Practical Tips for Using Pinterest to Increase Blog Traffic
Pinterest is the main source of traffic to this blog and has been since my site redesign in February. In the first week I got a total of about 4,600 views. On February 11th, the beginning of the second week, I got 877 views on one day, and that’s still my highest daily viewcount. Now, my usual daily viewcount is somewhere between ten and thirty, but prior to the redesign I’d been getting a max of about ten views a day. How did I use Pinterest to skyrocket traffic? Well, let me show you.
1. Update your account to a business
Once you update to a business account you’ll have access to analytics and thus be able to see how many clicks, views, repins, etc. your pins get. Plus you’ll seem more trustworthy to anyone stumbling across you.
2. Optimize your blog images to be Pinterest friendly
This was THE biggest thing that helped me, I believe. A pattern I’ve found is that a lot of author bloggers have all or part of their image greyed out and the title of the post over that so that it’s readable, and then a band across the bottom that has the blog name so it’s clear where the pin originated. Readable fonts are KEY, as is branding (making your fonts and colors match your site as much as possible). I personally get my images from Pexels and edit them with Photoscape, but you can also use Canva or some other image-editing program. Canva actually has a Pinterest graphic template that’s the optimal size for a pin. I do recommend Pexels, if you need stock photos, but there are also Pixabay, Unsplash, and others.
You want your images to have a consistent design so that when someone looks at your pins they think, “Oh! That pin must be so-and-so’s!” This also means you won’t want it to look to similar to someone else’s. There are a few bloggers I follow who have really similar pin designs and I always have to look at the address to figure out which of them a pin belongs to.
3. Boards to have
You’ll want a board dedicated to your blog posts and at least one dedicated to writing tips (of your own and others). I have about fifteen boards for various sub-categories of writing tips, but I’ve been on Pinterest for a couple of years. Expand as you need to. When you write a blog post, save it to every board it fits on for maximum visibility. You obviously want to be strategic about this and not gimmicky. As an example, I didn’t put my post about the literary world needing better romances on my reading board—even though it could plausibly fit there because it’s about books—because it’s geared toward writers, not readers; however, I put it on both my Christian writing tips board and my relationship-writing tips board in addition to my blog board.
I also have storyboards, character boards, and random boards that are more me-related than writing-related (TV and movie boards, book boards, reading boards, car boards, Disney boards, etc.). What exact boards you make are totally up to you, but there are some ideas to get you started.
To look as professional as possible you’ll likely want to hide a lot of your non-writing boards, as well as the writing boards that you don’t pin to consistently or those that belong to projects you’re no longer working on. I’m fairly certain I have just as many secret boards as public boards. You don’t necessarily want to hide all of your non-writing boards (I have a lot still up on mine), but they’ll attract a different audience.
You’ll want to add descriptions to your boards, both to include keywords (naturally in the bio, not forced in) and to tell your viewers about the board. This can be particularly beneficial for storyboards, to start early getting people excited about the book. You don’t have to have a finalized blurb, but something to catch people’s attention is good.
4. Don’t be egocentric
Pin other bloggers’ posts. These posts will be helpful for you as well as your followers, they’ll help out the bloggers because you’re helping the pins see a wider audience, and they’re more pins on your account which helps you seem more legit. The more pins you have, the more trustworthy you’ll seem to people coming to your account.
5. Make sure your account is representative of you/your brand
Make your profile picture something connected to your blog. If you use a profile picture on your blog, use the same one across all your platforms. It’s another trust/reputation thing. You’ll likely want a picture of yourself, but a recognizable logo will also work.
6. Use your bio
Use your bio to describe who you are and link back to your blog. Say what kind of writing you do, maybe mention where you are in your writing journey, and mention anything else that’s important to who you are. Also include keywords (naturally; don’t force them) to make people more likely to find you in searches.
You might also want to mention in your name that you’re an author. My Pinterest name is “R.M. Archer | Author”. This helps people see at a glance what it is you do and what your profile is mostly going to display.
Are you using Pinterest to promote your blog yet? If you leave your username in the comments I’ll give you a follow. :)
Ooh, thanks for the tips!! I’ve been considering using Pinterest more for my blog but I wasn’t sure exactly how to start, so this is really helpful!
Yeah, Pinterest is an amazing tool. I’m glad this was helpful!