Raise your hand if you L-O-V-E Pinterest?
Pinterest is my eye candy, and it is what helped Twins Mommy initially grow.
But, how do you use Pinterest to grow your blog traffic?
My traffic grew from 4,000 pageviews a month to now over 60k pageviews a month.
And for many new bloggers who just started a blog, trying to figure out how to get people to their blog seems like a challenge.
They start a YouTube channel, an Instagram profile, maybe even Snapchat and a Twitter profile.
Yet, nothing.
No comments on their blog posts, no clicks to their income generating posts. Nada!
The one thing I suggest for new bloggers is to focus on one or two social media platforms as a way to explode your blog traffic. For me, it was Facebook and Pinterest.
You can use Pinterest for business because if you want to make money with your blog, then your blog is your business mama!
If your blog audience hangs out on Pinterest – 80% of Pinners are women and moms – then you NEED to be on Pinterest.
Let’s go over 27 Pinterest marketing tips to help you get started on using Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog.
How to Use Pinterest for Blog Traffic
Your Pinterest Profile
1. Use a Headshot, Not a Logo
People want to follow other people and if you’re a blogger, then having a headshot of you or your family is the best way to connect with your followers.
I know there are blogs out there that use a logo, and that’s fine, but the successful bloggers humanize their brand with a photo of them.
For example, Chasing Foxes is a huge blog with a huge Pinterest following and they aren’t using a logo.
2. Claim Your Other Accounts
When setting up your Pinterest profile, you can claim your other accounts like YouTube, Instagram and/or Etsy.
When you do this, you get some great features like:
- More analytics to use to take action with. When claiming your other accounts, you get to see all the analytics for Pinterest for each pin.
- Grow your monthly views. Your monthly views are the analytics of how many people have seen or engaged with your pin. This number can grow when you claim other accounts as the monthly views will be aggregate across accounts.
- You can grow your Pinterest followers. With a claimed account, when others pin your pins, they get to see your profile and a red button to follow you (if they haven’t already)
For more on this, check out Tailwind’s post.
3. Niche Down Your Pinterest Profile
As a blogger with a Pinterest profile, you need to understand that Pinterest is doing its hardest to figure out what your profile is about. It uses your user behavior and other information to understand your Pinterest profile niche.
For example, the boards you have on your profile and the pins you pin to those boards gives Pinterest information on the type of pinner you are.
Similarly, the pins other people save from your account helps Pinterest understand another level of context with your profile.
So, the best thing you can do is niche down your profile.
For your title, instead of using multiple keywords, try using one main (umbrella term) for your title.
With Smart Mom Ideas, I originally had several keywords like parenting tips, pregnancy tips, frugal living and organizing tips.
But, I recently cut all of that out and niched down to just parenting tips.
4. Optimize Your Bio Description
Under your title, you have a spot to tell pinners what you are all about. This is a great place to optimize that description with keywords based on your blog niche.
For example, if you have a mom blog and you blog about frugal living and organizing, some keywords you can incorporate into your bio description are:
- Frugal living tips
- Save money tips
- Organizing tips
- Declutter and organize
Your Pins
5. Be Creative in Your Pin Titles
The goal of promoting your blog on Pinterest is to gain a new audience. You want them to see your pin and click to your blog post.
But, how do you use Pinterest for that?
By having a reason for them to click over. And you can do that with the Pin title.
What’s great about Pinterest is that you can create multiple different pins for the same blog post. This means you can try out different Pin titles to see which one brings the most traffic or click-throughs back to your site.
For example, let’s say you wrote a post called: 5 Instant Pot Meals Your Toddler Will Love.
In this post, you share 5 dinner ideas using the Instant Pot.
You can create different Pin titles around by upping the curiosity and using emotional words:
- 5 Yummy and Delicious Instant Pot Meals Your Toddler Will Devour
- 5-15 Minute Instant Pot Dinners for the Busy Mom
- The Best Instant Pot Meals that Are Toddler Approved
6. Include a Call-to-Action in Your Pin Descriptions
As a way to promote your pins on Pinterest, you get a Pinterest description that you can use to place keywords in. But, remember it’s a good idea to also place a call-to-action.
This is something you want the pinner to do.
For example, “click over to read how I got my baby to sleep through the night.”
7. Use Hashtags In Your Pinterest Descriptions
Along with using keywords, start incorporating hashtags in your Pin descriptions.
Use the hashtag symbol, and Pinterest will give you suggestions. Try using hashtags with the most pins.
