Blogging

Blog Tips: My Top Pinterest Strategies To Bring Massive Traffic to Your Blog

Here’s the thing you need to know about Pinterest:

It is not a social media platform. It’s in an entirely different category than Twitter or Facebook.

Everyone who visits Pinterest is looking for value, something that will help them improve their life. Users come to Pinterest to find business or blogging tips, to find a haircut inspiration, to find ways to deal with stress or anxiety, to learn about self-improvement, to find recipes, makeup tutorials, and reviews.

So, no. Pinterest is no longer a place where you’d only go if you were looking for a DIY project or wedding inspiration. AND, men are actually on there, too. This means that it doesn’t matter what kind of niche you’re in- Pinterest can help you find that perfect audience.

Yes. People come to Pinterest to find ideas or inspiration.

You have to think of Pinterest as a visual search engine.

What do search engines love?

SEO.

PINTEREST SEO

When you log in to your Pinterest account, the pins you see no longer show up in a chronological order. Pinterest now has a smart feed, which uses its algorithm to figure out the kind of content that each user is interested in, and displays most relevant pins first.

This means that each user not only sees pins from people they follow, but they also see related pins and interest pins. That gives you an opportunity to get your pins and your content in front of people who don’t already follow you.

To take advantage of the smart feed, you have to utilize SEO. This includes things like:

  • Your image names– they should always include one or more keywords relating to your post
  • Your profile– use keywords there, too
  • Your boards– make sure that each board is assigned a category, use keywords in the board description
  • Your pin descriptions– make sure that they’re keyword-rich
  • Your website– make sure it’s verified + sign up for rich pins

These are all things you need to keep in mind. If you’re just starting out, it can seem a little overwhelming at first. BUT, once you optimize your profile and boards and get in the habit of implementing SEO, it’ll take you about an hour a week to run your Pinterest account. But more about that later.

PIN FOR YOUR AUDIENCE, NOT YOURSELF

If you’re using Pinterest as a business or blog marketing tool, you have to pin content that will attract your target audience. Most people use Pinterest for finding DIY projects or recipe ideas; but if you’re a food blogger and post plant-based recipes for example, but constantly pin pictures of cute dogs, your targeted audience (or people who you want to get to visit your blog, turn into subscribers, get to buy your products) will never see your pins. You have to stay within your niche. There are some bloggers with hundreds of thousands of followers on Pinterest, who can’t drive any traffic to their blog despite those numbers, and that’s because they don’t stay within their niche.

Think about it.

IF all you pin are fashion-related pins, then chances are most of your followers are following you because they’re interested in fashion. BUT, if you’re also a food blogger, don’t be surprised if pins from your own blog don’t do well. Someone who followed you because of your fashion boards, might not be interested in your recipes. This is why it’s so important that you curate your boards to attract that perfect audience- people who are interested in the same things you blog about.

Since the new smart feed doesn’t display pins in a chronological order, it’s very important that you pay special attention to your pins and boards. Don’t just pin for the sake of pinning. You want to pin quality content and stay within your niche. The smart feed uses its algorithm to estimate how valuable each pin is to a user. To do that, the algorithm takes many things into consideration, including both pin AND pinner quality. So, if you blog about beauty and have a lot of high-quality beauty boards with high-quality pins, the smart feed will be more likely to display your pins to people who are interested in beauty. That also means displaying pins from your blog.

Pinterest can help you find that ideal audience- you just need to let the algorithm know that you’re a high-quality pinner with a specific niche.

EXPERIMENT WITH YOUR IMAGES

It’s hard to get it right the first time, which is why if you’re just getting into Pinterest, you’ll have to experiment a bit with your images. As most of you will probably already know, vertical images do a lot better on Pinterest- and that’s because they stand out and appear larger in the feed. The ideal size of a Pinterest image is about 800 x 1200 pixels.

If you don’t like taking vertical images or they don’t really fit in with your blog, you can combine two horizontal images to create a Pinterest-friendly version.

Here’s an example of how combining two images can work.

Adding text overlay is another must. Pinterest is a visual search engine, so the first thing that people look at when scrolling through their feed is the pin/image itself.

Here’s the thing:

No one really takes their time to actually read the pin description.

