This post, The Writer’s Secret Hack: Easy Pinterest Marketing with ChatGPT was originally published on Medium. [Friend Link]

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Even though I’ve written books about Pinterest marketing, I’ll be the first to admit — most of us would rather write our next chapter than create Pinterest pins.

Despite my hesitations, Pinterest has been a great tool for reaching readers. If you’re smart about how you use it, Pinterest can help your writing and business gain visibility and promote engagement.

After years of trial and error, I can safely say you don’t have to live and breathe Pinterest to see results. By cleverly combining Pinterest’s search-engine magic with ChatGPT’s content-creating powers, you can build a strong Pinterest presence by showing up a few hours each week. No expensive tools or daily posting required.

If you’ve been on the fence about using ChatGPT, then you might try it with your Pinterest Marketing strategy.

ChatGPT Overview

If you aren’t familiar with ChatGPT or haven’t used it, let’s look at how it works.

ChatGPT is one of many platforms created by OpenAI, a company that develops artificial intelligence tools to help make technology more accessible and “benefits all of humanity”. Other AI tools include Claude (Anthropic), Gemini (Google), and Copilot (Microsoft). ChatGPT is the platform that most people talk about when referring to AI tools. You can create a free account here.

Using ChatGPT is simple. Imagine having a conversation with a knowledgeable friend who can help you brainstorm ideas, write descriptions, or suggest strategies. You type in what you need help with (these are called “prompts”), and ChatGPT responds with suggestions.

In using ChatGPT for Pinterest, it’s not only useful for things like Pinterest keywords or descriptions but also for finding help with your strategy, suggestions for visual imagery, and improving your copy. You can also research Pinterest best practices or have ChatGPT suggest ways to improve your analytics.

When you want to create, plan, strategize, or make improvements, ChatGPT can assist your efforts.

Although ChatGPT gets a bad rap from a lot of writers, I’ve found it helpful. I don’t want it to write my book for me, but it assists me with the nitty gritty and helps me when I’m stuck and uninspired. ChatGPT can help you in a variety of ways so you can spend more time doing what you love.

Getting Started with Pinterest Marketing

To get started, you need to have a Pinterest for Business account. If you are brand new to Pinterest, hop over to Pinterest for Business and set up an account.

Your Pinterest for Business account and profile should be ready to go and hopefully you’ve taken the platform for a spin and understand the basics.

When starting with Pinterest, it’s important to understand the platform. Pinterest values genuine, authentic content. When using AI, even for ideas and strategy, it can leave the impression of being disingenuous. However, I would encourage you to use your own voice on Pinterest.

If you view AI as an assistant, not a replacement, then your voice will always shine through.

Setting Up Your Pinterest Marketing Strategy

First, consider your goals:

• Are you promoting your books directly?
• Do you want to share writing tips for building authority?
• Are you trying to grow your email list with lead magnets?
• Do you hope to build an audience in your genre?

Select 1–2 goals to get started. You can always refine or expand on this later.

Based on your 1–2 goals and your target audience, you should think about topics or themes for your content. If you’re focused on promoting your sci-fi books and want to build an audience in your genre, you might use topics such as “science fiction books”, “sci fi quotes”, or “science fiction reading lists”. Hint: Ask ChatGPT for help! You can also use the categories from your website, if that helps.

Create a list of topics that would resonate with your audience. This could also include the title of your book or website, behind the scenes writing process, and reader lifestyle content.

Once you are happy with your list, you will have a good idea for content you want to use on Pinterest, as well as any Pinterest boards you want to create and people you want to follow.

Pinterest Marketing and Content

As a writer, you want to focus on your writing. Marketing your work might not be your cup of tea. The great thing about Pinterest is that it is less about growing your fan base with comments, followers, and likes, and more about your content.

Pinterest is more like a search engine, so using keywords will help your content rise to the top. The best thing about Pinterest is that people are searching for content just like yours.

When you develop your content, whether it’s a blog post or a product page, consider your keywords and how you will use them on your website.

