Automation from Tumblr to Pinterest: Tumblr and Pinterest are the best social networks for people who want to totally immerse themselves in great visual content, but connecting the two so you can pin or post the same content on both platforms can be a bit tricky.
Automation From Pinterest to Tumblr, it’s easy
If you just want to publish all your pins from Pinterest on your Tumblr blog, There’s an easy way to automate that process with a handy online automation service called IFTTT (If This Then That). You can create your own recipe IFTTT or just use an existing recipe that reads the RSS feed of your Pinterest account and post the new pins on Tumblr.
Automation from Tumblr to Pinterest may not be that easy.
Unfortunately, if you want to do the opposite – pin Tumblr posts to Pinterest – you’ll have to use a different alternative. IFTTT is an absolutely wonderful tool for automating online posting, but since Pinterest only works through the RSS feed and can’t be added as a channel of its own yet, IFTTT can’t access your account to pin automatically anything from Tumblr to Pinterest.
This may change in the future, but for now, you’ll have to stick with the next best method: use the Pinterest bookmarklet to easily pin anything you find on Tumblr to your Pinterest boards.
Using the Pinterest Bookmarklet
If you’re not already familiar, Pinterest has a convenient tool you can use to easily near anything you see on the website directly to any of your boards Pinterest. It’s called a button in It» and you can find it by scrolling down the page of Pinterest Goodies.
- Drag the pin it button to your bookmarks bar Web navigator.
From the Pinterest Goodies page click the Pin It button and simply drag and drop it in the bookmarks bar of your web browser. You should notice that the Pinterest “P” logo appears automatically if you’ve done it right.
- Browse Tumblr until you find something you want to pin on Pinterest.
Now you can keep browsing your Tumblr board until you find something you want to pin. If you are interested in the correct configuration of the URLs source all your pins, then you may want to click on the notes in the post to be taken to the actual live blog post so you can pin it from there.
- Press the Pin It button when you found something to pin and select the image you want to pin.
Once you’ve hit the Pin It button, you’ll be shown a page with all the images pulled from the site you just viewed. (Note that this method works for all websites, not just Tumblr.) Hover over the image you want, click the Pin It button that appears above the image, and you can then select your board and fill in the rest of the details.
Everything you pin via the Pin It button is pinned directly to your boards, so you never have to manually save Tumblr photos to your computer or mobile device and then upload them to Pinterest. Pinterest also offers some how-to tips on how to install the Pinterest bookmarklet on your iPhone’s web browser.
Admittedly, it’s a bit frustrating that there’s no way to automatically post pins from elsewhere on the web, especially considering so many other social networks allow you to do so, but considering how popular Pinterest has become, it’s probably Hopefully better options for board automation and management will appear in the future. Hang in there with the Pin It tool for now!
