25 ways to use Pinterest, for Musicians

Jacky Stoneygate
Jul 25, 2017 · 4 min read

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is an image-sharing platform. You might think that does not make it especially compatible with music, but there is in fact a lot that musicians can do with it. Because it also acts as a search engine for images, it can also help to drive traffic back to your website or blog.

I’ve just ‘discovered’ Pinterest, having known about it for a long time. Having decided to experiment with it, I’m now wondering why I haven’t been a hardcore Pinterest user for years, as it is a great way of collecting ideas and sources of inspiration together in an organised way. I intend to use it as a way of inspiring and encouraging myself and others, as well as for sharing images that I create and organising information visually for topics I’m interested in and/or want to share with music fans.

I don’t know at this stage if using Pinterest will help my own fanbase to grow — it might just end up being a cool way of collecting together all the visual elements of what I do, or it may only help build engagement with my existing community. One thing is certain, engaging with Pinterest is making me think more about the quality and type of graphics I design, and the best way to use them.

Pinterest basics

You create ‘boards’ — which are essentially folders of images — for as many different topics as you want. When you open a board, you see all the images displayed together. The idea is to make them look as attractive as you can, as Pinterest is all about visual appeal. If you have a board that you don’t want to share publicly, or that is not ready to share yet, you can set it to be private.

You also add links to images you create, making the display more useful, so it will point back to that blog with the useful article you want to reread in the future, or direct someone to where they can hear your music.

It’s also a good idea to make it easy for visitors to your web pages who use Pinterest themselves to pin posts. For example, if you use WordPress, there are plug-ins available to display a pin button on your images, allowing easy pinning of posts that reference your pages.

25 ideas for musicians using Pinterest

Here are my ideas (so far) for the kinds of images and ways you could post to Pinterest as a musician, in no particular order.

  1. Lyric memes
  2. Events you participated in
  3. Views of your studio or equipment
  4. Computer screen grabs to show work in progress
  5. Infographics on topics you’re expert at — these are popular on Pinterest
  6. Music-related quotations
  7. Music-related cartoons and other art, including artwork created for your albums
  8. Pictures of you — performing, recording, chilling out
  9. Your cat, dog, hamster, or the giant spider you found in the corner that just scared you witless. Basically, things that show you’re a real human being with a life! Food pictures always seem to be popular on social media, too, even though they’re not usually directly relevant to your music.
  10. Stills from your videos or photos of their making
  11. Gigs you went to — posters/photos/tickets — share the love with other artists!
  12. Things that inspire you to write/sing/play/produce your music
  13. Your musical influences.
  14. Latest news — eg a poster of your gig schedule. If you have a latest news board on Pinterest, you’ll need to maintain it regularly, of course.
  15. Your band’s merchandise (linking back to where your fans can find it).
  16. Pictures from your blogposts (You should also give pictures used on your blog alt names and descriptive filenames to make them search-friendly).
  17. Images of places you have toured.
  18. Dance, fashion, memorabilia associated with your genre of music, if that’s part of your scene.
  19. Playlists — e.g. a list of music you’d put on for a party, a screenshot of one of your Spotify playlists, or a nice infographic listing tunes on a YouTube playlist you made for your YouTube channel. Link back to the external sites so that people can enjoy the actual playlist and not just the graphic.
  20. Chord + lyrics sheets of your songs and those you cover or would like to learn, plus your setlist.
  21. You can also share music and videos on Pinterest. (But note: a board with several tunes in it will not trigger the next song to play).
  22. Memes and pictures which will encourage you/your fans when you’re having a bad day — be prepared!
  23. Songwriting tips and writing prompts that pique your interest, and/or music theory information, to help get the creative juices flowing if you get stuck writing.
  24. When browsing, pin photographs from relevant articles that you want to read later to a ‘read later’ board. (Your pin should include the link; this is added automatically if you’re using Pinterest’s Chrome plug-in). After reading, move useful articles to a board of relevant items to stay organised — this board may be a useful resource later for you/others.
  25. And last but not least, you should pin other related Pinterest users’ posts — it’s really important to do this as Pinterest is a social networking site. It is recommended that 80% of what you post is re-pinned from other users and 20% your own content.

NB: Pinterest, like Twitter, expects its users to use the service in moderation, and will start to limit your activity if you do too much in too short a time. (I found this out the hard way, oops!)

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