BUT if your image has a large, easy to read text overlay, it will immediately let the user know what your pin/blog post is about and how it can help them.

Other than your text being easy to read, you’ll also need to stay consistent with on brand colors and fonts. This is where you’ll have to experiment a bit, see which color/font combos work best for your blog. I wouldn’t try to use too many fonts or colors and only stick to two fonts and a handful of colors. This is because you want people to immediately recognize the pins as yours, so staying on-brand is important.

If you’re just starting out, experiment a bit, see which images do better until you find a style that works best for you. You can even create multiple Pinterest images for one post, hide them within the post and see which ones get the most repins.

SCHEDULE YOUR PINS

Scheduling my pins to post automatically has changed everything for me. I only spend about 30 minutes to 1 hour a week working on my Pinterest, I schedule my pins and focus on creating content. I still like to pin organically a few times a day, but I love knowing that even if I’m busy, my Pinterest account is till working for me.

Right now my Pinterest profile averages in over 4 million monthly views- that is so much potential you guys. Pinterest is still very much an under-utilized tool and if you have a blog, an online business, a shop- you’re seriously missing out if you’re not taking advantage of it yet. And yes, I’ll keep saying this until you all get on there and start driving insane amounts of traffic to your blogs.

I talk about Tailwind all the time in my Pinterest-related post and it’s been a game-changer.

I grew my Pinterest account to over 22,000 followers within a year and a half and Pinterest is my #1 referral beating Google, and it’s all thanks to Tailwind. I already talked about Tailwind in a few of my other post, you can read about it in more detail right here.

A few final words for beginners: I think it is quite obvious, but I’ll mention it anyway: don’t only pin your own content. You don’t want to have a Pinterest profile and boards that are filled with nothing else but pins from you blog. What you do want, is to create a board with pins only from your blog and make that particular board appear at the very top of your profile. Don’t forget to pin other quality content from your niche- remember that more quality content you pin, more users will see your pins.

Another quick tip: if you don’t have a whole lot of posts on your blog, create multiple Pinterest images for each post, tweak the caption/text on your image a little and pin it to multiple boards. This is a great way to get your content seen, without pinning the same image over and over again.

Top Pinterest Strategies

As a blogger or an online business or shop owner, it’s so hard to be everywhere- unless you have unlimited time and resources, which, I know not a lot of us do. This is why you need to focus on what works for you. I know I’ll never love Twitter or Facebook even though it works great for other bloggers. Instagram is one of my favorite platforms, but with constant changes to its algorithm, I just don’t have the time to spend hours a day, trying to figure out how to beat it.

This is why I love Pinterest– because it gets results and by automating it, I can focus on doing what I love most: creating content. Keep in mind that numbers of followers don’t matter, unless they actually engage, connect with you, visit your blog and are interested in what you have to offer.

Want to launch your own WordPress blog and start earning money? Check out my step-by-step guide to starting a blog right here + a list of all my blog resources, including my favorite affiliate marketing programs, right here.

This content uses referral links. Read my disclosure policy for more info.

57 Comments

  • Reply
    Christine C.
    May 4, 2017 at 10:19 am

    Such an amazing read and congrats on 4 million views! That’s amazing and some serious goals right there!!! Your posts are always so informative and easy to follow! For that, I can’t thank you enough!

  • Reply
    Liz | Lipstick & Confetti
    May 4, 2017 at 10:49 am

    This is such a helpful post! Thank you for sharing!

    xo, Liz
    http://lipstickandconfetti.com

  • Reply
    Kaylee K
    May 4, 2017 at 11:13 am

    This post was really helpful! Thank you for sharing!!

    XX -KK
    http://www.KayleeKarcher.com
    #ObsessedWithEverything

  • Reply
    Aleksandra // bunniesaremagic
    May 4, 2017 at 11:38 am

    I ran out of ideas when it comes to improving my Pinterest – all of the elements above are there, just my own stuff is not pinnable enough, I think :)

    • Reply
      Paula @ thirteenthoughts.com
      May 5, 2017 at 7:23 am

      Definitely takes a little patience to get things going, have you experimented with adding different overlays to your photos? You have amazing content!

