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4 Ways Pinterest Can Help Drive Traffic To Your Blog

Posted By Stacey Roberts 10th of August 2015 Blog Promotion, General 0 Comments

4 Ways Pinterest Can Help Drive Traffic To Your Blog - tried and tested tips to boost your traffic with some simple changes. On ProBlogger.netThis is a guest contribution from Marie-Eve Vallieres.

Nobody puts Pinterest in a corner. With 73 million users (85% of which are females), an expanding presence outside the United States and upcoming buyable pins, this social media platform/search engine is now more powerful and sophisticated than ever.

After months of pinning diligently and engaging with my subscribers, my analytics exploded, figuratively speaking – Pinterest has become the #1 referral for my blog, bringing a steady flow of high-quality visitors (that stay on my site for more than a microsecond and comment on/share the content) every day.

And that’s the beauty of Pinterest right there: their algorithm is not aggressive in the way Facebook’s is. People are either following your boards or they are not. There is no such thing as playing the Pinterest game or paying for advertisement in the hopes that an infinitely small slice of your subscribers will get to see your post in their feed. Pinterest popularity is entirely a question of how your subscribers engage with you and how easy you make it for them to share your content.

Here a few tested and tried tips that helped me reach over 160,000 followers on Pinterest.

Create bespoke pins

4 Ways Pinterest Can Help Drive Traffic To Your Blog

Millions of pins are being shared every minute. Your subscribers are constantly being thrown new information. How could they possibly know that your content is more relevant than the rest?

Think about it: by creating custom-made pins, you will immediately stand out on your subscriber’s home feed because you will present something they’ve never seen before. You want to create something that will, 1: catch their attention, and 2: that will make them want to click through. Spend an hour or two in Photoshop to create a memorable template that you will adapt for each new pin and that your subscribers, in time, will come to recognize and associate with your brand.

There are four “rules” you should follow when it comes to creating bespoke pins:

  • Always opt for vertical images. Pinterest automatically resizes pins to the same exact width. Play around with your image’s length in order to create something big enough to be noticed.
  • Don’t shy away from bright and bold colors. You do want to catch your readers’ attention, don’t you?
  • Clearly state what the pin is about. Opt for concise yet engaging wording that reflects the content of your blog post.
  • Stay in line with your blog’s visual identity. Use the same fonts or color scheme if you have one.

Find out what blog posts are already being pinned

The first custom pins you will want to create are for blog posts that are already being shared on the platform; enhance the appearance of your own popular content in order to make it even more shareable.

In order to find out which posts are attracting the attention of other users, simply follow the URL www.pinterest.com/source/YourBlog.com/ and see what comes up. These are the posts you want to make as Pinterest-friendly as possible.

4 Ways Pinterest Can Help Drive Traffic To Your Blog

Be loyal to your online persona

Nobody likes a spammer; don’t be that person who only shares his or her own content. Strengthen your brand’s identity by pinning things that are relevant to your niche or personality that you haven’t created. Identify lacks in your competitor’s strategy and enforce them on your own boards. Engage with the influencers in your community. Participate in collaborative boards. This will ensure that you won’t bore or annoy your subscribers, and that your brand’s presence on Pinterest will be as organic as possible.

Make your blog Pinterest-friendly

It’s one thing to improve your Pinterest interventions directly on the platform; it’s another to fine-tune your blog in order to make it inherently more pin-able. There are two ways to encourage your readers to pin your content (I strongly encourage you use both and not just one of the two).

First is by adding Pinterest buttons to your social sharing plugin – this method will allow your readers to share the post straight to their boards, as the featured image and title will generate automatically.

The second and most effective option is by adding a “Pin It” plugin for your images – this, on the other hand, will enable your readers to pin whatever image they like in the post (a hover Pin It button will appear when they mouse over your images) and create their personalized caption. This technique works particularly well if you use lots of vertical images on your site.

Marie-Eve Vallieres is a professional travel blogger at ToEuropeAndBeyond.com and social media strategist from Montreal. She has been to more than 20 countries, lived abroad in both France and the U.K., and is always on the lookout for authentic experiences wherever she travels – as long as she has WiFi.

About Stacey Roberts
Stacey Roberts is the Managing Editor of ProBlogger.net: a writer, blogger, and full-time word nerd balancing it all with being a stay-at-home mum. She writes about all this and more at Veggie Mama. Chat with her on Twitter @veggie_mama, follow on Pinterest for fun and useful tips, peek behind the curtain on Instagramand Snapchat, listen to her 90s pop culture podcast, or be entertained on Facebook.
Comments
  1. hey Stacey,
    I was in search of this kind of article.
    I’m new to blogging!! Can you tell me should I use Pinterest now or should I wait till Google Ads !! ?? I’m confused

  2. Pinterest is most amazing place to drive the traffic on our website. But you must know how to use it..

  3. Hi Stacey, great article, but i found that pinterest is more dedicated to women if this is the target of the marketer.

  4. that seems great! H always think about pinterest that how can help us! thanks for article

  5. I have forgot my Pinterest. Only see sessions per time. Tks for your tips which help me very much :)

  6. Hi,

    I always wants to drive traffic to my blog from Pinterest. This article will help me in driving the required traffic to my blog.

    Thanks

  7. Hi Stacey,

    Its awesome. but don’t know how to use it. Can you help me, Please?

    Thanks

  8. To experience, Pinterest and Twitter are great sources to gain more traffic to my website. I put aside Facebook as a secondary source to promote my business. You wrote what i think of Pinterest..! It’s great Stacy.:)

  9. Thank you for this post. Great suggestions, one of which led me to learn how to make a custom pin. I found these instructions on The Hampton Roads Creative (and no I’m not affiliated with them) Hope you don’t mind my leaving their link: http://thehrcreative.com/pinterest-board-covers/#comment-1701

    Another thing I recently learned (for other like me who didn’t know) was to add a pin board to my side bar. I had seen it on other blogs but didn’t finally make the effort to find out how. Pinterest has instructions here: https://business.pinterest.com/en/widget-builder#do_embed_user

  10. I use Pinterest for my blogs since 2 – 3 weeks. I have litterally Pinning sessions scheduled in my calendar. My blogs for pregnant women and mom’s so Pinterst seams like a better option than Facebook. Thank you for your tips. Especially with looking up the source of the Pins! That was a great tip.

  11. I started using Pinterest and I am not very happy with the traffic received. I spend way less time on Stumble Upon and I get way more traffic! I guess that a post about Stumble Upon would be interesting for many of your readers!

  12. Hi Marie, great tips on using Pinterest. I agree that Pinterest can drive tons of traffic and at this stage the algorithms aren’t as aggressive as Facebook but they will get to it eventually. Until then marketers can have a field day.
    What are your thoughts on Instagram?

  13. Thanks Darren great information. Just a quick question. When I add this URL http://www.pinterest.com/source/YourBlog.com/, which includes my actual URL and not YourBlog.com. I am taken to a page that says “Whoops we couldn’t find that page, what about these.” Not sure why that’s happening. Any suggestions as to how to find out? Thanks

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