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This is probably a big no-no because I am not charging you for these tips as so many other bloggers do. As a somewhat newer blogger, I am always doing research on how to improve what I am already doing and figuring out what I should be doing. So many bloggers have courses that make you pay for tips on how to do things. I am going to give you 5 Pinterest tips to grow your traffic for free without a course. This information is especially great for new bloggers or anyone trying to promote their business that is just starting out. Hopefully, you can learn this quicker than I did so you can start succeeding sooner!
(This blog post contains affiliate links. Clicking on these do not cost you anything extra but I might earn a little. I only promote products or services that I personally believe in and think that you might also benefit from them.)
I was tired of just looking at clickbait all the time on Pinterest. So many bloggers have pins that say just “do this and you will get tons of traffic”. When you click on it, you then realize they are telling you to sign up for their course to really find out the details. Instead of doing that, I am going to share with you some Pinterest marketing tips I have learned in my first year of blogging. There has definitely been a lot of trial and error but I do get about 50% of my blog traffic from Pinterest by following these tips.
Create Quality Pinterest Pins
This might seem like a no-brainer but when I first started blogging I had no idea how to create pins and was justing using pictures from my blog post. After research and asking other bloggers I found out that the majority of quality pins were being created in Canva or PicMonkey. Canva is a design tool that is AMAZING!! It has totally changed the blogging game for me. It has preset image sizes depending on what you are creating and even has free templates you can use and customize.
The best pins usually have a 2X3 ratio so its a little longer than wide and has a text overlay. You want people to be able to know what your blog post is about just by looking at the picture. Also, you want it to be pleasing to the eye. You can get free, quality images from Unsplash to use in your pins or you can use your own. Some of the free templates are great as well. The Side Blogger has a great post on how to create quality Pinterest pins. This is where I learned my base knowledge of creating pins.
You should be creating 2-3 pins for each blog post and staggering them on Pinterest so it looks like new content. Pinterest likes new pins even if it is an older blog post so it will give new pins priority. Pinterest also prefers pins coming directly from a blog post.
Pinning Strategy
There is such a thing as a Pinterest pinning strategy. When I first started I had no idea what I was doing. I am still not a professional Pinterester but I have definitely come a long way. What has helped me the most has been using Tailwind. There are not many blogging tools that I am willing to pay for yet until I start seeing significant income, but Tailwind is one I am willing to do. It’s $15/month to use and it’s a huge time saver and traffic booster for me. If you want to try it out for free for 30 days you can use my link here.
One strategy I use is to set my Tailwind account to pin about 30 pins a day to various boards and then I manually pin another 5-15 a day. It is important to make sure you are still going into your group boards and pinning content from there. The main places that I get content for my Tailwind account are from Tailwind tribes, Group boards on Pinterest and those that I follow on Pinterest.
One trick for getting more Tailwind scheduling content is by picking a board to add to. Then search a keyword for that board on Pinterest. Press schedule to Tailwind for each pin but don’t actually schedule it yet. Once you have 10-30 pins in your queue go back to Tailwind and do a mass schedule to select boards. Once they are in your queue, use the “shuffle scheduled pins” function so you aren’t pinning to one board too often.
When you are choosing which pins to re-pin, stick to the ones that are not sponsored. Also, focus on ones that have visually appealing graphics with a text overlay and come from a source that at least seems reputable. You want to try to stay away from spam.
Related Blog Post- Blogging Basics- Checking for Errors
Pinterest account set-up
When you are first starting out with Pinterest, you want to make sure to switch over to a business account and enable rich pins. When you are setting up your descriptions you will also want to use keywords. What words describe you, your Pinterest account and your Blog/Business? If you want people to follow you, you need to make it easy for them to know more about you. People will often follow those with common interests or niches. The majority of the people I follow are in the Mom Blog niche. Are you a Mom Blogger? If so, send me your Pinterest name and I can follow you too!
Pinterest Boards and Group Boards
Once your account is set up you will want to start creating boards. I had barely used Pinterest for personal use before starting my blog so I didn’t have much content in there. For the boards I had that didn’t pertain to my niche, I made them private. I started creating boards for some specific topics that I knew I would touch on often and some more generic boards. I would suggest creating 30-50 boards.
Some examples of some of my Pinterest Board titles are Family Travel, Everything Pregnancy, Self Care, and Breastfeeding. Some of the Group Boards that I created are called All Parenting Advice, Working Moms Group Board, and Kid-Friendly Recipes. For the titles, you want someone to easily know what topics will be covered for the pins on that board just by looking at the title. They should be fairly straight-forward. People might be searching keywords and your board could come up if it is titled well.
To create a group board and easy way to do it is just put Group Board in the title, some instructions in the description and then invite collaborators. It is common practice to require anyone who wants to join your group board to have to follow all of your boards. This is also a great way to gain followers. If someone emails you with their Pinterest name, you can just add them to the collaborators. In the editing area of the Pinterest Board, you can choose to add the “Request to Join” function which makes it easy to add people.
Facebook Groups
Another great way to grow your traffic to your blog is by participating in Facebook Groups. When I first started, I joined a whole bunch of groups to try to get the word out there about my blog. I quickly realized that I was spending a lot of time just participating in the group threads and didn’t have a lot of time to actually write content. I have scaled back on the number of groups I participate in. As well as how often I participate but I do find them very beneficial. The best groups, in my opinion, are the smaller (under 500) groups that have active participation. When not very many people participate in threads that it is not worth your time. If you are in a group with a lot of members that are also very active, it can be hard to be seen.
I have joined groups that are more generic and are for general bloggers, but I find that sometimes the other content is just not relevant to me. The best groups I feel are the ones that are in a similar niche to yours so you can support each other. These are great for getting blog post collaborations too! When you are joining threads and sharing content similar to yours then you are only making your niche stronger. Blogging does not need to be super competitive because it is personal to each person. Everyone can succeed together so it’s better to support each other instead of tearing each other down. There are boards specifically for supporting Pinterest use and then a lot of blogger groups often have a Pinterest thread. You will want to put in the effort to grow your followers as well as get people to repin your pins.
Some great Facebook Groups for Mom Bloggers or Generic Bloggers are: Mom Bloggers Collective, Epic Bloggers Group, Mom to Mompreneur, and the Momfluencers Networking Community. Groups with a lot of members can still be good because that is more potential exposure to you.
Welcome to Pinterest
These tips should get you moving in the right direction when it comes to Pinterest. Please share this post so that others can learn as well. These simple changes can make a big difference!
THANKs for the tips!
Great tips…I’m just starting to dabble in Tailwind, and your advice on the shuffle is very good!
I love these helpful tips. New to blogging and just learning as I go. Thanks for sharing.
Fantastic tips! So helpful! Pinterest is,juhe in this niche!
I started my blog a while back but had to take a break for a while and just got back into it. I don’t use Pinterest for personal use so the idea of using it for my blog is super intimidating. I love finding helpful tips because I know at some point I need to take the plunge. I also have a parenting based blog so its great to know that Pinterest is a good platform for exactly what I’m doing. I will also have to check out Tailwind to see if it might be worth the money for me.
Good job putting together these tips. Your list is pretty consistent with what I’ve learned in my first 6 months of blogging too. Thanks for the reminder that I should look into group boards in my niche on Pinterest.