Let’s face it driving traffic to your blog can be an extremely tedious task. However, if you want to make it as a blogger driving large amounts of traffic to your site is crucial for success.
Pinterest is one of the MOST IMPORTANT tools you will use to drive traffic to your blog.
You can get thousands of page views to your blog in just one day from Pinterest traffic alone.
Pretty crazy right!!
If you’re looking for exposure for your blog, PINTEREST is THE place to be!
If you’re thinking of starting your own blog or just started blogging make sure to check out our tutorial here. This will walk you through the process of starting your own blog today, so you can start making money tomorrow!
Trust us we blindly walked through the process of starting up our blog, I totally wish we would have had a guide like this to tell us exactly what to do next!
Have the post sent directly to your inbox!Save This Post For Later
How To Use Pinterest For Your Blog
Pinterest can be tricky and just when you think you’re getting the hang of it… they change something on you! That’s right Pinterest is almost constantly changing, which means YOU have to be continuously learning what they WANT so you can provide it.
Everyone is looking for the ONE big secret to becoming successful on Pinterest and on their blog…. sadly there isn’t one. However, if you follow these steps, with time and consistency, you will see great success!
1| Create Business Pinterest Account
Before we start, make sure you sign up for a BUSINESS PINTEREST ACCOUNT. This is completely different than the normal Pinterest account that you probably used before. Having a business account allows you to have access to your Pinterest analytics, which is awesome!
Having a business account lets Pinterest know you’re a creator and you’re there to create content for them.
If you have an old Pinterest account with followers I highly recommend you convert it to your business account. I wish someone would have told me that in the beginning. Starting with a completely new business Pinterest account will take you a lot longer to gain followers. Starting from the bottom is rough.
Pinterest analytics is an extremely helpful tool, especially when you’re a newbie. Here’s what Pinterest analytics does for you.
- It lets you view the analytics of your Pinterest Profile and how many clicks, impressions, and saves you had for the date of your choice.
- It tells you how many people you reach on Pinterest on a monthly basis. It also lets you know the demographics of your blog.
- Lastly and most importantly, it tells you how many CLICKS you get to your blog from Pinterest. You can see how many people click on your pins and go directly to your blog. This is a pretty awesome tool and is the NUMBER you should be focusing on the most. After all, the purpose of Pinterest is to drive traffic to your website.
2| Rich Pins Are A Must
Did you sign up for Rich pins yet? If not, sign up for Rich pins as soon as possible! It’s extremely important to becoming successful in the Pinterest world. Rich pins show more context about your pins and your blog which increases your chance of someone clicking through to your blog.
After all, that’s your goal right! You want people to click back to your website.
Rich pins are different from a normal pin because they include your websites name and logo, as well as a second description, pulled from your website, usually your alt description. If you’re a little confused on what a Rich pin looks like head over and check out some of our recent pins. Click on any pin to see what I’m talking about.
Setting Up Rich Pins On Pinterest
- Install the Yoast plugin on your blog if you haven’t already. Then head over to your Yoast Plugin and click “social” and then click the “Facebook” tab. Here you will make sure that the “Add Open Graph Meta Data” is ENABLED.
- Next, you’ll head over to Pinterest’s rich pin validator and plug in the link to one of your blog posts. It doesn’t matter which blog post.
- Once your pins have been validated click “apply now” and you’ll be set to go.
It will take a few days to hear back from Pinterest, especially if it’s a weekend or Holiday.
3| Consistency Is The Key To Using Pinterest For Blog Traffic
Being consistent is the key to driving traffic to your site. You need to be consistent in everything you do. If you only have time to pin twice a week do you think you’re going to see good results? No, you won’t.
Pick a certain time every day to pin. Try and pin each day when your traffic is at its highest. For me, this is usually around 11 am and 8 pm. I see the best results when I pin around 8 or 9 pm at night.
