Blogging

3 Unknown Pinterest Tips to Grow Your Blog Traffic (and Presence)

Pinterest is my BFF!

It’s been my BFF for a long time, but we had a bit of a falling out over the summer. I’ll get into that in just a bit.

I’m sure you’ve been hearing loads and loads about Pinterest tips for growing your blog traffic. I have even written those posts countless times on Twins Mommy.

Because it’s true. But something happened to my presence on Pinterest.

While my traffic and income didn’t take a dip, my Pinterest analtyics tanked big time.

But, before we get into the post, if you want to hear my story, check out my YouTube video and make sure to hit the subscribe button for more awesome videos!

My Pinterest Story

Last year I was in big time growth mode for my blog. Everything was going great. I was publishing content and using Pinterest to gain clicks back to my site.

So, back in May my Pinterest reach – this is how many people are seeing my pins and how many are engaging with my pins – was going up and almost reached 400k.

But, then summer hit and my Pinterest monthly views plummeted. They kept decreasing all summer.

And no matter how many pins I pinned I could not grow my reach.

By August of 2017, my reach dwindled to 250k!!

Ouch!

Just seeing this hurts my eyes. What’s more important is the engagement number of MY pins. From 15k down to 9k!

Fewer and fewer people were seeing my pins and even less were clicking through or viewing my pins.

I Tried Everything To Grow My Pinterest Reach

During this time I tried different tactics like:

  • Join more group boards
  • Pin more often
  • Schedule my pins more often
  • Pin less often
  • Scheduled less often
  • Created an original board to track my original pins

As you can see, none of this increased my views at all, and they just kept decreasing.

But, I wasn’t the only want with this fate.

A lot of bloggers were talking about this in June of last year and about how their reach wasn’t growing. This seemed to hit bloggers that blogged about blogging and making money more than lifestyle type of bloggers.

But, as with any blogger, you grow and you learn and I started trying brand new tactics to grow my reach on Pinterest.

And it worked.

By November my reach started growing….overnight.

I was over the moon happy by this.

Things were turning around. Sure, Pinterest may have changed their algorithm during this time, but I truly feel it’s the things I was doing that I never did before that worked.

And by December, I had reached 1M monthly views.

Not only that, but all of my Pinterest Analytic numbers were increasing! I was ecstatic as this isn’t common for me.

And once this happened other amazing things started to happen with Pinterest.

My Pins Were Trending on Pinterest

Pinterest has an explorer tab. Click on the slanted compass next to the red plus sign.

I’ve been looking at the explore page to see what it’s all about and noticed my pins were on there!

This meant even more people were viewing my pins and saving them to their boards, driving my engagement numbers up.

And did this result in more traffic?

My Blog Traffic Grew

Yes!

All of the tactics I was doing was actually working in my favor and resulting in two traffic bumps.

Sure,

And it’s continuing to grow.

So, how can you grow your Pinterest reach and traffic? Let’s look at some unknown tips to help you get started.

Pinterest Tip 1

You need to help Pinterest figure you what your pin is about. My YouTube video goes into much more detail than what I’ll mention, but your Pinterest description and Rich Pin information isn’t enough.

Don’t get me wrong!

Your descriptions are super important for relevant searches on Pinterest, but to let Pinterest know quicker what your pin is about, you have to help it.

Because in the beginning, Pinterest views your pin. It’s a visual search engine after all, so the way your pin looks is relevant to what your topic and description are about.

In the video, I show you a black and red infographic I recently made.

I show you what Pinterest thinks my pins is about. Pinterest shows me other long black pins with red in it but if you look at the topics, they are NOT relevant at all.

This tells me Pinterest is only going by my colors, size of pins and other features of the pin (like small writing and icons).

So, how do you tell Pinterest what your pin is about? Again, check out the video for more information, but in essence:

  • Pin to highly relevant boards (your own and group)
  • See what others are placing your pin to

Pinterest Tip 2

Pinterest rewards you for being on their platform.

You probably already know that because there has been a HUGE push for manual pinning.

I’ve known about manual pinning for a while and even teach about it in my course.

But, what I recently learned is that you have to do MORE than manual pinning.

I show you exactly what I mean in the video, but to summarize:

  • Follow boards in your smart feed
  • Pin other people’s pins and your own pins
  • Pin from the trending section

Pinterest Tip 3

Don’t ignore your popular pins. If you are a brand new pinner you may not have popular pins, but it’s worth investigating.

For me, a lot of my pins “took off” when I first started Twins Mommy over two years ago. They are still circulating and bringing me traffic.

The links with NO arrows are my popular older pins. The ones with arrows are my newer pins.

So, how do you focus on the pins bringing you traffic consistently?

By going to your Google Analtyics.

Go to Acquisition > All traffic > Referrals > Pinterest to view your top pinned posts.

From there copy the pin link and paste it and then repin it to a group board or one of yours.

There Ya Go!

Three unknown – well they were unknown to me in August! – Pinterest tips to help you grow your blog traffic.

Please pin me!

And let me know if your Pinterest Analytics are growing now!

