5 Free Tools for More Powerful Pinterest Marketing Make the most of your online marketing campaign without spending any money.
By Brian Honigman Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Pinterest, the third most popular social network in the U.S., offers marketers a number of opportunities to extend the reach of their business through engaging visuals and a platform designed to make sharing quality content simple.
But marketers have limited time, especially when new social networks seem to pop up all the time. The good news is that there are several tools that can help you use time more efficiently on Pinterest. And many don't cost a penny to use.
Here's a look at five free tools that can make your marketing efforts on Pinterest more effective:
1. Pin Alerts. This tool sends email alerts to your inbox when images from your website are pinned on Pinterest. The idea behind Pin Alerts is similar to that of Google Alerts, except instead of selecting which keywords you want to monitor, you choose which domains to monitor. It allows monitoring of multiple domains and the ability to change the frequency in which you receive notifications about pinned content.
Pin Alerts can provide real-time insights on what visual content is resonating with your Pinterest audiences. At the same time, it lets you see who's pinning your content.
Related: How 4 Small Businesses Are Winning on Pinterest
2. Pinerly. This is one of the few tools available for measuring the progress of your Pinterest campaigns. By using a simple dashboard, marketers can pin new content through Pinerly to their boards to track their progress in terms of likes, clicks and repins.
The dashboard can be helpful for learning about past Pinterest campaigns and structuring future ones. Other features such as suggestions on accounts to follow and content to pin can also be sources of inspiration to bolster the reach and the freshness of your boards.
3. Pin Search. Pin Search is a plugin for Google's Chrome browser that allows you to search a Pinterest image on Google, giving you all the websites where the picture appears, similar images, info about the photographer and more. This information can prove beneficial when conducting competitive research or devising future Pinterest campaigns.
4. Pinvolve. The Pinvolve tool is a Facebook app that allows a business to display its Pinterest pins on its Facebook Page. Fans can pin your Pinterest images and share them on Facebook from your page. It also displays the images shared on your Facebook page so that they resemble Pinterest pins. Bottom line, Pinvolve makes it easy for your fans to share your content where they feel most comfortable.
Related: The 10 Commandments of Using Pinterest for Business
5. Pinstamatic. This tool can help you create and pin content such as snapshots of your website, quotes, text, sticky notes, Twitter snapshots, songs from Spotify, calendar dates, location maps and photos with captions. The easy-to-use Pinstamatic dashboard gives marketers the ability to create content for pinning on Pinterest without the need of editing software or skills. The tool also serves as a source of inspiration for new boards and future campaigns.
Which tools are you using to help bolster your marketing efforts on Pinterest? Share your thoughts in the comments below.