*Updated in 2024*
I’m sure you’ve been hearing a lot about Pinterest eh? It’s a powerful visual search engine that can help grow your traffic and email list.
Well, when I started this new blog, I knew one of the quickest ways to bring traffic to my blog was to start pinning.
But, I had no idea that I would get so many followers too. Every month since starting to grow this blog I’ve been steadily gaining on average 500-800 new subscribers each month.
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And what’s even more cray-cray is that I really didn’t do anything to get those followers.
Wha-what?
Okay.
I don’t mean I didn’t do ANYTHING, but what I did didn’t take much effort. I’m a busy mompreneur here.
I don’t have time to grow my social media followers. Heck, I don’t have time to cut my hair! Ouch! That hurt saying that.
If I can find a way to supercharge my productivity and use my time better, I’ll do it.
And I know there are other mamas and bloggers out there that just don’t have the time to spend hours trying to grow their Pinterest followers.
In my short time using a Pinterest strategy, I’ve analyzed six things that I know have helped me generate followers.
But, before I get into that, let me show you how I got form point A to point B.
My Pinterest Follower Progression
When I decided to grow this new blog I decided to blog about my growth too. This included my Pinterest marketing progression.
When I started I only had around 600 followers.
My Pinterest profile was for my other blog about freelance writing. I decided that instead of signing up to a new Pinterest account, I’ll just share my current one.
My profile wasn’t used much since I started freelance writing. I had a couple of boards about freelance writing and the rest were hobby type boards. So it was like a fresh start.
Within two months of actively being on Pinterest, I had over 1k followers. And by my third month, I almost gained another 1k followers.
And you want to know something?
I wasn’t following many people. In fact, I stopped following people – unless they were my blogger friend – and I still gained more followers.
Six months later, I had 4.8k followers.
I did all of this and didn’t spend much time doing it.
Update: As of February 2024, I have 61.9k followers from following this strategy!
If you’re struggling to gain Pinterest followers or playing the, “if you follow me, I’ll follow you” game and unfollow those that don’t follow you, here are the six things I did to help me grow my followers.
1. Create a Good Amount of Boards
In light of all the Pinterest updates that’s been going around, are group boards still worth it?
I don’t think so.
For brand new bloggers all you need is to create a good amount of your own boards.
This is what I did for my niche websites.
A good strategy if you are COMPLETELY new to Pinterest is to create boards about the blog post topic.
So, if you recently published a blog post about frugal living tips, create a Pinterest board, “frugal living” or “frugal living tips.”
Do that for the first 10 or so blog posts but make sure the boards are populated with 3rd party pins and your own. Don’t create a “pest control” board if you only ever write about pests in the house one time because it’s not your main blog niche.
2. Start Using PinGenerator
I’ll be honest with you –
For most of Twins Mommy’s Pinterest life, I’ve used Tailwind.
Tailwind is truly my BFF. But I found a better BFF…
It’s cheaper and it works faster.
I started a brand new blog and started using PinGenerator and in 1 month I’m almost at 10k pageviews.
If I can maintain this for three months, I can get into Mediavine Journey. This is an ad platform.
So PinGenerator isn’t only a Pinning automation tool, it’s also allows you to make money from your blog!
PinGenerator is easy to use and you can make your own templates.
What I did was find a template that got a lot of engagement and copied what I created in Canva to PinGenerator.
All you go is put in the URL and PinGenerator grabs the images from that blog post.
It will ask you to use all your image or you can pick from the results.
Sometimes it grabs my author bio image or Amazon images that I can’t use on my Pins.
So, I choose the images and the templates to use and it populates the pins.
Sometimes I change the title to make it more optimized for clicks and schedule them.
That’s it!
3. Have a Compelling Headline
I’ve been hearing from other bloggers that they’re active on Pinterest or they are scheduling their pins but they have a small conversion rate, i.e. no one is clicking through.
Now, why should you be concerned about click-through rates when all you want is more Pinterest followers?
Because no one’s going to follow you if you have poor content. While it’s also a great idea to have a visually appealing blog design, that’s not going to help you grow your social media followers.
And one of the first things a pinner is going to read is your headline. You have about two seconds for them to decide if that pin is worthy of their time.
I found that one of the best headlines to use on Pinterest are personal ones. Using “I” or “my” seem to generate more repins and click-throughs for me.
Your headline should also show a benefit for reading your post. Will your pin help them blog better? Earn more money? Save them time? Have the best chocolate chip cookies ever?
If you can show a benefit for the reader in your headline, they are more likely to click through to your post.
And if you have an engaging introduction that hooks them, they’ll remember your content and not only subscribe to your list, but also follow you on Pinterest.
A lot of my subscribers found me via Pinterest!
4. Create Awesome Images
I L-O-V-E looking at images. Don’t we all?
They’re so pretty and I’m always wanting to know what font you all are using!!
I love fonts, stock photos, and colors and Pinterest is a goldmine for awesome images. I’m not the BEST at images, but I try.
Here are some tips I picked up from blogging:
Optimal Pin Size
I use 1000x1500px for most of my pins and alternate pins. There’s a lot of talk on social media about what size your pin image should be. While many have different sizes, they all agree that your pin image must be longer than it is wide.
A taller version I use is 1000x2000px.
Easy to Read Font
Your font must be large enough to read.
I use two fonts on my images. A sans-serif font called Futura, which is included on Mac computers, but you can grab this paid font and others with a subscription to Typekit (for Windows too).
I also use Madina that I got at Creative Market. If you’re bootstrapping it all, you can definitely use Google fonts – they’re totally free.
Beautiful Images
It goes without saying that a picture is worth a thousand words…and repins!
There are a ton of places to grab free images that are beautiful!
I made a blog post on it here, but here are some more places:
5. Have an Optimized Bio
One of the first things I did with my profile was make sure my bio had keywords in my niche and told people what I do and where to find me..
When pinners go to my profile they know exactly who I am – I help moms and writers create a business and where to find me.
You can also state who you are – freelance writer, blogger, Pinterest manager etc. in your bio.
Make your bio value driven so that people have a reason to follow you.
Little Effort Overall
As you can see, I didn’t try to grow my followers on Pinterest. PinGenerator helps me schedule my pins out to more people, which helps me gain more followers.
I have over 61k followers and it grows every day.
The only effort for me is writing my blog posts and creating my images.
That’s it.
Want Help Planning Your Pinterest Pinning Strategy?
Don’t forget to grab my FREE Pin Promote Planner! You get a weekly planner, monthly planner and yearly planner! This is what helped me triple my traffic, list and followers in only three months of starting Twins Mommy!
Let me know in the comments what you plan on doing first to help you grow your Pinterest followers!
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