8. Use High-Quality Photos
Can you use free stock photos on Pinterest or is it better to use paid stock photos?
I use both options and what I can say is that the paid stock photos do convert a bit more than the free stock photos.
In saying this, you can get away with using free photos by making sure you change the angle of the image, increase the size to focus on one thing in the picture and changing it by brightening or darkening the image.
9. Avoid Faces In Your Pin
This is a personal choice. For my Twins Mommy profile, I try not to use too many faces, but I’ve been playing around with using more faces. For Smart Mom Ideas, I use a lot of faces.
Both instances haven’t hurt my click-throughs and impressions on Pinterest.
So, do some A/B testing and see if faces convert for you.
You can try showing partial face, the back of the head, or full face.
10. Avoid Using Dark Images
People tend to stop and click on bright pins with a lot of white space. If you use a pin image that is dark or cluttered with too many things in it, pinners may just scroll past it.
If you use a free editing program like PicMonkey, you can easily brighten up the image.
11. Make Your Fonts Large
Most people view Pins on their mobile phone. To make sure they see your pin, use a large font and an easy to read font on your pins.
I personally use a sans serif font rather than a serif font as a way to market my blog & business on Pinterest.
But, I do like to A/B test, and serif fonts do convert as well!
I feel it’s tied with what the pin is saying too!
So try different styles of fonts and sizes!
12. Place Your Blog Name On Each Pin
It’s a good idea to place your blog name in each of your pins. This can help pinners know where the pin comes from, grow your brand and blog and helps pinners know if your pin has been stolen.
For example, if your pin says NatalieSimmons.com but when a pinner hovers over your pin it goes to some weird blog, then they know that your pin was stolen or doesn’t lead to what the pin states.
Your Pinterest Boards
13. Use Keywords As Board Names
It’s important to let Pinterest know what your profile is about from the words you use to name your boards. Instead of using a cute name like “yummy food Nathan likes” you can optimize that board by using keywords like “Dinner Meal Ideas.”
Think of what other pinners will type into the search query and use those ideas as board names.
14. Create Relevant Board Names
Another important thing on how to use Pinterest for business and as a new Pinner is to name your boards relevant terms based on your blog niche. Remember, you want to niche down. So your coffee loving Pinterest board may not align with your frugal living board names.
For those personal blogs, just turn them into secret boards. Click on the pencil icon when you hover over your board and edit your settings.
15. Fill Out Your Board Descriptions
Did you know that Pinterest recommends boards to other pinners?
If you want your board recommended make sure to fill out the board description with keywords based on your blog niche.
16. Pin to Your Boards Daily
Pinterest loves fresh and new content so give Pinterest what they want!
You can manually pin from your blog to Pinterest every day or you can schedule your pins using Tailwind.
Here’s my video on scheduling pins.
17. Pin to a Relevant Board First
When you have a brand new blog post with a brand new pin, the best thing you can do to show Pinterest what your pin is about is to pin that new pin to a relevant board.
For example, if your new blog post is about Toddler Snack Ideas, you can pin that pin to a board called “snack ideas” or “toddler snacks.”
18. Pin Your Pins to Your Boards More Than to Group Boards
As it stands currently, Pinterest is de-prioritizing pins from group boards. While I haven’t seen that effect on my Pinterest profiles, just know that there will be a time when group boards may die away.
So, while it’s a good strategy for beginner bloggers, don’t rely on group boards to grow your blog traffic.
19. Optimize Your Boards With 3rd Party Pins
When you create new boards, an easy way to quickly show Pinterest what this board is about is by pinning popular 3rd party pins. Just use the search function in Pinterest and usually, the first 3 pins in the first row are optimized for that keyword.
20. Be Cautious when Repinning The Same Pin
Pinterest has stated that they are looking at your boards and making sure that you aren’t spamming your own boards.
This would mean pinning the same pin over and over again.
So make sure that if you pin the same pin to a board that there are other pins between your same pins.
Pinterest Marketing Tips for Business
Let’s go over some optimized marketing tips for Pinterest. Having a pinning strategy will help you see if Pinterest is driving traffic to your blog.
21. Know The Best Time To Pin
While this may not fit your blog niche, know that most people spend time on Pinterest or are pinning content in the evenings and during the latter half of the week.
Knowing this helps me decide when to publish content on my blogs. Since Pinterest drives most of my traffic for Smart Mom Ideas, I publish content on the weekends and the midweek.
22. Add Pinterest Widgets On Your Blog
To grow your Pinterest followers, you can add a Pinterest board widget to the sidebar of your blog.
