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The best thing about Pinterest in comparison to other social networks (even though Pinterest is *technically* a visual search engine and not a social platform) is that pins can send traffic to your blog or business for a LONG time after posting.
Post to Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, and it will only send people to your site for a few hours or days at most.
But with Pinterest?
Your pins can keep sending traffic to your blog or website for MONTHS after it was first pinned.
I think that is a pretty good reason to put in the effort to get the most out of your Pinterest strategy for your business as possible. The returns are awesome, and the benefits will keep coming in long after you’ve completed your efforts.
That’s why I’ve put together this list of EVERYTHING you should be doing in order to maximize your Pinterest strategy in order to get the best results!
Psst!
If you want to take your pin design and Pinterest strategy to the next level, I highly recommend Breaking the One Percent‘s The Perfect Pin course. You’ll learn exactly how to create pins that go viral, as they teach you the same strategy they use to get over 7,500,000 views on their pins per month.
I learned so many new things in this course that I hadn’t even thought of before, and my pin design has improved SO much.
I highly recommend you sign up if you’re serious about creating great pins that drive a ton of traffic to your website.
Anyway: onward to the 26 ways to grow your blog or business with Pinterest!
1. CREATE AT LEAST 10 (NICHE SPECIFIC) BOARDS WITH MINIMUM 25-30 PINS EACH.
You won’t gain many followers or send much traffic to your blog if you don’t pin any content on Pinterest. Start with a minimum 10 boards and populate them with great content from your own blog and others.
My niche-specific boards on Pinterest
2. USE A NICE HEADSHOT OR YOUR BRAND LOGO FOR YOUR PROFILE PHOTO.
People want to see the face of your brand, so if you have a nice headshot this is the best option. Let your personality shine through! If you don’t want to show your face, your business logo is a great option too.
3. TELL PEOPLE WHAT YOU’RE ALL ABOUT IN YOUR BIO.
You definitely don’t want potential followers feeling confused when they land on your Pinterest page. So take a moment and write a little description about what you do, what your business has to offer, and let your personality shine.
My Pinterest profile: includes my headshot, and a description of what my business has to offer.
4. INCLUDE KEYWORDS IN YOUR NAME + PROFILE.
Pinterest is a search engine, and putting keywords in your profile will help people with an interest in your niche to find you. Think about what sorts of search terms your target audience might be using to find content, and include these somewhere in your Pinterest profile.
5. INCLUDE KEYWORDS IN YOUR BOARD TITLES + DESCRIPTIONS.
Keywords, keyword, keyword.
Keywords are a super important part of a great Pinterest strategy, and board titles are not the places to get creative or clever. Again, Pinterest functions as a search engine, so you want to help people find your boards by including keywords that your audience is likely to search for.
6. INCLUDE KEYWORDS IN YOUR DESCRIPTIONS FOR EACH PIN.
Same logic applies as in the points above.
7. PUT YOUR MOST IMPORTANT BOARDS AT THE TOP OF YOUR PROFILE.
The boards you most want people to see and interact with should be at the top of the list. Not everyone is going to scroll all the way to the bottom, so get your best content up where your visitors will see it.
8. SIGN UP FOR A “PINTEREST FOR BUSINESS” ACCOUNT.
You’ll not only gain access to extra features like analytics to track your successes and failures, but you’ll look like a legitimate business on Pinterest as well. Plus, you’ll be able to run Promoted Pins to grow your reach even faster!
Sign up for a Pinterest business account here.
9. PIN TALL VERTICAL IMAGES INSTEAD OF SHORT HORIZONTAL ONES.
Pinterest is set up for long vertical images, so these kinds of images will take up more space in the feed and more people will take notice! Horizontal images will be small, and will have a hard time competing against the larger, more visible vertical images.
Standard size is 735 x 1102. I use Canva to create all of my Pinterest-friendly vertical images in just a few minutes.
McKinzie over at Moms Make Cents has a great tutorial on how to create your Pinterest images using Canva.
10. FOLLOW THE 80/20 RULE: POST 80%YOUR OWN CONTENT / 20% OTHER PEOPLE’S CONTENT.
Posting only your own content all of the time can come across as super spammy and self-promotional. Plus, Pinterest is all about repinning and SHARING content, so you should be posting a little bit of content from other people too. This makes you look great in the eyes of both Pinterest and your own followers. Spread the love!
11. FOLLOW INFLUENCERS + LEADERS IN YOUR NICHE.
They often post great content, so having them show up in your feed makes it easier for YOU to find great content to repin and share with your audience as well.
12. FOLLOW COMPETITORS AND THE PEOPLE FOLLOWING THEM.
Keep up to speed with what your competitors are posting, and let people know that you exist. Following others is a great way to notify them of your existence, and you’ll gain some follow backs in the process. Here’s how to find influencers in your niche on Pinterest.
13. CREATE A “BEST OF [YOUR BLOG]” BOARD TO SHOWCASE CONTENT FROM YOUR BLOG OR WEBSITE.
This is a place where you compile all your best content in one place, so if you’re followers are looking for content specifically created by YOU they know where to find it. (You’ll also be able to find it easily when posting to group boards)
My ‘Best of Go Rattle the Stars’ board on Pinterest. Notice how it’s the first board on my page, because that’s where I’d like people to go most!
