Pinterest drives 80% of the traffic to my blog – so it clearly deserves my time and attention!

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Growing your blog traffic by boosting your Pinterest traffic is one of the most common methods of growing “the right” engagement.

In my first ever month of blogging my Pinterest had an amazing growth of 22,000%. Yep, I went from basically no traffic at all…to 104.851k Pinterest visits in my first month of blogging!

However, even if Pinterest is kicking-butt and you are gaining a ton of traffic, never forget the other very important things you need to do in order to continue growing your traffic and begin drawing more organic traffic to your blog or website – like improving your Domain Authority Score and Content Marketing.

 

How did I do it?

Hard work

I never realised how much work a blog actually is…luckily though, I love, Love, LOVE IT!! At the beginning, I was spending about 2 hours a day just creating pins, pinning, re-pinning, networking etc.

…I was a bit obsessed!

After I started doing the things that I will discuss in this post, that time dropped down significantly. I now only spend about 15 minutes a day (if that) on Pinterest – and that is mostly just for fun.

 

Eye-Catching Profile

Profile Name

When someone sees your profile name in a search and they click on it, they don’t expect to see half empty boards, disorganisation or spam! Make sure that your profile is professional, but still has that little touch of “you” and your branding.

It might sound obvious, but your profile name is VERY important!

Did you know that Pinterest also classes the words in your profile name as keywords? Awesome, right!

So, rather than just putting “Life It Or Not” (which seems pretty vague when you really think about it), add some common keywords in there.

…If you have enough room!

Unfortunately, Pinterest only allows 30 characters in a Profile name.

But, whatever you write, always think “keywords”. Pinterest IS a search engine after all.

Therefore, getting your SEO practice right on Pinterest is just as important as using SEO correctly in your blog posts!

 

Description

The description needs to be lengthy, but concise! Simple. I hate clicking on a pin to see a more detailed explanation, only to see it say something like, “I love this post!”. I mean, come on!!

Put as many keywords as you can in your description.

Use Google Analytics to find out which your top countries are by traffic. If your top country is the UK, you would use the term “mum”, whereas if your main traffic comes from the US, think about using Americanised language, such as “mom” etc.

Remember, this is all about being clever with your SEO and appealing to your most relevant target audience. 

While we are on the subject of keywords – USE #Hastags in Pinterest!

Although Pinterest is technically a search engine (think of it as a Google-style thing), Pinterest recently began allowing hashtags into peoples board and profile descriptions.

progress your pinterest

Want More Traffic To Your Pinterest?

Selection of boards

When you view someones profile and you see just a few boards, do you bother to follow them? Ok, if their content is AMAZING then you just might, but with most profiles that have a minimal amount of boards they will fail to gain followers.

Whatever your niche topic is, it can always be broken down into multiple things. For example, if your niche is jewellery, you might want various boards on the different types of metals, precious jewels/gems, engravings, colours, design types, how to wear it, when/where to wear it etc.

 

Arrangement of Boards

Not only do you have to focus on the variation of boards that you have, but it is also a good idea to actually arrange your boards so that the most relevant or the best one is at the top. Pinterest now offers a “Featured Board” which allows your most relevant board/s to be pinned to the top of your page.

This catches peoples eyes before they scroll, so there is no point in hiding your most popular bits at the bottom of the page, where a huge bundle of people might not even look.

 

Custom Board Cover

This just looks a lot more professional than a bunch of images of random pins squished together. The first time I saw a board cover, I jumped straight onto Google to find out how to make my own – it is really easy to do too!

If you go on to ‘Canva‘, you can create your own cover to a custom size. Pinterest cover boards are normally adjusted to 217 x 146 pixels. You just create your cover image and then upload it as a pin. Then edit the board, check the “change” cover picture option and wa-lah!

 

board covers

 

Good Content

Pin Image

Ok, so you already know you have amazing content in your post – otherwise you wouldn’t be sharing it. Now it’s time to make sure that your pins are as good as your post.

You do not want to spend tons of time and energy creating a brilliant post just to have the pin cover fail you…that would be horrible! You won’t get any traffic to your blog or any Pinterest traffic if your pin covers are not attractive and pleasing to the eye.

