I started my latest blog a little over a year ago and I’ve been able to grow it to 40000 monthly page views and a passive income of $1000/month.
It wasn’t magic though, it was marketing.
The biggest problem that I faced when I started my travel blog was getting people to read it.
I remember writing on 20 different categories, only to realize that barely anyone was reading my blog. I was on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, pretty much everywhere to try and grow my audience.
I did that for a few months until I came across a blogger who had started after me and she was doing 10 times my traffic.
Her secret? Pinterest!
For some reason, when we online creators try to grow our traffic we automatically assume that traditional social media is where our audience is at.
WRONG.
It took me over 2 years of blogging to realize that the reason why no one was reading my blog was because I was marketing to the WRONG audience.
In this post, I’m going to explain to you some of the Pinterest best practices that can help you take your marketing to the next level.
But first, let’s take a few steps back and see how my blogging journey evolved.
You’ll notice a strong correlation between my traffic and my income.
Before I discovered how to really use Pinterest, I was averaging $50/month on my blog in passive income.
After I started to utilize specific strategies and tactics, I was able to grow my passive income to over $2000/month.
And I wasn’t selling sponsored content or going on press trips or coaching others.
I was busy finishing my Master in Germany while at the same time interning to pay my bills and exploring Europe at the same time.
The reason I am telling you this is because I want you to know that I am not an exception.
My time is just as limited and I have the same amount of distractions to face on a daily basis.
I have just created a way that works to bring me sustainable high quality traffic and income on auto-pilot.
To drive this point further, you can see how my email list grew before and after I started to generate good amount of traffic.
So what changed?
Well, I discovered Pinterest.
And in this post, I will help you discover and make the most of this platform to grow your website’s traffic and audience.
Why Pinterest Matters
Before we do a deep dive into how to make Pinterest work for you.
Let’s take a moment to understand why this platform is a gold mine for bloggers and businesses alike.
Since I’m a numbers kinda girl, I’ll give you some interesting facts first-
- Pinterest has 265 million monthly viewers.
- Pinterest drives 33% more traffic to e-commerce and shopping sites than Facebook.
- 98% of ‘Pinners’ try out the ideas they find on Pinterest.
- Advertising on Pinterest earns a $2 profit for every $1 spent.
- Pins live for months, whereas an average tweet or FB post dies out in minutes.
- 59% of millennials have discovered products on Pinterest.
- Pinners spend 29% more on shopping than non-pinners do.
Alright, enough with the statistics Shruti, tell us how is this relevant for us?
I hear you!
Here’s why Pinterest is the most relevant platform for new bloggers:
1. Pinterest doesn’t discriminate.
Whether you have 2 followers or 2 million, the likelihood of your pins being organically found is just as HIGH as any other user.
Take that Instagram!
2. Pinterest users WANT to get inspired or buy.
While on Facebook people want to talk to their friends, on Instagram people want to see what influencers are up to, on Pinterest, Pinners are actually looking to PLAN life moments (this is statistically proven) AND buy products.
It doesn’t matter if you haven’t built a huge brand already. You have an audience that’s waiting for you to show them what you are up to. How amazing is that?
3. Pinterest users are growing world-wide.
If you are an Asian or African blogger and say, “but Pinterest is only popular in the US”, that’s not entirely true.
While it is more popular in the North-American market, 50% of last year’s growth came from outside the US driven my male users.
How’s that for a large global audience?
4. Pinterest users SHARE the love.
Which other platform allows people to mass share your content for months and even years. Did you know that 80% of pins are actually RE-pins?
This means that on this platform people are most likely to share, save and forward your pins (aka content) to new users helping you get found for free.
Well, if this is not enough to convince you why Pinterest should absolutely be at the TOP of your traffic and audience building strategy, I don’t know what is!
PINTEREST BEST PRACTICES
Recommended Pinning Schedule
A recommended pinning schedule can be(feel free to mix it up):
- Day 1: Upload to the most relevant board, “Best of” board, Add to a tribe
- Day 2: Schedule/Save the pin for 10 relevant personal and group boards, Add to a tribe
- Day 3: Schedule/Save the pin for 10 other relevant personal and group boards, Add to a tribe
- Day 4: Schedule/Save the pin for 10 other relevant personal and group boards, Add to a tribe
- Day 5: Schedule/Save the pin for 10 other relevant personal and group boards, Add to a tribe
- Day 6/7: Check performance, save to additional boards, create new pins if the pin is picking up and see if you want to schedule it again.
Please Note: Each time you upload a new pin with a new design and keywords, it is considered a NEW PIN even if the URL leads to the same blog post.
