If you’ve been scratching your head on how to use Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog, you’re exactly at the right place!
From trial and error, after years of blogging, I’ve finally managed to nail the MOST important things you should be doing to maximise blog traffic from Pinterest.
I’ve also come to the conclusion that other social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or Youtube will never bring as much traffic to your website as Pinterest can in an organic manner, unless you already have an established large audience.
In this post, I’ll show you:
- What you’ll need as a foundation to succeed on Pinterest
- 5 simple Pinterest marketing strategies that will help boost your traffic
BUILDING THE RIGHT FOUNDATION
The first step in your journey is to set up
1) A Business Account
This will give you in-depth insights into what is working and what is not working in your Pinterest account.
Read here for the complete setup guide from Pinterest.
2) Rich Pins
This will make Pinterest understand what content is related to your blog and also make these pins show in Google results.
Don’t stress. It’s not as complicated as it sounds.
Rich pins essentially show the relevant details attached to a pin such as the title, the meta-description.
This can include the information that it is an article, a product, a recipe or an app.
Rich pins serve two major purposes:
- Help Pinterest understand what type of content is related to the image/pin: article, recipe, product, app.
- Help Google and Pinterest optimise your content for search results in either platform
Read here for the complete setup guide on rich pins.
Once you have set the basic foundation in place, you can start using Pinterest for good now!
Here are 5 fail-proof strategies that will blow your traffic through the roof, when done right.
STRATEGY #1: PINTEREST HOVER BUTTON
Sometimes in life, small actions can have very big payoffs.
I’m about to tell you the power of one such small action.
You can do it right away and it will help multiply your Pinterest reach.
Ready?
Install the Pinterest Pin it Plugin on WordPress.
Link: https://wordpress.org/plugins/pinterest-pin-it-button-on-image-hover-and-post/
This button is by far the EASIEST way to get people who are already on your blog to save more pins.
How did I find this out?
One of my pins was going viral and I started to see a TON of images from that blog post being circulated and bringing me more traffic.
But I had actually never used those pins to save or share via my account.
This is when I realised that it was actually this one small button that shows a “Save” button for the image that led to this viral growth.
I didn’t even have to create new pins or do anything fancy- shmancy. This small plugin did all the work. Check out the video to see how it works in action!
If you have a Squarespace website you can check out how do this here: https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/206544157-Adding-Pinterest-Save-buttons
STRATEGY #2 : GROUP BOARDS
In this section you will learn what are group boards, how to join them and why you need to join them.
What are group boards?
Group boards are essentially boards where more than 1 contributor posts content and shares content from each other.
Group boards can have anywhere from 1 to 5000 contributors. They can have anywhere from 5 to 5 Million followers.
To increase your traffic you need to IDENTIFY & JOIN the most relevant group boards for your niche.
I highly recommend to have a group boards that are a mix of:
- Niche Boards: For example if you are a food blogger, you want to look for group boards that focus on food, recipes or any other sub-niche that you blog in
- General Niche Boards: Some boards are an “all you can post” type of boards. These boards have a mix of varied bloggers but are less effective when it comes to maximising your traffic compared to blog niche boards.
The absolute thing you should AVOID doing is:
- Join spammy boards with low-quality pins. Don’t. Just DON’T.
- Join boards in niches that are not at all relevant to your blog. For example, if you only blog about travel, do NOT join a mom blogger group board or a fashion blogging board UNLESS you also post content related to those topics.
It’s not just enough to join ANY group board that comes your way. NO.
Be strategic about the group boards you apply to and join and stay in so that you can work on creating a long-term, sustainable Pinterest traffic strategy.
How To Join Group Boards?
Step 1: You can use the tool Pingroupie to find group boards in your niche.
Step 2: As a beginner I would suggest to search for ones with >5000-10000 followers so that you can maximise your reach.
Step 3: Collect 50 emails and send out about 20-30 emails per month until you are a part of at least 50 group boards. This should be an ongoing activity done once every two months.
