Anyone who has been marketing their business on Pinterest for very long probably has wished for 3 things:

1. To manage multiple accounts (not sure there’s a way to do that yet, Pintics claims to, but they spun off part of their business and have become more of an ecommerce play).
2. To make some boards or pins private (not available yet either).
3. The ability to schedule pins.

Now you can accomplish #3 and schedule pins in advance with at least two Pinterest tools, Pingraphy and Curalate. Scheduling is important because as a business you want to pin during popular times to increase exposure for your pins (generally speaking, before work, at lunchtime and in the evening). At the same time you want to avoid posting too much content at once and overwhelming your followers.

Here’s a short description of each tool you can use to schedule pins.

Pingraphy – www.Pingraphy.com
This is a basic tool that is free. You can’t schedule repins or upload original pins to schedule, but you can pin and schedule images you find online. You login using your Pinterest account and then use their bookmarklet (instead of Pinterest’s) when you want to pin something. You’ll also be able to see your most recent pins and quickly see if you have likes, comments or repins. Click on the image to be taken to the pin on Pinterest.

Here’s a short tutorial on how to use Pingraphy. It’s a good start but it’s not pretty or intuitive. The first time I used it I pinned their site without meaning to. I kept trying to upload a pin instead of going to another website to find and schedule a pin. Also, I’m not a fan of yet another bookmarketlet (my toolbar is getting crowded). However, you can’t argue with the price.

Curalate www.Curalate.com
Curalate is a definite step up from Pingraphy but you’ll have to pay for it. It’s ideal for heavy pinners and brands. They offer more advanced analytics and now scheduling. Instead of just choosing the board and date/time to post your pins, you can edit the URL and all of the details from your dashboard.

It also finds pins from Tweets and Facebook Likes originating from Pinterest. That way you can see which other social networks are driving traffic. Curalate costs $99/month for up to 4 users.

Have you used either tool or is there a Pinterest tool that has scheduling that we missed? Please let us know in the comments.

Author Bio: Francesca is the founder of Credible Copywriting and has written for several organizations, including Internet start-ups, advertising agencies, and small businesses, just to name a few. She has helped individuals and entities put their names and messages out there by producing quality works in the form of articles, web content, video scripts, and more. Follow her on Twitter @francescastaana.

Pinterest has truly been a boon for online stores, because it allows them to showcase their products. The same goes for image-heavy websites and blogs that publish a lot of illustrations and infographics, because they can easily use Pinterest’s graphic-friendly interface to show off their content.

But what about text-heavy websites and blogs? If your site relies on the power of content rather than images, can you still take advantage of Pinterest to drive traffic? The short answer is yes.

You can still get a lot clicks and even repins for your blog posts simply by creating pin-worthy images for your content. Take a specific quote or an attention-grabbing line from your post and put it on top of an interesting image. Don’t worry; you don’t need heavy Photoshop skills or artistic flare to do this. Creating pinnable images for your posts can be done using a simple free web app called PicMonkey.

Here’s how to do it:

Step 1: Select a good image – Find an interesting graphic that can serve as a good backdrop for text. Be sure to use an image that you can legally alter and re-post to avoid ending up in copyright hot water. The best way to do this is to buy images, or to find pictures that are under the Creative Commons license. You can also use free images, like what I did in the example below, where I used a free typewrite template.

Step 2: Use PicMonkey to edit the image – Once you’ve selected and saved an image, head over to PicMonkey.com and upload it. You’ll then be taken to an online image editor where you can crop the image and toggle with its brightness and contrast settings. Feel free to play around with the toolbar on the left-hand side to see the effects and changes that you can apply to the picture. For the typewriter example, I didn’t apply any special effects; I simply covered the “Your text here…” blurb with a white opaque box.

Step 3: Use PicMonkey to add text – When you’re comfortable with the look and feel of the picture, you can now add the text.

Copy a line or two from the blog post that you wish to pin. It could be the title, a quick description of the post, or a witty statement. Then go back to PicMonkey and paste it. The text tool is the letter “P” button on the toolbar, and the fourth icon from the top.

Paste the text onto the box on the upper left part of the page, then click “Add”. Once you do this, you should see your text appear on top of the image together with a new menu that will allow you to edit the color, size, and alignment of the text. Click on the text box to drag and position the text on the image.

When you’re satisfied with the color, size, and position of the text, hit the save button on the lower left part of the page.

Step 4: Pin that awesome image! – Last, but certainly not least is uploading your masterpiece to Pinterest. Don’t forget to include a link to the actual blog post to make sure that people will be taken to your site when they click the pin.

There you have it. The 4 steps to making your blog posts more pin-worthy. It may take more effort, not to mention a little PicMonkey experimenting to get your images just right, but once you create a good image that turns heads on Pinterest, all that extra work will undoubtedly be worth it.

Editor’s Note: We loved Francesca‘s typewriter image. We saw it on a blog post she tweeted and then asked her to share how she created it. We’re a fan of tools like PicMonkey and Pinstamatic that help you add text to images. Images with text really sell your content on Pinterest!

Like this post? Please pin it!

For the last three months we have been working on a Pinterest tool that will help people grow their business on Pinterest. We have finally finished it and we are currently in beta testing with it. So, keep your eyes open for an announcement later this week on exactly what this is (or if you want to be a beta tester join our Pinterest LinkedIn Group).

Update: our new Pinerest tool is live!