I used to use a FREE online program called ‘Crello‘ to create my pin images, but then I fell completely in love with a different program called ‘Canva‘ – on which you can create the cover image for every social media platform you can think of.

 

Themed Pins

If you have a strong visual brand – e.g. colour or theme, you should try to use this on your pin. If you decide that you actually don’t want to use those colours etc., you don’t have to – but you should still make all of your pins relatable. Try to keep them as similar as possible.

The font should also always stay (roughly) the same – this adds to your branding strength. If you have ten pins that look completely different, people won’t automatically know that they are from your blog.

However, if you consistently put out pins that have a clear theme, it becomes instantly recognisable. The more your viewers see them, the more they will connect them with your blog.

 

Your Website URL

Many people think, “Oh, the viewers will click on the pin and go straight to my website.”

Nuh-uh! Wrong!

Most people don’t actually click on your pin the first time round – they will however, remember the name of your website if it is plastered on all of your pins and you are posting regularly (more on this soon). Include your blog name/URL somewhere on the pin – on every pin.

 

Use Vertical images

Although Pinterest allows horizontal images, it prefers vertical ones. Of course, you can create a beautifully stunning horizontal cover for your post, but Pinterest will not favour it well.

Quite a lot of group boards now don’t allow horizontal pins (some of the group boards I am in have a ‘Vertical Pins Only’ rule)

 

More than one pin per post

You will have a much better chance of spreading your post if you have at least 3-4 different (but still well-branded) pins for each post.

I try to keep my pin images to three per post. I create all three pins at the same time, and post them up one every few days.

This also tells Pinterest that you are posting new Original pins, which means that it is more likely to start favouring your profile and putting your pins at the top of search feeds – resulting in more impressions, more views and…more CLICKS! Yay! 

 

As you can see from these three pins, there was a clear development!

Pin 1: First week of Pinterest, not linked to brand at all and colours were a bit weird!

Pin 2: Looks a bit better. Colours match brand, but the picture of the child is clearly older than a toddler.

Pin 3: Much better! Image and text work well together, my blog URL is clearer and the child is actually a toddler. Overall it just seems much more professional.

The below pins are my most recent style, which now fits entirely with my branding and the style on my blog. They also draw much more attention than my earlier pins and are getting saved (re-pinned) more.

Click on the image to check out the post for these pins!

toddler behaviour management

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Boards

Group Boards

Although group boards are a debatable concept in the Pinterest community, it seems to work for me. That said, you should only join boards which are related very closely to your niche and where the group members are supportive of each other and share each others pins, rather than simply spamming a ton of their own pins into the group and running without sharing.

Think about it…

If a group board has 100k followers, then anything you post in that group is automatically seen by 100k people!!

Amaaaaaaaazing!

Obviously, not all of those 100k people will be online during that week or so while your pin is at the top of a feed, which is why you still have to pin regularly.

It used to be said that on group boards (as well as on your own boards), it was a general (unwritten) “rule” to follow the 50/50 (or even 60/40) pins per day. This meant that around 60% of the pins on your profile / group boards were ‘Saves’ (repins) and around 40% were ‘Originals’ from your own blog.

However, as time has progressed, so has Pinterest and the algorithms. These days pinners tend to see a better result when they share around 40% of others pins and 60% of their own.

Some group boards have a sharing rule. Many group board owners ask that for every one pin you add to the board, you share one or two pins back, for example.

 

Your Own Group Board

When creating a group board, it is important to have your own contact details there (email address or profile name) so that people who want to join the board can find and contact you easily.

You should include the rules of the board, e.g., will you have rules on daily pinning/sharing? Are there only certain types of pins you want on the board (infographics, long posts, short posts, how-to’s etc.)?

Your management of the group board is also very important. Pinterest is known to have shut down whole profiles if someone owns a group board which receives a lot of spam! You could lose your entire profile if a selfish pinner decides not to follow the rules!

So, be careful who you allow to contribute to your group – check out their profile first.

Do not launch a group board with nothing in it – people won’t be drawn to it if it is empty! You should build the board up first with a lot of great posts related to it’s topic and then open it up to contributors.