14. AVOID USING HASHTAGS.
Pinterest’s “Smart Feed” displays pins based on popularity, pin quality, and quality of the website it links to. The Smart Feed doesn’t like hashtags (since they look a bit spammy) and will show your content less as a result.
2018 Update: Pinterest has changed to now allow hashtags in posts!
15. SIGN UP FOR RICH PINS.
‘Rich Pins’ is a feature you can get if you have a Business account, that adds extra info to the pins you post from your website.They include the name of your post in bold along with extra descriptions and details from your website.
This makes your pins look more professional, and helps potential customers by providing them with a little extra info about your blog or product. Plus, the info automatically updates if you change it on your website.
16. RUN PROMOTED PINS.
Boost your reach by paying to run promoted pins, to have your content show up in the feeds of people who are NOT following you but have a shown interest in your niche. (You’ll need a business account to do this)
Promoted pins do not go away after the promotion period is over like on some other platforms (Instagram, Facebook), so you can boost your pin using this method, and get enough repins to have your post go viral all on its own.
17. ONLY PIN CONTENT OF GREAT QUALITY.
This goes for your own content as well as other people’s content that you repost.
When re-pinning, make sure that not only does the IMAGE look great, but that the source it links to is high quality too. Please avoid reposting pins that link to broken websites or crappy blog posts.
The guys over at Breaking the One Percent have a fantastic course called The Perfect Pin that teaches you exactly how to create pins that go viral. They get over 7,500,000 views per month on their Pinterest content, so they really know their stuff.
When I enrolled in The Perfect Pin I already knew quite a bit about Pinterest and what works — but I learned so many new things in this course that I hadn’t thought of before!
I highly recommend you sign up if you’re serious about creating great pins that drive a ton of traffic to your website.
18. JOIN LOTS OF GROUP BOARDS IN YOUR NICHE, AND PIN TO THEM OFTEN.
This is one of the best ways to grow and get your content seen and re-pinned by others. Group boards are often quite large, so you can get your content in front of an audience much larger than your own. Look for group boards to join in your niche by searching on PinGroupie.com.
Search for niche related group boards to join using the search feature on Pin Groupie. Pictured: results for group boards in the travel niche.
Read about my fool-proof method for finding and joining the best group boards on Pinterest in this blog post here.
19. CROSS PROMOTE YOUR PINTEREST ON YOUR OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS.
Do you have followings on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook? Let them know that they should also follow you on Pinterest, and give them the link to get them there! Don’t forget to include a link on your blog or website as well.
20. TEST PINNING AT DIFFERENT TIMES ON DIFFERENT DAYS TO FIND YOUR BEST TIMES.
If you pin when your followers are most active, you’ll get more likes, repins, and traffic to your blog. Best times differ for everyone, so it’s important to do a bit of experimentation to find out when to reliably reach your audience.
21. ADD A “PIN IT” BUTTON TO IMAGES ON YOUR WEBSITE.
In general, people are lazy and have short attention spans. That’s why you need to make it as EASY as possible for people to repin your content in order to get more shares.
I use a the Sumo plug-in on my WordPress site, which puts a column of social sharing buttons on each page of my blog. It’s super simple to set up and you can include whichever social media platforms you want!
The Sumo social sharing app on my WordPress website makes it easy for site visitors to Pin my content (or share on another social platform).
22. FILL OUT THE ALT TAGS OF THE IMAGES ON YOUR WEBSITE WITH KEYWORDS.
The alt tags will become the default description when a reader pins your content directly from your website. A lot of people are too lazy to write out a description themselves, so including keywords will automatically help your pin become more searchable.
23. PIN CONSISTENTLY.
The more consistently you post, the higher Pinterest will rank you when it comes to its Smart Feed, and the more often your pins will be seen. I try to pin 15-20 times per day.
But don’t get overwhelmed, you DON’T have to do it all manually!
What you need is to sign up for a Pinterest Scheduling App:
Tailwind is the ONLY Pinterest approved scheduling app, and the one I personally use and recommend.
I use Tailwind to schedule my pins in advance — for me that means scheduling about ten days worth of content at a time, scheduling 10-15 pins per day. In addition to my scheduled Tailwind pins, I also try to manually pin about 3-5 pins per day as well.
If you want to get started with Tailwind, you’re in luck!
For me, the $14 a month is COMPLETELY worth it — because of Tailwind I’m seeing 4X the blog traffic I had beforehand, which will eventually translate into more sales and profits for me in the long run.
If you’re still on the fence, just think about all the benefits you’ll get out of it, in increased traffic and subsequent sales.
The more you post, the faster you’ll grow.
Want to learn more about automating your Pinterest posting? Check out my blog post How to Automate Traffic to your Blog or Biz with Pinterest.
I agree totally with this tips. It seems that most bloggers are gearing to get their Pinterest strategies in order, given the fact that it drives a lot of traffic, second only to Facebook! I will take these tips and improve on my own strategy!
Thanks!