What to do if a pin goes viral?
Measure, repeat and recycle.
Take a note of the :
- Aesthetics
- Headline
- Board/Tribe where it may have gone viral (you’ll have to guess this one)
- The reason why it could have gone viral (you’ll have to guess this one)
Next step is to create a similar pin and pin using the same process as before.
- Add to the most relevant board first.
- Add to the most relevant tribe.
- Save, schedule, promote.
Do sharing threads help on FB?
Many new bloggers share their pins on sharing threads on FB which run specific days where they allow new pins to be shared.
This is a good way to quickly get some saves, but reciprocal threads where you have to save 150 pins so 150 people save yours can be VERY EXHAUSTING and can be considered a bit to spammy as they are click-outs from Facebook Groups.
I would still use promo threads especially as a new blogger, but would go out of my way to avoid reciprocal threads as I would rather not have my account flagged for spam.
Here’s a list of groups you can join that run blog or social media promo threads:
Here’s a list of 12 groups that you can start with right away-
- https://www.facebook.com/groups/681136371988524/
- https://www.facebook.com/groups/1456208727792810/
- https://www.facebook.com/groups/170139453515011/
- https://www.facebook.com/groups/177513372802395/
- https://www.facebook.com/groups/963272083763338/
- https://www.facebook.com/groups/517883595061680/
- https://www.facebook.com/groups/342549066192370/
- https://www.facebook.com/groups/596045983784215/
- https://www.facebook.com/groups/747613138719914/
- https://www.facebook.com/groups/blogbizbabes/
TOP PINTEREST FAQ’s
I stick to 1000*1500 px which is the size that Pinterest recommends. However, most graphic design tools offer a standard (free) Pinterest design in 2:3 ratio that is also completely fine.
In the past, taller pins did well, but now Pinterest tends to cut them off in the mobile feed. I would stick to the regular Canva Pinterest graphic or 1000*1500 to be safe.
I prefer to pin a particular pin once every 7 days and across all my relevant personal and group boards. If I were to schedule this pin I would keep a time gap of 4-6h (using Tailwind) between each pin so the same pin would rotate across a couple of days and not be considered as spam.
You can keep a longer gap between your pins if you have fewer pins and boards. For example, if you have less than 20 boards to pin to, you can spread that out across 5 days with a time interval of 8h between each pin.
As a heavy Tailwind user, I switch up my pins every 2 weeks. This means that if I create 10 new pins for the next two weeks, I would schedule a maximum of these 10 pins + a few old pins that I want to re-share across my boards.
I would switch up my pins every two weeks. This is also why I’m a big fan of batch scheduling on weekends as you can sit and select a combination of pins that are :
Not repetitive pins ( to avoid spamming)
Still get you good results (based on past pins)
A mix of new and old pins (70:30)
Pinterest loves fresh content so you want to make sure you work out a steady stream of fresh content, but at the same time you also want to make your old well performing pins work for you.
Just make sure not to repeat the same content for more than two weeks and switch things up as you go.
My recommendation would be to create 1 new pin every day. However, with a million things to do that’s not always possible. In this case I would schedule to create 5-7 pins every weekend and post them out with gaps on Pinterest.
You can do this easily by using the “publish at a later date” option.
PRO TIP: Publish at a time when most of your audience is online. As my audience is in the US, I publish pins late at night (for my timezone) that is morning in the audience timezone.
Pinterest doesn’t have a limit on how many pins your account can create or how many you can upload. In theory you can make 100 pins for a well performing blog post and you can make 1 pin for a poorly performing blog post. Of course the timeline would matter as well.
Just for an example, i have 2-3 posts that I make at least 10 new pins every month for because they are evergreen for my audience. And then there are about 20 other that I create only 1 each. Not to mention i would also add new pins for new blog posts.
The major difference here is KEYWORDS. You might have saved different ones on these different platforms and based on what you want to promote you would chose the platform from which you would pin to.
I always stick to saving and sharing my pins from Pinterest itself as they have the most updated SEO optimised keywords and I would highly recommend doing the same.
Unlike Google, Pinterest favours and promotes fresh content. Instead of spending time correcting all your old pins, you should be spending time creating new pins that are 100% optimised from the beginning.
This takes longer but is certainly a more rewarding task to do. Instead of going back to update old pin descriptions, create and upload new ones.
Looking for more help on Pinterest? Here are a few resources that will help you take your website traffic to the next level?
- 7 Tips To Design Viral Pins: FREE EBOOK
- 5 Day Pinterest Traffic Challenge: FREE EMAIL COURSE
