Pinterest has been described as a blogger’s paradise.
Surprised?
–>I was.
Not only is it a paradise, Pinterest is also the main source of traffic for most bloggers.
Right?
–>Absolutely.
Like me, you must have created a few Pinterest Boards for your special interests.
You then randomly added pins to your Boards without any clear strategy.
Now, another surprise…..>
Ready?
Pinterest is a search engine!
That threw me. I always thought it was a social media platform.
When you delve into and understand Pinterest, you soon realise it is a very powerful search engine.
Over 200m people use Pinterest every month performing 2 billion searches monthly.
It is a monster you cannot ignore!
Not only is it a powerful traffic engine for bloggers, it is also a great income generating machine.
This review will cover the following:
Inside My Pinterest Account
Any serious blogger needs to develop a Pinterest strategy to grow traffic to their blog and generate an income.
I had known about Pinterest for a while but never had the time to understand how it worked until the holidays at the end of December 2017 when I finally decided to have a go.
I implemented a Pinterest strategy and was astonished at the results.
See my Pinterest Analytics screenshot below to see the immediate impact of my strategy.
My previously mundane viewers spiked, growing from 240 to 3000 within 2 weeks and has been rising exponentially since.
In the scheme of things, the figures may be small but it is a growth of 1114% in 2 weeks!
This was reflected in my Google Analytics blog traffic which also grew correspondingly from December 2017.
I will share the changes I made and the strategy you can employ today to grow your Pinterest and blog traffic.
Tailwind is a big part of the story but more of that later.
My Pinterest Strategy
Here are the 10 steps that helped grow my Pinterest traffic from 240 to 3000 in 2 weeks.
You can use the same today to boost your blog traffic.
1. Switch from a Personal to a Pinterest Business Account.
Do you have a personal Pinterest account or are you not on Pinterest at all?
If you want to grow your blog as a business, you need to switch to a Business account.
With a business account, you get access to Pinterest Analytics, an invaluable tool.
Switching to a business account is very simple and easy – literally takes 15 sec.
Here are the 4 steps to take:
- If you have a personal profile, log out of it
- Go to Pinterest for Business and click Join as a Business
- Fill out details about your business and the person who’ll manage the profile
- Read and accept the Business Terms of Service and click Create Account.
That’s all it takes.
Now confirm your website.
2. Confirm Your Website
Having created your Pinterest business account, you need to confirm your blog website with Pinterest.
By confirming your website, any Pins from your site will have your profile picture added next to them.
You will also get access to website analytics so you can see what people are saving from your website.
There are two ways to claim your website – with a metatag or uploading an HTML file.
Navigate to your Account settings.
Click on your profile in the top right corner.
Under “Claim Website”, enter your website URL and click on Claim Website.
Select the metatag or HTML file option and follow the instructions.
If you get stuck, Pinterest has a helpful guide.
You will get a green check button like below once your website is confirmed.
3. Optimize Your Profile
I researched some of the most successful bloggers on Pinterest.
They shared a uniform pattern in the manner they dispayed their profiles.
Their names (first or full name), were followed by a vertical line and then they mentioned their interest or specialty.
Use keywords to help people searching for what you offer.
Your bio should be informative, telling people who you are and what you do.
Add a call to action, like a link to a free email course or email list.
Use a photo that shows your face clearly and not a whole body shot.
See my profile below.
4. Set up Rich Pins
Rich pins are very important for the success of your blog posts on Pinterest.
Rich pins will display your website name and favicon under each pin that originate from your blog or website.
Users are therefore able to find the source of the pins.
To enable rich pins on WordPress, follow a 3 -step process:
1.) Install the Yoast SEO Plugin and activate it. Enable the “Advanced Settings pages”.
2.) Log in to Pinterest’s Rich Pin Validator, add a link to any of your blog posts (not the homepage) and click “validate.”
3.) A message will appear after validating that says “your pin’s been validated.”
Click apply now and a pop up with your website’s domain and “HTML tags” will appear.
Click “apply now” and voila! your rich pins are enabled.
Cool huh!
5. Create high-quality pins and images
Pinterest is a very visual and viral platform, with an 80% content share rate.
The quality of the images and pins is important if y0u are to stand out and attract an audience.
Here are some features you should adopt in creating your pins:
- Vertical images – images should be longer than they are wide.The standard is 735pixels x 1102 pixels. I use Canva to create my Pinterest images. Picmonkey also has Pinterest templates and is useful for resizing images.
- Use large easy to read fonts. Keep it simple. Avoid too fancy fonts that may be difficult to read.
