Pinterest: Not Just Another Social Media Channel – Part III of III

In this final blog post, I have loads of ideas for how nonprofits can use Pinterest and create interesting and sticky pins.

If you have additional ideas, or would like to share ideas that have worked (or not worked) for your nonprofit, please comment below!

Environmental Organizations

  • Recycling or reuse projects in your city or community
  • Parks and local green areas
  • Outdoor activities for people of all ages
  • Endangered species
  • Community cleanups
  • Earth Day
  • Gardening, responsible watering, plants, community tree plant-a-thons
  • DIY green – rain barrels, composting, small solar projects

Animal Shelter/Rescue

  • Adoptable pets
  • Rescue success stories
  • Topical news about animals
  • Donate now
  • Wishlist
  • Sponsors/supporters
  • Quality pet food, pet products, toys
  • Animal events occurring within the community
  • Pet food recipes/treats
  • Funny animal pics/videos

School*

  • Student projects
  • Art from art class
  • Video of different teachers – thirty seconds each
  • Activities for kids/pre-teens/teens to download
  • Amazon wishlist
  • Favorite books by grade/year
  • Musical instruments offered by band department
  • Classroom decorating ideas/contest
  • Curricula/syllabi

*Be aware of your school’s regulations about including children’s recognizable faces

Women’s Organization

  • Influential women in history
  • Women in politics or positions of prominence
  • Local ‘Superwomen’ – collaborative community board
  • Mom of the Year
  • Local girl or young women’s groups/events
  • Issues around discrimination in the workplace
  • Women’s health
  • Reproductive rights (if applicable)
  • Mothering-related (if applicable)
  • Healthy diet and lifestyle

Hospital/Health-Related

  • Medical research stories related to your mission/area of expertise
  • Wishlist, toys, cheer items
  • Infographics about specific health issues
  • Healthy lifestyle – exercise, balanced meals, stress reducers
  • Positive images/video of healthy people who have benefitted from your service or care
  • Fundraising

Veteran’s Organization

  • Soldiers returning from overseas or active duty
  • Armed Services historical photos
  • Military awards and medals
  • Uniforms from different branches
  • Working animals in the military
  • Important events or dates in military history
  • Family support
  • Acclimating to civilian life or return to the States
  • Medical/mental information specific to vets

Member Organization

  • Member pictures/stories
  • Brag board for ‘above-and-beyond’ member accomplishment
  • Images/videos related to organization’s mission
  • Toolkits – resources, apps, websites relevant to your members
  • Upcoming events
  • How-to videos
  • Benefits offered to members
  • Bookstore, swag, ongoing education/certification

Top 5 Reasons To Join Pinterest

Reason #1 – Huge Community

Pinterest is a rapidly growing community, composed of users who are hungry for a different kind of social media experience.

Reason #2 – Engaged Audience

Pinterest has an engaged audience that closely matches the target audience for many nonprofits.

Reason #3 – Gifts

The Gifts section is widely visited and provides exposure for your nonprofit fundraising efforts.

Reason #4 – Analytics

You can easily track referral traffic through Google Analytics and ShareThis/AddThis

  • See which images from your site have been pinned by going to:http://pinterest.com/source/yourdomain.org/
  • Use third-party tools like Pinreach.com (analytics only),
  • Pinerly.com (analytics, pin scheduler, management tool)

Reason #5 – Referral Traffic

Pins back to your website count as referring traffic / incoming links and can help improve your search engine ranking.

  • Pinterest generates more referral traffic to websites than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn COMBINED

Resources

The following are resources that I used while researching this blog.