Because Pinterest content is visual, Google ranks Pinterest pages in visual searches and content that its users are searching. When you use Rich Pins, it provides extra metadata that Google can crawl and display in a search.

If you have a website, you most likely are already using keywords for your content.

Plug the keywords that you’ve researched into the search bar on Pinterest. What do you find?

In the example above, I used the phrase for my blog post, “Beta Readers”. There are many ways you can incorporate this phrase into your post, which is why I use a plugin tool for WordPress called AIOSEO* that tells me how to rank better by using this keyword.

For Pinterest, we want to use this keyword as well, but also find similar phrases. When I search Pinterest, I get some other ideas:

• Beta Readers Questions
• Beta Readers Worksheet
• Beta Readers Checklist
• Questions to Beta Readers

Typically, you’d use these keywords in your blog post and in content you post to Pinterest. However, I’m going to use some of these search terms on ChatGPT to help me with Pinterest.

ChatGPT Prompts

When you use AI, you want to feed the platform as much information as you can about what you are doing.

For strategy, you could use these prompts:

• Analyze these Pinterest keywords [insert your keywords] and suggest related phrases that could perform well based on current search trends for [your audience or niche].
• Generate 10 engaging Pinterest pin titles using the keyword [your keyword] that align with SEO best practices.
• Suggest visual content ideas for pins related to [your topic] that would appeal to my target audience of [describe audience].

ChatGPT for Pinterest Marketing

ChatGPT is there to assist you, so if you feel like the list is too overwhelming, use prompts to get more specific results. For instance, “Can you provide 5 results or less”. This can help with overwhelm.

Once you find a strategy you want to work with, then you can move on to getting ideas for other types of content creation.

Using AI for Pinterest Marketing & Content Creation

Continuing with the Beta Readers theme, let’s say I created several pins and used the keywords mentioned above that I found using Pinterest. When you use Pinterest to save your content, you will first need to create a Pinterest board.

Think of a Pinterest board as a file. Each board has a topic or theme and only that type of content will “live” on that board. The topic can be broad, like “Self-Publishing” or it can be more specific, such as “Self-Publishing for Non-Fiction Authors”. The key is to find the phrases that Pinterest users are searching for and tie that to the content you are saving on Pinterest.

When you create a board, you will need these elements:

• Name
• Description

For the name of the board, you can use the keywords you found on Pinterest.

For the description, use a prompt in ChatGPT. The description can be 1–2 sentences. There is no need to use hashtags. Ask the AI platform for ideas for your board description.

Example Prompt: I need a Pinterest board description that is 1–2 sentences and uses these keywords: beta readers, beta readers checklist, and question to beta readers. Give me 3 examples.

I would then select one option and rewrite it, so it sounds more specific to my board and my brand.

Plug your refined description for the board and then save it. Once you’ve created your Pinterest boards, then you can add pins, or graphic images that lead to your content, to the boards. You’ll add your own content to your boards but also include other content that relates to the topic.

Using AI for Pinterest images

Since Pinterest looks at relevancy, one good tip is to always use one of your images from your website or blog post and use it in your pin. If you use Canva, you can find Pinterest templates and then just pop the image in the template and update the text. Then upload that image to Pinterest and link it to your URL. Pinterest will see it’s related and prioritize it.

While ChatGPT won’t make images for you (I don’t suggest you use AI art), it can offer image suggestions for specific posts.

With ChatGPT, use the following template for help with creating Pinterest pins:

Help me plan a Pinterest image for [topic/niche].

The image should:

• Target audience: [describe ideal viewer]
• Emotional response: [desired feeling]
• Style: [modern/vintage/minimal/etc.]
• Color scheme: [preferences]
• Main elements to include: [list key components]
• Composition: [vertical/horizontal/specific layout]
• Seasonal relevance: [if applicable]

Here’s an example prompt based on the above template:

Help me plan a Pinterest image for writing craft tips.