If you don’t know when your “peak time” for pinning is, there are several ways to figure it out. I highly recommend setting up Google Analytics for your blog. Google Analytics is a “must have” as a blogger. Not only will it give you a complete rundown of your site, it will also tell you what day and time you have the most visitors on your site. It’s an amazing tool and I use it daily!
Another easy way to figure out “peak times” for pinning is through different pin scheduling tools such as Tailwind and many others. These awesome pinning schedulers tell you your peak times so you know the best time to pin. I personally love using Tailwind to help automate my pinning and give me a little more free time to work on other aspects of the blog!
Lastly, remember you NEED to repin OTHER PEOPLES PINS. High-quality pins at that! I pin on a ratio of 70/30. 70 percent my pins 30 percent others. Everyone pins different quantities, this is just what works great for me. Its all about trial and error.
For the sake of your blog do not pin only your pins! Pinterest will flag you as spam and give you the boot real quick.
Pinning Tip Of The Day – Pinterest has been cracking down on deleted Pinterest accounts that use scheduling systems that aren’t recommended BY PINTEREST. Only use schedulers that are recommended by Pinterest.
4| Manual Pinning for Newbies
Let’s face it, everyone has their own favorite way to pin and their own favorite way to keep track of what they’ve pinned. I have experimented with just about everything! For me, manual pinning worked the best and I highly recommend it until you have about 10-15 thousand monthly pageviews to your blog.
First off, manual pinning is FREE! When you first start off with Pinterest you don’t need to pay for
This is the exact step-by-step process I used to manually pin all of my pins, in the beginning. Her strategy works, I wouldn’t have over 1 million monthly viewers to my Pinterest page if it didn’t.
Grab your copy of her Ebook HERE!
The Best Pinning Tips
- You don’t have control over whether or not your pins go viral. Its all about getting each pin in front of the eyes of the right person.
- Don’t play the “follow” for a “follow” game on Pinterest. It’s not worth your time! You will gain new followers in time, its slow in the beginning.
- Don’t focus on the number of FOLLOWERS you have. This doesn’t play a role in how many people actually visit your blog. So don’t waste your time being fixated on that number.
5| Tailwind – The Best Scheduling System
There is a reason you more than likely have heard of Tailwind... because its amazing and well IT WORKS! Tailwind is a Pinterest approved scheduling system that helps schedule your pins.
I manually pinned all of my pins up until I had roughly 15,000 page views on my blog. I was able to find the time to sit down twice a day during “my peak pinning times” every day, and pin. However, it got to the point where it was exhausting. I couldn’t keep up with all of my pins and I was spending to much time pinning when I could be using my time elsewhere.
With two kids always at my
Tailwind is heaven sent and I recommend it to everyone who is looking to free up time from pinning. Every Sunday I set up my pinning schedule for the week and then let it do its thing during the week. I pop on once a day during the evening to do some manual pinning of my new posts and other peoples pins which takes about 5 minutes and that’s it!
Once you link up Tailwind with Pinterest it lets you know which times are the BEST TIMES to pin. It seriously takes all the dirty work out of it for you.
Below is what my Tailwind schedule looks like at the moment. The dark green boxes are the times that Tailwind recommends I pin. Once again, your audience could be online at completely different times so don’t pay attention to the times below.
I know some people who schedule their pinning for the whole month and then let it do its thing and it works for them.
Use our link to give Tailwind a try for FREE for a whole month!
6| Organize Your Pinterest Profile And Boards
You need to make your Pinterest profile look professional, like a place you would want to visit, that’s appealing to the eye. It only takes a few seconds for someone to draw their own impression of your profile. So make that impression a good one!
Make sure you add your picture and that your Pinterest name is full of Pinterest Keywords (I’ll talk more about keywords later) in your niche. Below is an example of what my profile currently looks like.
My profile not only mentions the name of my blog, Living Low Key, but it also includes keywords. Such as, saving money and frugal living. This not only tells the reader exactly what they are going to find on my page, but it also tells Pinterest.
