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Are you a Pinterest beginner looking to up your blogging game?
Pinterest is a great tool you can use to grow your blog’s traffic, community, email list, and overall profit. If you are still new to this amazing platform, here are some facts you need to know:
Table of Contents
What is a pin?
A pin consists of an image (sometimes with a text overlay) and a text caption.
A pin links to an outside source like a blog post, product, or landing page. Once you click on this, a new tab will be opened, leading you to that linked page.
How to pin
If anything catches your eye, you can “pin” it. This can be done either through the Pinterest site itself or from an external website.
1. To pin on Pinterest hover over one of the pins in your feed or on a board and then click the button that looks like a either a red “P” or it may look like thumbtack and is most often found on the top corner of the pin. You can then select a specific board where you would want to share that image with and click on the thumbtack icon found at the right side of that board.
2. To pin when you are visiting a website, hover over an image with your mouse and most often a pin it button will appear. Click the button that looks like a either a red “P” or it may look like thumbtack and is most often found on the top corner of the pin. Then select the board you would like to save it to.
3. If you have installed a Pinterest extension on your browser you can also pin images or you can use the “pin it” button that could be installed on that site in order to share the image.
Create a Pinterest business account
When you have a business account on Pinterest, you can look at Pinterest Analytics, set up promoted pins, enable rich pins, and also use a business name instead of a personal one. All you need to do is choose the “Business” option. If you already have a personal account, you can just convert it to a business one in order to keep the existing followers you have.
Setting up your profile
When creating your bio, use the keywords that you have come up with and write 2 to 3 sentences describing yourself and what you do.
Including keywords also applies to your business name. Incorporate those keywords as well in order to give it a more interesting take.
Make sure your profile description is true to what you are and really describes what you can do or what you are offering. In your profile, include a little bit of information about yourself, a call to action, and a site link.
Don’t forget to also upload your photo or profile picture. I recommend a photo that is at least 600 x 600 pixels. Choose a profile picture of you that is in color, and you are genuinely smiling.
Enabling Rich Pins
Rich pins are more attractive because of their bold titles found under the image. They offer more details as well as making them more valuable.
When you enable rich pins, you can have your pins gain recognition when you share or re-pin. Your business also gains more credibility and you will find that your engagement will also increase.
Branding + Design
If you want your brand and pins to be recognizable, you need to focus on branding. This means being consistent with the kind of pins you put out there.
Not every pin has to be exactly the same, but you can be creative and come up with ways to make each pin unique but still stay true to your overall brand or theme. Keep on trying new things out and eventually, you will find the right balance and style for you.
Here is an example of a few of my recent posts, they all are similar and use the same fonts and colors, but are slightly different.
In order to make the most out of your pins, they have to have these characteristics:
- long and vertical
- have the brand fonts and colors that are consistent with your brand colors
- high-quality images or graphics
Taller pins work better on mobile screens and because of the way Pinterest shows images, vertical images is the way to go. The standard size of a Pinterest image is 600×900, however, I often make my pins longer than that.
Studies have shown that generally, pins with more than one color are more effective. Red usually gets more re-pins compared to blue. If there is too much going on though it can become distracting or overwhelming. Try to stick to a color palette of 1-3 colors.
When it comes to fonts, you can even pair 2 different ones to give a little personality but make sure you also don’t overdo. I usually go with a bold font and then a scripted font.
Make sure to always post your watermark or site URL at the bottom of your pin. This helps readers know where the pin is coming from and also gives you some protection in case someone wanted to steal your image.
Look for 10-20 keywords that are relevant to your niche
Many people think of Pinterest as a social media tool, but Pinterest is actually more similar to a search engine where keywords are vital. SEO strategies can be used so that you can increase your following, views, and reach. To get the most out of search engine aspect of this platform start by brainstorming 10-20 keywords that are relevant to your niche.
By doing this process and implementing these keywords strategically, you can boost your SEO and traffic on Pinterest. This is key to getting your online business visible on Pinterest.
You can find these keywords by going on Pinterest and using the search engine. You can then come up with long-tail keywords (meaning a keyword phrase that is 3 words or longer) that are usually ranked in order of popularity from right to left.
Once you have these keywords, you can put them in your profile, board descriptions, titles of blog posts, board titles, and pin descriptions.
Just remember not to overdo it and “stuff” your keywords. Make sure they are relevant and engaging, but still incorporated in a natural way.
Pin Descriptions
When writing your descriptions under your images, make sure they catch the eye of your reader right away and encourage them to click on the link. You don’t have to make your descriptions lengthy since only about the first 1-2 sentences can be seen.
It is better to write shorter descriptions that will make an impact. Don’t forget to also incorporate your keywords that are niche-relevant but make sure you are not overstuffing it with keywords just for the sake of doing so. Doing all this will help increase your search ranking.
Having titles and descriptions that are relevant and straight to the point is best since you are trying to come up for common search terms and if your name is too unique or different, people may not be searching for that and thereby your content might not be found.