Step 4: Be patient, wait and watch! About 50% of the request you send will just be lost in outer space. But soon enough, you’ll see payback for all the effort you put in! 😉
Here’s a draft of what I usually send out as a DM/email depending on the board requirements.
How many group boards is too many?
No amount of group boards is too many as long as they are:
- RELEVANT
- MANAGEABLE
You want to join as many group boards as possible that are highly relevant and manageable by you on a daily or weekly basis.
Conclusion: You need to nail your group board strategy if you want to multiply traffic and visibility on Pinterest.
STRATEGY #3: TAILWIND TRIBES
What are Tailwind Tribes?
Tailwind Tribes are like the accountable other half of Group boards.
As a free user you will have access to 5 tribes and 30 submissions/month.
So for example, if you submit one pin to 5 tribes, that will be 5 submissions.
The reason why these are important is because they are usually reciprocal in nature.
This means if you share a tribe member’s post some one from the tribe is also likely to re-share yours.
I have to attribute a lot of my viral success to the increased exposure I get through Tailwind Tribes.
How can you find the right tribes to join?
Step 1: Get to this section to “Find a Tribe”
Step 2: Search for the category closest to your niche.
I searched for education and marketing respectively. And then zoomed in on “Bloggers”.
Step 3: Join Tribes with MAXIMUM CONTRIBUTORS.
Unfortunately you cannot sort tribes by number of members, but you can pretty much see which tribes have maximum numbers and are most relevant to the field you blog in. More tribe members= More Re-pins. Simple Math.
Tailwind is free until 5 tribes, don’t waste your time on tribes that are less than 500 members, especially not when you begin to grow your Pinterest followers or viewers.
What strategy should you have when using Tailwind Tribes?
Good question!
As I mentioned each pin that you submit counts as 1 submission.
So you have to be strategic about which pins you submit.
What I personally do and recommend is to:-
Submit 1 new pin per day to a tribe
Why? Because many tribe members are likely to be in other tribes too.
The way to maximise exposure is to make sure your “new and shiny” pin is added to the most relevant board.
You can also submit 5 pins across 5 different tribes on the same day, but I have found most success while submitting to tribes on a consistent and daily basis.
Now, what do you do if you don’t create new pins every day?
Just use a pin you haven’t previously submitted! There is no rule that says that the pin NEEDS to be new in order to maximise impact on the tribe.
But when you DO create a new pin make sure to add it to relevant tribe(S) for maximum boost right at the beginning.
💎TIP: Share other tribe member’s pins or schedule them on your Tailwind queue as they can see who all shared their pins in insights and are likely to reciprocate the love.
STRATEGY #4: NEW PERSONAL BOARDS
Explosive traffic is not a consequence of just 1 standalone task.
By now, you have probably realised it is the sum of many strategic little things you do over a period of time.
One such strategy is to regularly create new personal boards.
Take time aside every month to create 2-3 new boards.
In addition to updating popular and well-performing personal boards, it is also important to ADD new boards.
Why, you ask?
- New content signal
- High Pinner quality signal
- Active Pinner signal
- Relevancy signal
At this point you understand how each of those are important and I don’t need to further elaborate.
Let’s get to the actionable part:
Types of boards you can add
1) Seasonal boards
Spring-break, Easter recipes, Christmas gifts, etc.
The added benefits of such boards is that you don’t need to spend time maintaining them all throughout the year.
2) Variations of existing boards
If you check out my Pinterest profile you will find that I have at least 3 different boards that have the same underlying theme. These are:
- Europe Travel Tips
- Europe Packing Tips
- Europe Trip Planning
- Budget Travel
- Travel Destinations
- Travel Guides
- Travel Hacks
They all don’t have to be 100% the same, but this is an excellent way to divide and conquer.
Chances are if I saved one pin to Europe Packing Tips and also saved it to Travel Hacks.
If a person is following only one such board he can only ever have access to pins from that board.
