new board to your Pinterest account and make sure it is set to “public”.

2. Then Edit the board and in the section “Who can add Pins?” you’ll be able to enter other users by username or email address.

Note: before creating a community board, make sure you have time to monitor it and respond to questions/requests for invites. You want the board to reflect positively on your personal brand, so you need to keep it free from spam and unrelated content.

So if you want to show a little bit more about you and your interests, try this Pinterest tip for creating some lifestyle or passion boards. And then periodically share the link to your lifestyle boards on your social media and websites.

Do you have a favorite board that shows a little more about you? Share the link to your board in a comment below, or stop by my Facebook page (click here) and share the link in a comment on the post there.
Top photo credit (derived from): sridharan01 via photopin cc

Personal Branding Tip: Use Top Keywords Consistently

An important part of building your personal brand is to get others to recognize your expertise or influence on certain topics. These topics of influence can be described with keywords: the important words or phrases you use consistently on your blog or social media posts when creating content.

So your action step is to first, create a short list of keywords that you want to be associated with.

Add keywords based on your work:

Some of the keywords may be easy to quickly to come up with, based on your business, products or goals. For example, on this blog, my focus is on personal branding, work-life balance, and positive motivation. So those would be 3 keyword phrases on my list.

Additional keywords may include words/phrases that describe your target audience. If most of my work-life balance posts are targeted towards mompreneurs, then I would add that keyword to my list.

Your keywords would include words/phrases that describe you or or your brand. Business coach, social media strategist…might be a few to put on my list.

Search for keywords based on your industry:

There may be other keywords being used in your industry that could give your brand good exposure, but you’re not quite sure of what they are.

Do some research, using tools and social media sites.

1. Check out industry “Influencers” on social media – What keywords or hashtags show up in their posts on a regular basis?

2. Find your customers (or potential customers) on social media – What keywords, topics or hashtags are they using?

3. Research hashtags using tools like Tagboard.com or Hashtagify.me to find the ones that are trending in your industry. Want to learn more about hashtags and their importance in social media? Click here to check out this post on my blog at League Computer Solutions.

4. Learn what keywords people are already using when visiting your site with Google Analytics or another tool. Click here to see a list of Keyword Research tools by Pam Dyer that might help.

Use your top keywords consistently

Now that you’ve put together a list of your top keywords, use them in your blog posts. Note that your posts should be written for your readers, and not just for search engines.

Put your keywords in posts on social media sites. Again, make sure that your posts are written with your target audience in mind and not just for keyword optimization. Keep in mind that hashtags are a popular way for people to search for topics they’re interested in, so use them in your content strategy.

Make sure your top keywords are included in your social media profiles. Wherever you have space for a bio, mission statement, background or list of skills, include your top keywords as often as you can.

So take some time to create this list of your top keywords and then put a plan in place to use them consistently in your online marketing and networking efforts.

photo credit (derived from): 4:13Studios via photopin cc