Leave a Reply

34 Comments

I’ve been working hard and it seems to have paid off. Went from 64K monthly views to 177K in less than a month, makes me so happy!! Love your tips, again found myself on one of your posts while doing blogging researchReply to Brigitte
Hey Brigitte! That’s awesome to hear! So happy that your monthly views are growing!Reply to Elna
Thanks for the great information! I’m a new blogger and trying to get active on Pinterest ?Reply to Ashley
Hi Elna! Thanks for the awesome info! I’m trying to understand how do you manually pin your pins if you’ve already pinned them in the past to a relevant board? Do you do it again? I usually repin my pins to group boards but not to my own boards. For example a board of mine, parenting tips, I’ve pinned my relevant blogs once to them but not over again should I? Also should I be making a ton of relevant board to parenting tips so I have more places to add them like parenting advice. Its seems a little repetitive to me but not sure…? As always thanks so much Elna!!Reply to Jeannie
Hi Jeannie! What I do is, when I have a new pin, I pin it to relevant board topics and then to my main Twins Mommy board. I also pin to relevant group boards. It’s okay to keep pinning that pin the same board over and over again throughout the week! I hope this helps.Reply to Elna
These are really great tips. I am a Pinterest newbie and still learning a lot. I’d do anything to get 250K views right now 😀Reply to Sheeroh
Hi Sheeroh, Thanks so much! Just be consistent on Pinterest!Reply to Elna
Hi Elna, Thank you for sharing your stats and insights! I also just started using Pinterest more professionally, using Tailwind and trying to follow all the best practices. My numbers are increasing nicely (I think), I just have no reference as to where they should be at after X amount of time. Would you mind me asking how long it took you to get up to those first numbers (14K engaged viewers) after you actively started using Pinterest? Thank you!Reply to Lo
Hi Lo! Thanks so much for stopping by! That’s great your numbers are going up!! If you are talking about my Pinterest followers, that took me about a year or a little less than a year. But, I started with 600 followers. I hope that helps!Reply to Elna
I’ve been focusing on growing my Pinterest traffic and I feel like it’s going really well especially since I’m so new I feel like I got a pretty good head start which I’m happy about. I really enjoy manual pinning over scheduling, I just feel like I’m more connected to my audience that way. Plus Pinterest is just supper addicting.Reply to Ebony
Hey Ebony, That’s great to hear! You can take off quickly as a new Pinner for sure…but it’s keeping that consistent, that’s the challenge. Good luck!Reply to Elna
Great tips! I am somewhat new to using Pinterest for my blog. Your post gave me a lot of insight into what I am doing well and what definitely needs fixed! I love your blog, it is always full of great information.Reply to Holly
Hey Holly! Thanks so much! <3 I hope you found some good tips in my video! Pinterest is its own beast for sure!Reply to Elna
Thanks so much for these tips! Some of the specific things you mentioned in the video were unknown to me as well and I have read a LOT of Pinterest tips! 🙂 My mom blog has only been live since Sept 2017 and I have noticed inconsistencies in my own Pinterest account as well so I am looking forward to trying out the things you said. Also pinning this post! Thanks!Reply to Ellie
Hi Ellie! Thanks so much! Glad you watched the video. Good luck with getting more presence on Pinterest!Reply to Elna
Hi Elna, Thanks so much for these secret tips. I love Pinterest as a traffic driver to my site and I am constantly searching for ways to refine my strategies so this is fantastic info! Best, WendyReply to Wendy
Hey Wendy, You’re welcome! I’m so happy these tips will help you with your Pinterest marketing strategy!Reply to Elna
Question, do you recommend pinning my posts to general boards like “Bloggers best” “share anything” type of boards or should it be to boards specific to what the post is about? Like a fitness post to boards about fitness only?Reply to Lola
Hi Lola, For your new pins, I would stick to relevant niche boards mostly, but you can still pin to catch-all boards. I pin to relevant and then to BIG boards, which are usually catch-all as way to get that pin out.Reply to Elna
Thanks a lot!!!Reply to lola
Oh my gosh I’ll have to try this! I do not yet understand how people get crazy traffic through Pinterest. I pin 50+ pins per day and in lots of relevant group boards, have a business profile, featured boards etc… and still don’t get repins or blog traffic! I’ll try your tips because I really would love to see this kind of traffic!Reply to Ellie
Hey Ellie, Thank you so much! I’m sorry to hear that you aren’t getting traffic from Pinterest. Try these tips as well as try finding good headlines to attract curiosity!Reply to Elna
Great content! It’s so frustrating to see your engagement decrease despite any efforts. Glad you found a solution to the problem and thank you for sharing!Reply to Tricia
Hi Tricia, I know, right? You work and you try and pin so much and nothing! Traffic down or engagement down! It’s so frustrating. That’s why it’s awesome when it finally starts to pay off!Reply to Elna
I find that I enjoy manual pinning even though I use paid programs too. I’ll start pinning from the feed now and also trending pins. Will look into my google analytics too. That’s a trick I’ve been missing. Thanks so much for sharing this.Reply to Joleisa
Hi Joleisa, That’s awesome! Yes, I like manual pinning too! I become a user and not a producer for Pinterest!Reply to Elna
This is such an excellent post, i never knew these tips, thank you so much for sharing, i am really trying to up my pinterest game in the next month.Reply to lola
Hi Lola! Thanks so much! I’m so happy you found some strategies as a new blogger. I know it can be hard since there are soooo many things to learn!Reply to Elna
Great tips! I love how in-depth your blog posts about Pinterest are. Pinterest is my top source of traffic but I have been experiencing a dip in traffic lately so I’m definitely going to test out these tips and see if it helps!Reply to Coco
Hey Coco! Love your blog by the way!!! So glad these Pinterest tips will boost your traffic! Can’t wait!!!!!Reply to Elna