3) New Content Topics boards
Recently started venturing into new blog topics? Take them and add them as your boards. Also an excellent way to brainstorm content and assess what demand creates for such topics.
I found out the hard way that whenever I write about “blogging tips” my reach tanks and I never get as many followers as I do when I write about “travel hacks”.
Conclusion? I stopped creating new blogging related boards and optimised the ones I already had. I multiplied my travel hacks related boards not only because they were popular but because more of my audience cared about similar topics.
Analytics don’t lie.
By adding more relevant boards you basically multiply your own reach of the same content but through various channels.
💎TIP: Check out the top 5-10 bloggers in your niche and see which boards they have, which are the ones with the highest number of pins and followers and get inspired to create more of your own!
How many boards is too many boards?
I know you are thinking about this question so we might as well talk about it.
The last time I checked, Pinterest limits you to 500 boards.
Now for the sake of sanity, I would not advise you to add 100 boards in one go because you will likely go crazy managing them.
Also having a bunch of thin flaky boards that aren’t updated is as good as having no boards.
Start by adding 2-3 boards every one month and slowly build up to a point where you cover ALL the potential topics on your blog.
Avoid repeating :
- Titles
- Keywords
- Hashtags
Because, if you repeat these three you are essentially creating twins of the same board and THAT IS NOT FRESH CONTENT.
Alright, so have you noted this information already?
STRATEGY #5: RE-CREATING VIRAL PINS
I saved the best strategy for the end!
Okay, it’s not quite the end yet, but this strategy is definitely the most exciting one.
The best part is that you already have the resources to do this set up!
As you know, a viral pin is a pin that generates a truckload of traffic, sometimes for a day, sometimes for two days and sometimes for months.
What you don’t know is that there is a way to RIDE THIS WAVE.
Most people are happy when they see a viral pin and then forget about it the next day.
Viral Pinners however get down to the bottom of:
- what made the pin go viral
- how to re-create a viral pin
What made the pin go viral?
Any pin that gets you more than average views on a single day or over a period of days.
Where can you find it?
- Google Analytics
- Pinterest Insights
- Pin Insights
The easiest way is to log in to your home page and your “best of” board and just casually see the numbers at the bottom of your latest pins.
If you log in to your dashboard and see a number like this you can be pretty confident that this is either a viral pin or has the potential to go viral. You don’t even need to check Google analytics or your Pinterest insights to figure that out.
Once you have identified what made the viral pin, the obvious next question is-
How can you make sure this stays viral?
1) Re save pin to all the relevant boards/tribes.
This one’s a no-brainer right? You will obviously give this priority with manual and automated pinning when you already KNOW that it is going viral.
More importantly you need to:
2) Re-create more viral pins.
This is why I use the paid plan for Canva, because I can save my templates there.
Once I know EXACTLY which design, aesthetic and blog post is trending or going viral, I go back and tweak the pin a little bit and upload a new one the next day.
When you do this you will realise that the new pin will also likely pick up quite fast and subsequently go viral.
Once you nail this process, it’s pretty much repeat, track and re-create.
Not only does understanding WHAT is going viral and HOW to recreate it is important, it is EQUALLY important to have an action plan for what people will do when they land on your blog.
Even though this is outside the scope of your course, you want to make sure you maximise this burst of traffic.
Make sure to:
- Add a content upgrade or a freebie in exchange for an email subscriber
- Add an affiliate link or your own product/service page
- Add cues to check out other related blog posts to help increase traffic to other posts.
Think about this, if you could have 1 viral pin that was CONSTANTLY VIRAL, wouldn’t that just rock your world?
The underlying secret to explosive traffic from Pinterest is:
KNOWING WHAT WORKS & DOING MORE OF IT.
Everything else is just cherry on the top. 😉
Next Steps:
- Get The Viral Pinterest Templates Pack
- Watch the Free Pinterest Traffic Masterclass To Grow Your Traffic