      • Reply
        Aleksandra // bunniesaremagic
        May 5, 2017 at 10:11 am

        Thank you :) One day maybe I’ll get a pinnable looking photo taken, I feel like most of them are just too obscure or something?

  • Reply
    Angel Bland
    May 4, 2017 at 11:49 am

    Hi Paula. How do you check the number of views on your Pinterest profile? Thanks

  • Reply
    Anastasia
    May 4, 2017 at 12:03 pm

    Thank you for this post, Paula! I am 100% guilty of spreading thin and diluting my niche. I have food boards, beauty boards, fashion boards, and boards that are “in” right now, like tiny tattoos and lob hairstyles. I should probably make half of those private and just focus on my niche. By any chance, have you tested if private boards that are not in your niche count against you in the new smart feed algorithm?

    • Reply
      Paula @ thirteenthoughts.com
      May 4, 2017 at 12:06 pm

      Thanks Anastasia! They do not. That’s exactly what I did in the past; I had way too many different boards. I made a lot of them secret, so not to lose all the pins. I also kept a few boards that maybe aren’t very relevant to my niche, but have a lot of followers (so not lose them). I only noticed my repins and following go up since I’ve done this, so you can easily make those boards secret.

      • Reply
        Anastasia
        May 4, 2017 at 12:08 pm

        Thank you! I may have to give my boards a nice spring clean this weekend. Pinterest is my second highest referrer after Google, but I know I am not getting as much traffic from it as I should.

  • Reply
    Ana
    May 4, 2017 at 12:19 pm

    Thank you for these tips! I’m trying work more on my Pinterest page and make it more useful and interesting so this was great xxx
    http://fallingforablog.blogspot.com.es/2017/05/instagram-inspiration-april.html

  • Reply
    Jenn
    May 4, 2017 at 12:55 pm

    Thank you for this!! I started using Tailwind consistently a couple of weeks ago and I’m already seeing an improvement. I still need to sit down and optimize my boards, but I totally see it’s worth it now. Instagram is so frustrating and, while I still (reluctantly) love it, it’s just not great for promoting my blog.

    Jenn │ Beauty by Jellybean

    • Reply
      Paula @ thirteenthoughts.com
      May 6, 2017 at 2:17 pm

      So happy to hear that Jenn, that’s awesome! To be honest, I don’t even think of Instagram as a “blog growing” outlet anymore- I can’t justify spending so much time on it when it doesn’t bring results. I still love being on there, just for fun though!

  • Reply
    Grace
    May 4, 2017 at 2:17 pm

    Great post!! I need to really utilize Pinterest better. I was using Boardbooster for a while but I wasn’t really liking the interface and it was a little confusing. I’m definitely going to check out Tailwind. Thanks for this post!

  • Reply
    Katherine Tran
    May 4, 2017 at 2:56 pm

    I made a Pinterest and never use it. I should definitely get back to it!

    http://www.myclusterofthoughts.com/

  • Reply
    Dora
    May 4, 2017 at 3:57 pm

    This was so useful to read! I kind of abandoned Pintrest because I couldn’t really figure out how to bring traffic to my blog using it, but after reading this I am ready to give it another go.
    Dora
    http://www.adropofindigo.com/

  • Reply
    Ariadna Morell
    May 4, 2017 at 4:02 pm

    This was such a helpful post, thank you so much for sharing!! x

    Ariadna || RAWR BOWS

  • Reply
    Joanne Kennedy
    May 4, 2017 at 4:08 pm

    Great post! some useful tips here! and great photos!

    xoxo

    http://www.holajoanne.com

  • Reply
    mediamarmalade
    May 4, 2017 at 4:36 pm

    fab tips, Pinterest is super important to my blog but I’m desperately working to grow it too. It has such huge potential

    Mel x mediamarmalade.com

  • Reply
    fannyanddailybeauty
    May 4, 2017 at 5:19 pm

    Your Pinterest posts are always so helpful, I’ve never thought about the vertical images (mine are squares), but it is true that as a user, I definitely pay more attention to the bigger ones! Thank you for sharing!

    http://fannyanddailybeauty.com

    • Reply
      Paula @ thirteenthoughts.com
      May 6, 2017 at 2:21 pm

      Vertical images definitely do a lot better on Pinterest, try combining two in one for a few posts and see how it does!