23. Verify Your Website
It’s important that once you have a Business Pinterest account, that you verify your website.
This is easy to do as long as you have the Yoast SEO plugin installed on your blog.
Go to social > Pinterest.
On Pinterest click on the verify button and grab the HTML code and place it in the box in Yoast on your blog.
And that’s it!
24. Pin From Your Blog Often
As mentioned, Pinterest favors fresh and new content. Whenever you or someone else pins from your blog, you send a new pin to Pinterest.
So, instead of repinning pins on Pinterest, go to your blog and pin from there.
25. Check Your Analytics
Pinterest offers analytics to help you figure out how your pinning is doing.
Use this information to figure out:
- Which pins are your top performing pins
- Which pins need more “love”
- How big your impressions are growing
- Which boards are your top performing boards
26. Automate Your Pinning
It’s too much for bloggers to manually pin every day. Instead, opt to automate your pinning strategy using Tailwind.
Tailwind uses different ways to automate your pinning strategy. I like to use board lists and interval pinning as well as the new SmartLoop functions where you can have pins loop to the same board based on the interval of time.
You can schedule your first 100 pins for free using Tailwind!
27. Audit Your Pinterest Boards
Every month or few months go into your Pinterest boards and group boards to see what’s going on.
Are you spamming a board or group board?
You might notice that it’s hard to find certain pins so you can create Pinterest sections for some of your boards. Or, you might consolidate a board or make a board secret.
It’s always a good thing to go into Pinterest and see what’s going on. You can even act as a consumer/pinner and use Pinterest like that for the experience YOUR followers get with your pins!
How to Use Pinterest In 2019
Pinterest can be your best friend for your blog!
By using these proven and best tips for Pinterest, you can start gaining blog traffic!
Over to you – tell me which Pinterest marekting tip you will try out from this list?! I want to hear!
I always get confused with tip 20 and 24. So if I’m pinning the same pin from my website at different times like once or twice a month, it’s not exactly repinning but sending a new pin from my blog to Pinterest?
And another question, how many different pins do you create per blog post?
Hi Leah,
Yes, you are right. Repinning is doing on the Pinterest platform! I hope that makes sense. I typically create just one pin per blog post, sometimes two. But the ones I make more than that are the ones that bring traffic, subscribers or make me money.
Great info! Thanks for taking the time to write it.
What a valuable post! Thank you for sharing this awesome list of tips and tricks. I look forward to implementing your tips to help reach moms that want to teach their little ones Mandarin at home.
Julia
lingobuddies.fun
Hi Julia!
Wow! Thanks so much for stopping by. Pinterest is a fabulous place to grow your blog traffic! Have fun using it!
What the best guide on Pinterest I ever read!
Dear Elna! You rock. You are a Pinterest guru.
I learned a lot from this comprehensive guide. Your writing skills make the understanding skyrocket.
Thanks for such a nice post.
Hi Elna, I am not a mom, but still grateful for your content here nonetheless! I haven’t used Pinterest much so it remains largely a mystery to me. Thanks for helping me crack it a little bit. I feel like it would be key to driving traffic to my new blog.
I am a new blogger myself and this was so helpful! I love how easy it was to read I am suoer grateful you took the time to make this. I love that you also wan to help other moms!
Hi Mari,
You’re welcome! And it means a lot when you say my writing is easy to read! I am a freelance writer and brands hire me to write content for them so this is nice to hear! 🙂
Glad you enjoyed this post and if you ever need help you can email me! I’m here for ya!
Elna, you always provide the best quality advice. I was wondering does Pinterest favors those websites with higher domain authority?
Hi,
Thanks so much! I don’t think Pinterest favors blogs based on domain authority. They are only wanting people to stay on their platform as much as possible and interact with their pins on the platform. So if your blog on Pinterest is doing that then Pinterest will favor your blog.
Wow! This was so helpful! I am just starting out in the blogging world and I was able to correct several things on my pinterest account thanks to this article! Thank you so much for sharing!
Hi Hannah!
Wow! That’s awesome to know! So glad this post was helpful in optimizing your Pinterest profile!
These are great tips! This post made me check my Pinterest and my URL speed for my website. I was amazed at the results, so do you have any recommendations for fixing these as well or a blog post?
Hi Tiff,
You just have to be consistent. Produce fresh content for Pinterest and content your followers will engage with! Good luck!
Thank you for the reminder to audit boards on a regular basis! I need to do that more often.
Hi Erin!
You’re welcome! Yes, auditing your Pinterest boards should happen every 3-6 months for sure!