The description below your profile name once again needs to tell your readers the purpose of your Pinterest page.
Write Keyword-Rich Descriptions For Your Boards
Board descriptions are a very important aspect of Pinterest. Pinterest is like a search engine. If you want someone to find your board or your pins you need to add the right keyword descriptions in both your boards and your pins. Let’s say you want to make a board called Saving Money. Write “saving money” in the Pinterest search bar. Below the search bar, a row of KEYWORDS will pop up.
YES, searching for keywords is that easy. Pinterest just gives them to you.
THE MOST POPULAR KEYWORDS ARE ON THE LEFT SIDE
I’m not just going to name my board saving money and neither will you! I’m going to name my board Saving Money Tips / Saving Money Ideas or Saving Money Tips and Ideas.
Hello, keywords!!
Not only will your audience know what they are going to find on your boards but Pinterest will know too.
Remember when you are first starting out with Pinterest start out with a number of boards you can easily maintainable. Pinterest wants you to stay active on all of your boards. If you have 50 boards you will not be able to pin to them on a daily basis.
Lastly, make sure you fill your Boards Description with keywords as well. You do this by putting your cursor over the top of a board. A pencil button will show up. This is where you can alter your board name, description, and the category.
7| Join As Many Niche Specific Well Keyworde Group Boards As You Can
A group board works the same as a normal board with the exception that you add other contributors to it. If you found a group board in your niche and asked the board creator to join and they accepted you, you would then have access to all of their followers. This is a great way to reach even more people because when you pin, all of those followers who are a part of the board would then see your pins.
How cool is that!
This means you don’t have to worry about the number of followers you have! If you only have a few hundred followers but you belong to some awesome group boards in your niche that had thousands of followers each. Guess what that would do for you?? Yea, you would have the potential for thousands of people to see your pins!!
Benefits of group boards:
- Group boards boost your followers
- Brings more traffic to your Pinterest profile which then sends more visitors to your blog
- Increases your monthly views on Pinterest
- Increases your number of repins
- Did I mention more traffic to your BLOG
How Do You Find A Great Group Board
You can tell a group board apart from a regular board because of the tiny little icon on the board. Do you see how my group board Paying Off Your Debt has a circle with 3 little pictures on it? That shows you its a group board. The boards above it don’t have that icon which means they are normal boards.
There are several ways to look for a great group board. First, you want to make sure the title of the group board is relevant to your niche. You don’t want to post money saving pins to a board labeled Best DIY.
That wouldn’t do justice for your pin and your pin wouldn’t get views.
You also want to make sure that the group board has good quality pins on it. You can tell just by looking at a pin if it catches your eye. Lastly, does the board have keywords on it and if it does, do they match your pin and topic you are writing about?
8| Create Eye-Catching Pins
You need to create eye-catching pins with Pinterest SEO descriptions! Creating awesome pins takes practice so don’t give up. When I see old pins of mine float across Pinterest I want to hide.
They were really that awful!!
Here are my favorite tips for creating some epic pins:
- Use Canva to create your pins. Not only is it free, but it also has templets laid out for you to use
- The optimal pin size is 600 x 900 pixels. Pinterest favors vertical images so make sure to stay away from horizontal images
- Always use Pinterest SEO keywords in the description of your pins (use the same technique for finding keywords as I mentioned above)
- Add hashtags to new pins
- Always change the description of your pin before you repin it to the same board
- Make sure the picture you use on your pin is relevant to your title on your pin
Follow these steps to explode your monthly views on Pinterest!
How have you increased your following on Pinterest?
[disclosure]
Grab Your FREE Budget Binder Today!
Start saving more money and pay off your debt with this FREE Budget Binder
Create A Better Budget To Achieve Financial Freedom Today
Good old consistency guys; it wins on all platforms. I see this with Pinterest too; pros like yourself stress the huge volume of Pins is not super necessary, but Pinning on topic for a sustained period makes all the difference in the world. I experienced this on Twitter. Being consistent flat out wins.