The image should:

• Target audience: Fiction writers working on their craft
• Emotional response: Focused, motivated, creative
• Style: Minimalist and artistic
• Color scheme: black, white, one bold accent color
• Main elements: Typewriter or quill imagery, writing quotes
• Composition: Central focus on breathing space
• Seasonal relevance: Year-round appeal

ChatGPT will offer suggestions based on your description. You can also use a prompt asking for the title overlay, a call to action, and other elements. Here’s part of the results I received from ChatGPT after entering the above prompt:

When using ChatGPT, I toss aside the things that make little sense for me and keep the ones that work with my brand. Then I can create other prompts to get more specific until I’m happy with the results.

Using ChatGPT for Pinterest Pins

Let’s also use this method for your Pinterest pins. Use an image or graphic you created for your blog post or page. You can upload it to Pinterest and then link it to your URL.

You’ll need to consider the following Pinterest pin elements:

• Title
• Description
• Alt Text
• URL
• Tags (if using the mobile app)

Alternately, you can also pull the information from a URL without adding all the information above.

(Note: TastyPins* will allow you to craft the title, description, and so forth using their plugin for WordPress. Then you can easily upload it to Pinterest with all your researched keywords. Even if you use this plugin, you will still use ChatGPT to create these elements. You’ll just do it on your website using the tool instead of on Pinterest.)

Use ChatGPT to help write a title. You can use up to 100 characters, so include this in the prompt:

Example Prompt: Create a Pinterest Pin Title for [keywords 1 and keywords 2] that is 100 characters or less and targets [audience or niche].

Edit this title as needed.

Then prompt ChatGPT again for examples for a description with a character limit of 500 characters. The purpose of the description is so the Pinterest algorithm can determine relevance for how to deliver your pin to the right audience. So once again, keywords are going to be important here.

The alt tag is for describing the image and is read aloud by screen readers. It’s best to use this to explain what visual and text elements are on the pin.

The destination link or URL will be the link you want readers to visit when they click on your pin image.

If you are using the mobile app, you can also select tags to use with your pin. These are vague, such as “writing” or “self-publishing” but are useful for relevancy.

Save Time on Pinterest Marketing with ChatGPT

After you’ve created your prompts on ChatGPT, then you can always go back and edit them, and ChatGPT will create a new message.

Go to the edit pencil tool for one of your prompts. Edit it with new keywords. Then click on Send. You’ll now see another copy (in my example, 3/3). You can go back to the original using the arrows.

Measuring Success with Pinterest Marketing

The last thing I want to touch on is Pinterest analytics. It’s important to track how your pins are doing.

Pinterest is a long game, so you want to evaluate your pins after 30–90 days.

Note: You can find your analytics in the Business Hub and Business Manager.

Here’s a good starting point:

• 2–3% engagement rate
• 0.5–1% click-through rate (CTR)
• 100–300 monthly saves per active pin

Obviously, this will change based on your niche, when your account started, how often you post, and your existing platform presence. Try to aim for a 5%-10% monthly increase in impressions.

Here are some ChatGPT prompts to try:

1) Analyze these Pinterest metrics for [time period]:

· Impressions: [number]

· Saves: [number]

· Click-through rate: [percentage]

· Engagement rate: [percentage]

Provide insights on performance and suggest 3 specific improvements.

2) Based on these top-performing pins: [List pins and their metrics]

Identify:

3) Common elements driving success

4) Best-performing topics/themes

5) Optimal posting times

6) Suggestions for future content

Besides the suggestions from ChatGPT, you could also update your pin descriptions and titles or create more pins for the ones that are doing well.

Track your analytics monthly and update your strategy. ChatGPT can make the process easy when you use prompts to ask for specifics.

Summary

Pinterest marketing doesn’t have to consume your writing time. Focus on a sustainable weekly routine:

1. Dedicate 1–2 hours weekly to create 3–5 quality pins
2. Use ChatGPT to streamline:

• Pin descriptions and titles
• Board descriptions
• Visual content planning
• Keyword research

3. Review Pinterest Marketing Analytics monthly to refine your strategy

Start with these basic steps, analyze what works, and adjust as needed.

Your time is something you can’t get back.

With ChatGPT, you can save time on the grunt work and focus more on the best parts of your writing and business.