- Use beautiful and attractive images. There are loads of free stock resources to choose from.
- Employ warm colours and avoid a person’s face in the image (I was guilty of this in my old pins).
- Make multiple pins (up to 5) for each blog post. If you are lucky, one or two may go viral!.
- Be consistent in your design and branding– using the same fonts and colours for your pins. You can create templates and modify them as necessary for each post.
- Use catchy titles and descriptions on your pins incorporating the keywords that relate to the post.
6. Optimize your pin images for Pinterest and SEO
Pinterest is a venerable search engine. You want your pins to rank highly on Pinterest.
Tastypins is a tool with which you can set descriptions for your images to help them perform well in Pinterest search.
You can include hash tags and keywords.
Your image’s alt text should be used to describe what the image is, not to add a description for Pinterest.
Tasty Pins allows you to do both!
There is a dedicated Pinterest description box for your images.
Tastypins also allows you to easily create hidden Pinterest-specific images on your website
7. Set up Boards and Join Pinterest Group Board
—>Set up some boards to include some with diverse appeal and others that relate to your blog topic.
—>Optimize your boards for SEO to increase the chances of your board and pins being found in search.
Use simple titles and write specific and detailed descriptions incorporating the important keywords and title of the board.
—>Then find group boards to join. Group boards are those where the main owner gives you permission to join and pin with them.
Find boards with at least 2k or more followers. Your content will be exposed to this large audience when you pin to them.
There are 2 ways to find group boards:
- They have a small icon on the corner of the board of two people figures. When you click on the board, the first contributor at the top is the board owner and the one to email for permission. You have to follow them and the board on Pinterest as a rule.
- You can use PinGroupie to search for boards in your niche with a high number of followers and a high repin rate.
8. Pin regularly and consistently
Like you any platform, you have to be active and visible.
Pin consistently and regularly.
Pin other people’s content onto your boards and group boards (check the terms and conditions for each group board).
Pin high quality pins with lots of repins.
The more you share content from other bloggers, the greater the chances of having your own content re-pinned.
Many bloggers recommend pinning throughout the day up to 25 – 50 times daily.
However it is the quality of pins you share that is paramount.
Pinning can be done manually.
If however, like me, you don’t have the time to pin throughout the day, a scheduling software would be most welcome.
This is where Tailwind comes in.
Remember, I mentioned Tailwind at the beginning of this post?
Yes?
—>Great, now let’s get stuck in!
I knew about Tailwind in my random reading but didn’t appreciate its usefulness until my Eureka moment at the end of December 2017.
And I love it!
The spike in my Pinterest viewers coincided with using Tailwind.
It is perhaps the one business tool I would recommend to any blogger.
Tailwind is a Pinterest and Instagram automation scheduling tool. It also offers powerful analytics to track your success.
You can schedule pins to multiple boards at once and they will automatically be pinned at the best times to get maximum exposure.
Your pins are scheduled for when your audience is on Pinterest.
There are 3 ways to schedule your pins – direct from a blog post, on Pinterest itself or within Tailwind.
Download the Tailwind Chrome Extension to enable you schedule from anywhere on the internet.
A Tailwind scheduling calendar looks like this.
Another great feature of Tailwind, is that you can create board lists, each of which contains multiple boards with a similar orientation.
When you schedule to the groups, the content is pinned to each board in that group.
Absolutely amazing stuff!
10. Join Tailwind Tribes
How To Get Tailwind
You can download Tailwind here. Your first 100 pins are absolutely free.
Tailwind is an indispensable part of my Pinterest strategy and business.
With the help of Tailwind, Pinterest has become the main source of free organic traffic to my blog.
Milo Tree Smart Popup
To help grow my following on Pinterest, I have also recently installed the Milo Tree smart popup which helps convert visitors to your blog to followers.
Milo Tree popups can also be installed to grow Facebook, Instagram and You Tube followers.
You can try Milo Tree for free for 1 month here.
Do you use Pinterest for your blog?
Do you use an automated scheduling tool?
Let me know your experiences.
Bloggers Lead Machine
Bloggers Lead Machine is a social media marketing tool.
There is a 7-point blueprint that will help bloggers transform their social media profiles to get more leads and sales.
You essentially turn your Facebook profile into a lead generation funnel.
Final Thoughts
It takes time for a new blog to attract a consistent stream of traffic.
Writing good quality content is obviously the best way to do so.
Pinterest is a search engine new bloggers can use to grow free inorganic traffic.
Google Analytics will show the growth of your traffic.
By implementing the strategies outlined above, you will gradually grow your audience over time.
There is a corresponding growth in your blog income as more people see your content.
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