  • Reply
    Danielle Beautyblog
    May 4, 2017 at 5:39 pm

    This is so helpful Paula! Pinterest is a mystery to me but I need to organise myself a little better and see if I can start to drive more traffic from it!

    Danielle’s Beauty Blog

    • Reply
      Paula @ thirteenthoughts.com
      May 6, 2017 at 2:21 pm

      Thanks so much Danielle- ahh it was a mystery to me too at first, but it’s really not that difficult once you get familiar wit it ;)

  • Reply
    Natalie Harney
    May 4, 2017 at 6:17 pm

    Pinterest has been such a great thing for my blog, but I haven’t really had much of a strategy when using it. Thank you!

    – Natalie
    http://www.workovereasy.com

  • Reply
    Kiri Yanchenko
    May 4, 2017 at 6:22 pm

    I am going to have to read this on the weekend after I blog this week.
    This is so much to take in.
    How do you schedule your pins by the way? Is there a program that does it?
    Kiri
    Set to Glow
    http://www.settoglow.com.au

    • Reply
      Paula @ thirteenthoughts.com
      May 6, 2017 at 2:23 pm

      Yes, I use Tailwind to schedule my pins. I mentioned it in the post and linked to another posts where I discuss it in more detail ;)

  • Reply
    Lexie | NAILGIRL.NET
    May 4, 2017 at 6:59 pm

    This is so helpful! I definitely need to up my Pinterest game!

  • Reply
    Sophie Sierra
    May 4, 2017 at 9:35 pm

    Absolutely loved this post Paula, have been trying to focus on Pinterest more lately and have been enjoying it as a platform and your perfect strategies and tips are gonna be a MASSIVE help to me! I’m definitely with you on Twitter and Facebook, Instagram is definitely more of a firm favourite of mine now along with Pinterest <3

    Sophie | soinspo xo

    • Reply
      Paula @ thirteenthoughts.com
      May 6, 2017 at 2:24 pm

      Thank you so much Soph! Pinterest is definitely a great place to take advantage of for us bloggers. I love Instagram too, but it doesn’t drive nearly as much traffic to my blog as Pinterest does hehe ;)

  • Reply
    Marion Kit
    May 5, 2017 at 12:30 am

    Thank you for this very helpful post :D

  • Reply
    Yvonne Ashon
    May 5, 2017 at 1:54 pm

    Love this post. Thanks

    http://www.yourbeautypantry.com

  • Reply
    Isabel Robertson
    May 5, 2017 at 1:59 pm

    This post is so helpful! Thank you for sharing!

    Bella x
    https://bellasfashionjournal.com

  • Reply
    Alice
    May 5, 2017 at 3:41 pm

    Such a helpful post, thank you. I’ve not tried Pinterest to promote my blog, it sounds really useful.

    Alice | alicemaysnell

  • Reply
    Cat L
    May 7, 2017 at 10:54 pm

    Such a helpful post Paula! I really need to figure out how to use Tailwind! Will definitely be binge reading all of your related posts! Thank you for sharing!
    ~ Cat L.
    http://www.CatsDailyLiving.com

  • Reply
    Naya
    May 8, 2017 at 5:41 am

    My goodness, Paula you are my Pinterest Queen! When one day I get 4 mln viewers on Pinterest, I kid you not – I will send you a big, delicious cake as my “thank you”! Already saved this article to come back again to it for all your wonderful tips. Thank you!!

    Naya // http://www.partyparrotblog.com

  • Reply
    Rachel Emily
    May 9, 2017 at 11:31 am

    Love this post. I have just scheduled in all of sunday to embrace the tips in this post.
    I’d never thought about how people don’t read the captions until I read this and realised that 90% of the time I don’t read them either!

    Rachel | http://www.Rachel-Emily.com

    • Reply
      Paula @ thirteenthoughts.com
      May 15, 2017 at 9:39 pm

      Thank you so much Rachel! Ahh makes sense, doesn’t it? :) I do the same- usually only pay attention to images with large and visible text :)

Leave a Reply