How to use Pinterest to increase traffic to your blog – a guide

As bloggers it is really important that we get traffic to our sites.  This could be through Twitter or Instagram or through researching Pinterest stats.  This is my ‘how to use Pinterest to increase traffic to your blog’ guide.  I have found it a fabulous way to get my posts to the people who really want to read them (and that’s why we write, right?). To start with, I love Pinterest – and I loved it before I started blogging.  Now that I am blogging though, I have found out just how amazing it can be for bloggers!  If you are not good at design look at paying for graphic logo design.

Below are my tips to getting the best from Pinterest for your blog.  I’ve included a couple of my own pins to illustrate my points.  Feel free to pin them 🙂

Check out Creative Fabrica for awesome social media templates!

How to use Pinterest to increase traffic to your blog guide

Try to create a pin for every blog post.  Go back and add them to previous blog posts too.  Cherry pick the blog posts you think will do well.  It’s a bit of effort but it will be worth it.  Draw your reader’s attention to these pins with a call to action – ‘Pin me for later!’

 

Get a Pin it Button

 

Make sure you have a ‘Pin It!’ button on your blog.  There are lots of plug-ins that will do this.  It will make it easier for others to repin directly from you.  Make your pin long as these do better on Pinterest and will stand out more.  If you have good landscape shots put a few together to make a long pin.

 

 

Make long, narrower pins

 

You can use Canva or Picmonkey to create pins – these are free services (I am sure there are lots more services available but these two I hear mentioned the most). I use a combo of Canva and Photoshop.  Make them portrait rather than landscape (taller than they are wide!).  Here is one of my pins for packing tips for Disney World.

 

 

Add Text to your Pin

Add text to your pin to say what it’s about.  Again, Canva has lots of different fonts you can use – often you just change the wording if you are not great with photo design.  If you are good at Photoshop, Dafont has squillions of free fonts you can install.  Below is a pin I created for my Best use of Snack Credits in Disney World Florida post.  You can see straight away what the post is about, and it’s bright and jolly.

 

 

Make your Pin Pretty!

Make it pretty!  It’s worth investing some time making it pretty, as then it’s more likely to catch someone’s eye and make them pin it or click on it.

 

Rich Pins – Almost the most Important Step!

Rich pins – set your site up for Rich Pins – this is a crucial step and really should be your very first step as Pinterest really favours Rich Pins.  If you have the Yoast plug in installed on your blog, it’s pretty straightforward to do (Google how to do it – honestly, it’s not too bad).

 

 

Add Lots of Keyword Rich Information

Once Rich Pins are enabled, make sure you fill out as much information as possible on your pins.  Try and get as many keywords on your pin as possible.  Use full sentences and describe what the pin is about, don’t use hashtags.  If you are wondering what your keywords should be – Pinterest will even tell you!  Search for a similar pin to yours – what search words is it suggesting in the boxes below?  Ta-dah! Here are your keywords!

 

 

Create Some Lovely (Relevant) Boards

 

Make sure that you have a few boards created on Pinterest.  Your main blog board should be first, and named for your blog – so mine is ‘Best of Yorkshire Wonders’.  Only pin your own pins in there.  You can move your boards around (it’s easy – drag and drop) or even make some boards secret if they don’t quite fit in.

Create other boards in your niche.  You can repin your own pins into these and other people’s pins.  It’s good to repin other people’s pins as I have read that Pinterest does not like you only pinning your own pins as they see this as spammy.  Besides, that’s what makes the Pinterest world go around!

 

Join in Repinning Threads on Facebook

Join in repining threads on Facebook.  Search in Facebook for Pinterest groups where you promise to pin someone else’s pin and in return they will pin yours.  It can be time consuming, but is a great initial boost for your pin to send it out into the big wide Pinterest world.

You can pin directly from a saved photo on your PC and then add the URL/web address so when people click it, it takes them through to your blog.  But unless there is a reason for not having that photo on your blog post – then get it on your blog post!

 

 

Why are page views so important?

The more page views your blog receives the better your chances of more sponsored content and affiliate sales so you can begin to earn money via your blog.  Of course dealing with other businesses brings its own headaches with late payments etc, but is definitely worth it in the long run.