Whether your book is fiction or nonfiction, you can use Pinterest to create a better book by creating research boards.
What is a “research board”?
Basically, it is a board or series of boards that have images that link to anything related to your book. Take a look at these amazing research boards created by Alexa Chipman who writes young adult fantasy and science fiction.
You can create a board that takes place in the area your book focuses on: a state, city, park, or building.
Create separate boards for different categories of your book, such as: book cover ideas, characters, food, clothes, time period, places, spaces, weather, history, events, and anything else that will get you into the creative mood for writing your book.
For instance, let’s say you’re writing a mystery story that takes place in Corvallis, Oregon. Create a new board called “Corvallis, Oregon.” Now you can pin images, articles, videos, anything, and everything that happens in Corvallis.
3 benefits of your research board
1. Use your board to write description passages. If you have pinned images of a restaurant, you can look at those to get into a visual sense of the place. Ask yourself questions as you look at the pictures. What is the weather like? What kind of clothes are people wearing? What’s the atmosphere like?
2. Measure interest in your board. Do you have any traffic to your board? Use a site like Pinpuff to measure the popularity of your board. Knowing if anyone is interested in your book location can be valuable information to marketing your book in that area.
3. Build your book platform while collecting information for your book. What attracts people to go to Corvallis? By targeting those areas, you can fill your board with pins that match interest. People who visit one of your boards will likely visit your other boards. Make sure that they know you are writing a book and that it will highlight areas of their greatest interests.
At Wheatmark, our work with authors does not stop once their books are published. In fact that is just the beginning. That is why we place an emphasis on educating our authors about book marketing.
