how-to-use-pinterest-for-blog-traffic

When the subject of blog traffic comes up amongst successful veteran bloggers, more often than not, they attribute their success to a solid Pinterest strategy.

More than just a social network, Pinterest is a social bookmarking tool. This means that people don’t just engage with your content once, but share it or save it for later.

Obviously, there’s a lot of power and potential in this platform for bloggers, but you can’t just add images and links and expect magic to happen. In order to achieve exceptional Pinterest growth, you’ll need to keep these things in mind:

Take Care When Designing Your Pinterest Profile

If a person goes to your profile, is it clear what you do, and what you expect them to do?

Make sure to describe the things you pin about and include a link to your blog. If you want people to visit your blog after scrolling through your pins, or sign up for an email newsletter – tell them! Calls to action are very well-received on Pinterest. You will optimize your search results and boost your online presence this way.

Your first board should be a repository of your own posts. Give yourself the best real estate on your profile.

Use Keywords on Boards and Pin Descriptions

Don’t just copy and paste whatever description or excerpt you’ve created for your blog post. Make sure to give it descriptive text so that Pinterest’s search engine will find it if it’s relevant. It’s kind of like applying on-site SEO tactics to your blog post.

Here’s an example of a board rich in keywords from The Nectar Collective:

boards

The same thing goes when writing board descriptions. You could blatantly list out keywords, or include keyword-rich descriptions.

Design Pinterest-specific Images

The images that perform best on Pinterest are the ones that are specifically designed for the platform. They should be portrait orientation.

Use a tool like Canva to design them if you don’t have a design background. If you have a premium account, you can easily resize images to make them size appropriate for each social platform.

canva

Finally, make sure to embed these images in your post so they show up when someone tries to pin your post. You can use a plugin like Pin It to add them to your post in the background, so it only shows up when someone tries to pin the page.

Enable Rich Pins

Rich Pins allow you to take advantage of additional features on Pinterest that help with brand and follower building, like automatically adding a link to your blog under the image on each Pin.

In order to use Rich Pins, you have to set up each page the right way. If you’re using the Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin, just make sure to fill out all relevant fields. Then validate Rich Pins on Pinterest. It’s easy!

Pin to Group Boards

Group boards help to increase your reach past your follower base.

You can find relevant group boards on PinGroupie.com by searching for specific keywords. You have to follow the board’s creator to be able to message them and ask for permission to pin to their board. Make sure to tell them why you’re a good fit (so you don’t look like a spammer).

Here’s an example where I’m looking for Chicago-related group boards to contribute to for my blog, ChicagoCheapAss.com:

pingroupie

Automate Pinning with Buffer

Many Pinterest experts recommend creating secret boards, then scheduling pins to be sent to the group boards you’re a part of. This helps to systematically reinvigorate evergreen content.

You can use a tool like Buffer to schedule pins ahead of time. There are other similar Pinterest scheduling tools, but Buffer is one of the best values.

buffer

See What People Are Already Pinning

Finally, you can get ideas for what goes over well from your blog to the Pinterest crowd by seeing what people are already pinning from your site. Copy and paste this URL in your browser and replace “YourWebsite.com” with, what else, your blog’s URL.:

http://pinterest.com/source/YourWebsite.com/

It’s not easy to be great at Pinterest, but with the right strategy, you can gain exponential growth. The key is consistency, and taking care to set things up the right way… for every blog post you write.

Have you found success on Pinterest? Share your thoughts about the social network for bloggers in the comments below!