I'm a blogger whose self-publishing roots go back to a zine about BMX freestyle in 1985. I started blogging seriously while out of work in late 2008. I began by blogging about my BMX industry days in the 1980's, the blog took off, found an audience in that weird niche, and I've been blogging ever since. By blogging, I don't mean, "I write one blog post a month, and 12 people have read my blog in three years."
In 12 1/2 years I've tried over 25 blog ideas out, written over 2,400 posts, and attracted over 438,000 page views on niche blogs. None of my blogs have been financially profitable in and of themselves. I blog about things that interest me. To make some money with my audience, I took to promoting a weird form of Sharpie marker art I invented, and selling that with the help of my blogs and social media, in 2015.
It was in that search to find cheap ways to promote my Sharpie marker art (#sharpiescribblestyle), that I got into Pinterest. I'd heard of Pinterest, of course. My sister is a teacher, and told me she loved it, back in 2011 or so. But I knew it as a social media platform for women looking for recipes, craft projects, and DIY home improvement ideas. So, as a guy, I ignored it for years.
Then, in 2016, as I started getting steady work for my art, I wanted to keep that going. I googled "Sharpie art" to see how other artists were promoting their work. I clicked over to an image search. As I looked at photo after photo of artwork, one thing became clear, most of those top images were on Pinterest.
So I signed up to Pinterest, and took to YouTube, looking for how-to videos about Pinterest. Over the next couple of years, I found out that Pinterest is a monster form of free promotion for anything visual. Don't believe me? Do a Google image search right now for, "#sharpiescribblestyle, Steve Emig." (That's sharpie scribble style). I just did this on my laptop. The first 31 images that came up were all my artwork. Over half of the next two rows of images were my work as well. I OWN the first page of Google results, and it didn't cost my a dime. I did it with blogs and Pinterest. For free. It just took a bit of time on a regular basis, and not that much time.
If you are a real estate agent, broker, or in the home design or decorating field, would you like to OWN the the whole first page of Google search results? Not just the top spot, but most or all of the entire first page or both text and image results? Yeah? I thought you would. Pinterest, as it turns out, is a monster, when used right, to help build your web presence, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and to promote real estate in particular. In coming posts on this blog I will go into more details of how to use Pinterest effectively, particularly for real estate and home businesses.
For now, here are some current stats on Pinterest, to get you looking at it for its real estate possibilities.
-Pinterest has 478 million active monthly viewers. Facebook has about 2.8 billion, for comparison. Yes, Facebook is much bigger, and has many uses in communication and promotion. But Pinterest is much bigger than most people think it is.
-Pinterest users are 60% female. That's actually down, percentage wise, for about 80%, 3 or 4 years ago. Pinterest has grown tremendously in users over the last 2-3 years, and got a big boost in 2020, like all social media. But it still skews towards women, who use it for "aspirational and motivational" purposes.
-The average user age on Pinterest is 40. That, combined with the large number of monthly users, is another reason it's a great platform for real estate businesses.
-34% of Pinterest users have an income between $50,000 and $74,999. That's individual income of the user, not household income. So by promoting on Pinterest, you're targeting an audience that's 40 years old and fairly affluent, right form the start.
-Home decor and design ideas is the number one reason people use Pinterest.
All of these stats are available with a quick Google search (August 2021). There are many more. But I think I've got your attention. While Pinterest worked well to promote my artwork, my Sharpie art, by it's nature, isn't very profitable. My drawings just take to long to draw. I was looking for new areas to blog about, and to use Pinterest because I just like Pinterest in general.
When I thought about real estate, I was amazed.
Hardly anyone in the real estate world uses Pinterest, and only a handful of people really use it well. It's a huge Social media platform that almost seems to have been designed for real estate professionals, and very few of them use it. It's wide open. So I decided to write a "How-to use Pinterest for real estate" book. In the process of that, another idea came to me. Why not blog about real estate trends, something I've had and interest in for years, and build a really cool Pinterest page to promote the blog? So that's what I'm doing. I decided to have some fun with my Pinterest page. Here it is.
Big Transition Real Estate Trends Pinterest page
Tip #1 for starting a Pinterest page to promote your real estate business. Start a personal Pinterest page, and learn to build boards on subject that you find interesting. Start with a personal page, and build it a while, learn the platform. You can turn a personal page into a business page at any time, with a few clicks.
Stay tuned for more tips that I've learned about using Pinterest, and other real estate related topics.
Disclaimer: This blog is for educational and entertainment purposes only. I am not a real estate agent, broker, financial planner, designer, or any other kind of traditional real estate professional. I'm a blogger and artist, with an interest in real estate, financial, and social trends.
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