Tag: Pinterest

2016 Social Media Platform Cheat Sheets Part 2

social media cheat sheets social-1148035_960_720The need to keep your social media presence accurate and viewable is increasing every year. Optimizing your profile pictures and sharing the best quality layouts goes a long way to representing you and your brand.

This week, we continue our adventure through the maze of social media platform specs. In this installment, our 2016 Social Media Cheat Sheets focus on LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest and … new this year … Instagram. The Instagram cheat sheet was supplied by our friends at Buzzoid, so a big thanks goes to them for wanting to educate our readers!

Unfortunately, each social media platform is different … of course! We here at Indies Unlimited are trying to make life a little easier. If you missed my last post, you can find the cheat sheets for Facebook, Twitter and Google+ here.

So, without further ado … the 2016 updated Social Media Platform Cheat Sheets for image size and general rules.  Each downloadable cheat sheet (just right click and hit “save image as”) gives you an overview of the best image sizes for each social network. Continue reading “2016 Social Media Platform Cheat Sheets Part 2”

Why Waste Time on Pinterest?

pinterestWhy should authors care about Pinterest? I considered this question as I stared at the blank Word document. Should I try to convince you that fifteen minutes a day several times per week pinning and interacting on the site could find you new readers for your work? I have always liked a challenge.

The last time I looked I had 1783 followers on the main page of my profile. This isn’t a huge number by Pinterest business standards. I am connected to pinners who have over fifty thousand followers. You must admit that is a big number. How did they gain so many followers? Are they celebrities? No, they are business people who recognized early on the unique draw of this social media site. Continue reading “Why Waste Time on Pinterest?”

How to use Pinterest to attract new readers

I am one of those people who has struggled to see the point of Pinterest. I followed the tutorials here on Indies Unlimited, put up a couple of boards related to writing and got fed up with it. I couldn’t see how it would help me as an author. [L.A. Lewandowski has blogged about Promoting Your Brand With Pinterest and more.]

Imagine my surprise when a few weeks ago I discovered that Pinterest is a fantastic marketing tool for writers and I have been a complete dummy not to see its potential. The key is to think visually. [Here’s an article on Visual Social Networking with some helpful links.] We spend all our time describing places or people in our books but Pinterest allows us to actually put up pictures to help our readers. We can now show readers the locations in which our books are set. We can use our boards to give an idea of our characters and much more.

Yes, you can load your book covers onto Pinterest but to attract more interest in your books, what you should be doing is producing interesting storyboards about your novels. These can also be rewarding for your fans. Continue reading “How to use Pinterest to attract new readers”

More Social Media Spec Sheets – YouTube, LinkedIn and Pinterest

Let’s continue with our cheat sheets for social media profiles. Last week focused on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Today, we’ll give you the specs for YouTube, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

As writers, we know how to convey emotion and drama through our words, but media is stealing the show on the social media sites. Photos and videos are where it’s at when trying to get noticed.

I hope that these charts will come in handy. Just remember, as soon as you get this down, they may be obsolete as the sites continue to change to mimic and outdo each other.