TIP: You could do this on a public board and then just make it a group board, or you could even build it up in a Secret Board and then make it public before inviting people.

 

Secret Boards

These are fab for anything you don’t want the public to see.

I gave one example above about how I am using a secret board (to prepare and build up a board that I will be launching as a group board soon), but I have also used my secret boards for ideas for blog posts, Christmas ideas and for general things that don’t fit into my niche at all.

 

Sharing

This whole sub-section is obviously one of the most important!

There is no point in doing all of the work that we have just covered, just to end up not sharing your pins and completely withdrawing yourself from the Pinterest opportunities that await you!

Pinterest

Feel free to give this post a pin 😉

Social Media

It is very easy to share your pins on social media. I tend to share my posts more on Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook (and have recently started on LinkedIn), but by gaining more followers on Pinterest, you are generally gaining much more exposure.

Share both your pins and your posts from your blog to all of your social media platforms!

Once you have a decent amount of posts/pins, you could even use a Social Media scheduler like ‘Sprout Social‘, ‘Buffer‘ or ‘Hootsuite‘. Be aware that most of the Social Media schedulers these days charge a fee for the full service (as do most online services now), but most of them have some kind of free trial for you to test it out first.

If you decide in the end that you do not actually want (or need) the service then at least you have had a free traffic boost for a month!

Remember to add the “Pin It” hover image on your website images so that people can pin directly from there to Pinterest! This is a huge method for driving traffic back to your website because your readers share it to their 1000’s of followers…and then they share it and so on.

 

Networking with others in your niche

You need to meet other influencers from your niche. No if’s or but’s…you just have to (if you want to be a successful blogger!) Networking is the best way to learn about your niche and to develop and grow your name and brand as a professional and trusted source.

You have probably already met some of the high-flyers in your niche through commenting on their posts or Twitter or other social media sites, but have you actually spoken to any of them on Pinterest? This is where they can share your post directly to their page and their hundreds-of-thousands or even millions of followers!

 Pinterest also seems to favour pinners who engage more and is therefore more likely to show your pins to more people.

 

Pin regularly

When I first started on Pinterest, I was only getting about 100 views a day with only 10ish people engaging with my pins. Now I getting about 6-7k views every day and around 500 people engaging with my pins every day!

The more I have pinned and re-pinned, the more impressions, views and engagement I have gotten back.

 

Pinterest Schedule & Tailwind

When I only had a few posts, I had a Pinterest Schedule spreadsheet that I used to keep track of when and where I would share my pins or put new pins. Now that I have many more posts, it would be impossible to do it all myself. It would take HOURS!!

So…I use the amazing Tailwind.

Everyone seems to talk about Tailwind these days. I honestly cannot vouch for it enough. Tailwind has probably been the one tool to single-handedly turn my Pinterest World upside-down!

I started with the free version of Tailwind, but could not wait to start using all of it’s amazing features! I now use the paid version which is not going to break the bank and for the amount of time that I save by using Tailwind I don’t know what I would do without it! I would NOT be able to keep up with my scheduling on my own without the help of Tailwind – especially now that my blog has many more pins than when I first launched.

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Pinterest for Business (Pinterest Analytics)

If you are serous about your blog, I would definitely suggest that you sign up to “Pinterest for Business”!

Having a business account enables you to view the Analytics of your Pinterest account!

It shows you exactly what is happening on your Pinterest account:

  • Your most and least popular pins
  • The other “interests” that your viewers have / what else they pin about
  • The general growth in your account
  • Overall engagement (clicks, shares, views)
  • How many people see your pins in their feeds
  • How many people actually click on each your pins to view it in Pinterest 
  • THE IMPORTANT ONE: How many people then click through to your website!

What seems to be the case in most profiles is that you might have a sh*t load of viewers, but only a tiny percentage of these viewers actually engage in your pins (in which case, the image may need re-jigging).

Likewise, if you have lots of engagement, but not many clicks through to your website, then either your description is too vague or un-targeted, or you have already given the whole post away in the description!

 

 

Please leave a comment below and feel free to share this post on your social networks 😉

Thanks for all your help Pinny!

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