What local TV newsrooms are pinning on Pinterest

Still not quite sure what to pin on your newsroom’s Pinterest boards? That’s OK, it’s a work in progress for just about everyone. But we are starting to see some trends with early adopters in local TV stations around the country. So if you’re looking for some (p)inspiration… here are the top 5 types of Pinterest Boards being used by newsrooms right now:

1. Food and Recipes

As is the case platform-wide, Food and Recipe boards are the most active for newsrooms. They have the most followers and the most repins. The problem is that many newsrooms are simply aggregating or repining recipes from other people into their Recipe Board. So they are driving traffic to other websites; but not their own. Nonetheless, these boards are getting traction… check out WHSV’s Tastes of the Valley board which has built an impressive 1200+ followers:

2. Behind the Scenes/Meet the Team

These are boards filled with Pinned photos of reporters and anchors on the set or in the field. The boards with the most followers and repins tend to be those that are truly offering unique content (rather than a collection of head shots). KARK 4 Today does a nice job of including fun shots of the talent during commercial breaks or when the cameras aren’t on.

3. Pets/Animals

Pinterest is a visual platform…and let’s face it, cute animals are very pin-able. We’re seeing newsrooms use this as a way to promote their partnership with local animal shelters by pinning photos of pets that are available for adoption. And we’re also seeing pins of images associated with pet-friendly web stories. The Fox 8 Hearts Animals board does a nice job of both:

4. Weather

For some, this is simply a collection of beautiful cityscapes. For others, it’s a montage of weather maps and detailed forecasts. Either way, this type of content seems to do pretty well on Pinterest. Again, the more visually appealing, the better. Here, WPTV’s South Florida Weather board features a collection of stunning images from around town:

5. News

Ok, maybe this is obvious. But pinning images from news stories is fairly common with newsroom Pinterest boards. Generally, the more visual the story, the more likely it is to get repined. But overall, despite their prevalence, the news boards aren’t getting nearly the number of followers or repins as the more personal, fun boards. And, as is the case with the WBAY-TV2 News you can use board, many of the pins are aggregated from other websites, cutting down on referral traffic potential:

Overall, there’s a lot of creativity happening on Pinterest. Which is a good thing. It remains to be seen what best practices will shake out. But in the meantime, here are a few more creative boards you might want to check out:

Have you seen other cool Pinterest boards from local newsrooms? Let us know in the comments. And check out this list of TV stations on Pinterest for more ideas.

Kim Wilson is the Founder of SocialNewsDesk,a social media management platform for newsrooms. You can follow her on Twitter @kimsnd or @socialnewsdesk.