Superb info! I’ve been working on my Pinterest game for a bit, but it’s a little shaky. Some months it’s up and the next month it drops. Hopefully by implementing some of these great tips I’ll be able to blast this thing off! Thanks!
Hi Devin,
Good luck! Pinterest is always changing so you have to up to speed with the changes and trying new tactics!
Thank you for this. I needed some tips. I just started a blog; I feel like I have a lot to write about and various topics that I can contribute to, but don’t know the best way to get anyone to view my content.
http://www.mnmilitarywife.com
Hi Kelsey,
That’s great! Good luck with your blog content!
Thanks Elna! I find your tips very helpful!
Hi Joy!
So happy to hear this!
Regarding your comment on group boards, I definitely agree! I’m a brand new blogger with less than 50 followers on Pinterest, and I am a contributor to a group board in my niche with about 5k followers, yet I get more impressions, pins, and link clicks from my own board! All that being said, my niche does seem a bit small. Is it possible that there’s not enough interest in my niche to grow my blog?
Hi Nailah,
That’s great about Pinterest group boards. For new blogs Pinterest is the place and being on just one group board can help you grow your engagements for sure! Not sure what your niche is but you can also broaden your niche if you find that it’s too narrow!
hi Elna,
This is a very helpful blog. I’ve got some ideas to read this blog. I worried to think about how to increase a traffic on blog but you solved this problem. Thank you for sharing….
Hi!
Thanks so much! Yes understanding how to use Pinterest as a new blogger can be a challenge. We aren’t consumers, we are content creators for Pinterest. Once you understand that you can form a plan!
Thanks for these awesome tips! The biggest help for me on Pinterest is definitely scheduling. I don’t have the time to manually pin all day with a toddler running around and an Etsy shop to run!
Hi Madi!
Yes, I feel the same way to. I have multiple Pinterest accounts and without Tailwind they would be static! Glad you found some tips on how to use Pinterest!
As a new blogger, I’ve been trying to decide which social media platform to use. Instagram is out because it seems that you have to post on your phone and not computer. I can’t stand using my phone for the internet. I’m going to use your pintrest tips and run with it. Thank you for a very informative article.
Hey Isabella!
Good to know! Yeah, Instagram is hard for me too. I haven’t updated my profile in a year or more! I like working in my office on my computer! I hope you enjoy Pinterest!
In #24, what exactly does pinning from your blog mean?
Hi Erica,
When you pin from your own blog, that means you go to a blog post of yours and pin it.
Thanks much. These are great tips. I only can hope Pinterest will help grow my blog as successfully as yours:)
Hey Mark!
I’m sure it can if you sink your teeth into Pinterest marketing and try different strategies 🙂
Thanks for your tips! These are super helpful. I noticed that PicMonkey only has a free trial. Has this changed recently from free to a paid service? Can you recommend another editing program?
Hey Beth!
Thanks so much! You can try Canva too!
This is great info. My monthly impression got up to 350,000 and then a group board I was pinning to a lot went solo and my monthly impressions dropped down to 70,000 monthly views. So I know what you mean about not depending on group boards
Hey Terrie!
Yeah, group boards may die out next year, but who knows? For now, group boards are working for some of my profiles and I’ll continue to monitor them! Thanks for stopping by!
Thanks this is the clearest pinterest strategy guide I have read.
Hey Anne,
Good to know! Thanks so much! Yes, how to use Pinterest for your business or blog can be a challenge for many. It’s much more than a social media platform for sure!
Thanks, Elna. I noticed my pageviews dropping over the past few weeks and needed some tips to be noticed again!
Hi!
So glad these tips helps you on how to use Pinterest as a beginner! Gaining blog traffic from Pinterest can be a challenge if you don’t know the platform! I hope this helped!
Oh, My Word! Thank you! I have been wondering how people got the follow me on Pinterest on their blog and now I know! Thanks to you I always learn some great actionable tips from your posts. I am trying to grow my blog traffic and this is very helpful.
Hi Jane!
You’re welcome! So glad you found some Pinterest tips for marketing your blog!
Thanks for these amazing tips Elna! Always love your posts and how helpful they are. Pinterest has been a bit of a challenge for me lately so these updated Pinterest tips will come in handy for sure.
Hey Nicole!
Thanks for stopping by! Yes, Pinterest is all over the place lately eh? But, I found these 27 tips to be stable and they’re easy to adopt in your Pinterest marketing strategy as a blogger!
This is one of the most vital information on increasing you target audience to your blog.