Pinterest for Photographers: Why You NEED to Use Pinterest

Every photographer should have a Pinterest account set up just for their photography.

There are several reasons to do this, and I honestly could write a whole book about this. Pinterest is an evergreen platform that does not get the recognition and credit it deserves for photographers. As a photographer myself, I can honestly say I did not utilize Pinterest as much as I should have in the past. In fact, I did not take a hard look at my own account until 2021. So with that all in mind, let’s speak openly about the benefits of using Pinterest as a photographer.

One of the most important reasons to have a an account as a photographer is because of the life line and active post time of a pin.

When you post on a website like Instagram or Facebook, that post is going to be in a user’s feed for only a few days. A single pin on Pinterest can last up to months! If not years.

Let’s put this into perspective a bit. Say you write one blog post. For this one blog post you create five images to represent it for Pinterest. Let’s say this blog post also included three other images. You can take all eight of these images and share them onto Pinterest. Each one of these images will have an opportunity to meet a different audience, a different day, and all lead back to your one blog post. With the longevity of an individual pinned on Pinterest, having just these eight pins can completely change the way your blog performs and bring in viewers you may not have otherwise had.

Another very important reason to be on Pinterest is because Pinterest is essentially a search engine of it’s own.

Think about it. When you go on Pinterest you usually look up something with the expectation that you will find an image or a blog that will answer what you just searched. It is almost like a social media Google. And this is becoming much more common in social media platforms. Think of how Instagram now lets you search for a keyword. Let’s think back to our imaginary blog post we created. Let’s imagine it is a blog post about your five favorite coffee shops in Sonoma County. Now imagine you have shared your images and links to Pinterest. Someone who may live across the country may go on Pinterest looking for tourist information and travel ideas for Sonoma County, and they will find your blog post. That is exactly what you want!

You may have noticed I’ve spoken about different social media platforms throughout this post. This is also another reason to be on Pinterest.

You want to expand your reach as much as you can, without spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on ads. By adding this one more platform, and most importantly a platform with more longevity than any other current social platform, you are expanding your reach.

With the expansion onto this platform, you are also going to expand your online portfolio.

As a photographer this is so important. People literally hire you because of the images you take. With Instagram and Facebook you may commonly find yourself sharing your images. You may even do so on LinkedIn. But Pinterest really is a whole other game. You can use keywords to not only share where you are based or where you may want to be based, but you can share keywords to expand the reach of your online portfolio and individual images. For example, let’s think back to our imaginary coffee shop blog. Say you took three photos for three of these coffee shops. You can use keywords for the town that the coffee shop is located in and you can use keywords to share the image with other photographers by describing the style and location of an image.

Everything I have talked about in this blog is what I consider the most important reason for a photographer to be on Pinterest. That is not to say there are not hundreds of more reasons to be using Pinterest. Pinterest is a versatile, expensive, use or heavy platform that everyone should be a part of. Plus there’s the added benefit of who I got to come up with also being a benefit to you as a photographer. I search for things on Pinterest all the time! It is one of my favorite places to find inspiration online.