Pin titles are one of the first things that your readers will see and what you put there can make all the difference for your audience to click on the image or not. Your title should help your reader know exactly what they are going to get when they click through to your post and what problem it will solve for them.
How to create boards
Now that you know how to create a pin and pin them you need somewhere to pin them to, right?
So that you can easily locate your pins, later on, it is best to create a board or groups for them. You can choose the board’s name, topic, category, and description. This will also make it easier for your followers to check out your content.
To create a board go to your profile and then sort by boards. Then click the red + sign and it will pop up and let you create a board.
Once these boards are on your profile, you can make them either public or secret. As their names suggest, public can be seen by others while the secret boards will only be available to you. This is also beneficial when you want to pin a lot of things that may not necessarily be relevant to your niche.
A group board is where multiple pinners can contribute their pins or ideas. Each one will have a specific topic and there are also a set of rules and regulations that you must adhere to.
You can also follow other pinners or their boards. When you do so, you will be able to see their pins in your homefeed. Your homefeed will have pins from boards and accounts that you follow, recommended pins, and promoted pins or Pinterest ads.
Creating relevant niche boards
This step is important in order for you to attract your ideal followers to your account. Make sure they are well organized not only for your own benefit but also so that people will have a good impression on your account or business.
These boards will help your readers get the information or content they need and want. Make around 10 to 20 boards that are significant to your niche (the keywords that you brainstormed earlier will give you some ideas for board themes).
If you want, you can create even more, but if you are just starting out it is better to have 10 high-quality than 20 or more low-quality boards with only a few pins.
You can also edit their names and descriptions in order to incorporate your keywords. There are also various categories that you can choose from.
Board descriptions should be engaging and describe the content correctly. It is also essential to have one board that will have your blog posts, products or services. Put this board on the top row of your Pinterest profile.
Board Covers
You can also add board covers to increase their visual appeal. You can use design software like Canva or Picmonkey to make them, or I personally just use stock photos.
This keeps a cohesive theme, and if Pinterest changes their board sizes it won’t affect my covers. These board covers can not only make your boards look more appealing, but it can also help get more attention and make you stand out amongst the competition.
Group boards
If you want your account to grow fast and gain a lot of traffic, group boards are key. This is because group boards will usually have around 1,000 to 50,000 or even more followers.
This means that your pins will get a lot of exposure, increasing your chances to gain even more followers. They are also great sources for relevant pins to be shared or get inspiration from. Try to keep on looking for new group boards and pin often on them as well.
You can find group boards by checking out the Pinterest profile of your favorite bloggers in your niche. Most likely you can find group boards that they are a part of that are also relevant to your niche and that you can also join.
When applying to join a group board, make sure you follow their rules and guidelines and always be polite. You can also keep track of your group board applications through Excel or Google Docs.
This way you can see which boards you haven’t been accepted yet and you can get back to them after a while. Not everyone will respond right away and not everyone will accept you, but the key is to be patient and persistent and you will eventually you can create your own group boards.
“Pin it” and “follow” buttons on your website
By adding a pin it or follow button on your site, you can make it easier for your readers to share your posts or content. All they need to do is hover over the image and they can click that button.
Don’t forget to also add social media follow icons on the site to link to your accounts. You can place these on the top menu, sidebar, footer, or all of these places.
Split Testing Pins
Choose 5-10 popular blog posts on your site and create 2-4 pins for each of them. You can change the fonts, colors, headlines, descriptions for each one and see which ones get the most re-pins and likes and you can use this as a reference to create similar ones in the future. This process is called “split testing” or “A/B testing.”
Re-pinning
Make it your goal to re-pin pins every day. Start with 50 and increase the number later on. To help you with this process, you can use scheduling tools like Tailwind. With awesome analytics, easy pinning with Board Lists, + Tailwind Tribes it has quickly become my favorite Pinterest tool!
Related: How To Use Tailwind To Skyrocket Your Traffic
Following boards
When you follow a lot of people or boards, you can get a lot of relevant content that you can use to pin from your home feed. You can look for people to follow by searching for keywords that are relevant to your niche and filtering them later on to just people or boards. Doing this step can also increase your followers since the people you follow may follow you back.
Promoted Pins
If you are a bit more of an advanced pinner and you have the budget for advertising, you also have the option of paying to promote your pins. This will increase the reach of that pin and increase views. You can also choose where you would like to target those promoted pins.
You can quickly promote a pin by clicking on the red promote button or clicking on “Ads” in the top navigation bar. You can also choose a daily budget indicating how much you are willing to pay per day to promote your pins. Costs are usually based on a per click basis.
Through Ads Manager, you can also monitor how your promoted pins are doing. It is important to remember that with advertising things change frequently and so it is best to check in often to see how your promoted pins are doing and to tweak your strategy.
For more tips on how to use Pinterest to bring traffic to your blog grab your seat in my free Pinterest course Pinterest Primer.
