Getting people to your blog and growing your website traffic can sometimes be a little confusing and tricky. Although there is a secret method whereby you can gain traffic to your blog from the beginning! For this method, we will learn how to use Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog. In this article, we will explore Pinterest and how this is an especially useful tool to get more traffic to new websites and blogs.
How To Use Pinterest To Drive Traffic To Your Blog
Usually, when we think of increasing website and blog, we think of SEO principles. This is important if you want your site to appear in search results on search engines such as Google. However, using SEO to grow and gain more traffic to your website is a long process and can take up to a year before you start seeing results. I like to think about SEO in terms of investing your money. It is required for the long-term gain, but what can we do in the meantime?
There are many bloggers and website owners who are seeing BIG results in terms of website traffic growth from using Pinterest! There can be a misunderstanding that Pinterest is another social media network, however, it is actually classed as a search engine, only it displays images for its searches.
So how does Pinterest drive traffic to your blog?
Usually, people using Pinterest will “pin”, or rather save images that they like to specific boards that they have created on their account. These pins (images) will usually be an image that somebody else has uploaded. Here lies the beauty of Pinterest…
If you upload your own image and add your image description, you can also add a link for your image. Meaning that when people click on your image, they will follow the link to whichever link you gave the image. This is super potential for exposure to your website or blog. The other wonderful technique of Pinterest is that once you have uploaded your own image, linking to your website, other people can save this image to their own boards. Which will then distribute your image and increase the reach amongst pinners, giving you more potential website traffic.
How Do I Get Started With Pinterest?
There are a few steps and techniques that you can carry out, to optimise your account so that you may appear in more searches for specific terms related to your website/ blog niche. I am going to use the example that I want to optimise by Pinterest account to gain more website traffic to my travel blog…
1.Complete Account Details
This covers the basics, but nonetheless important, steps of creating your account. Including;
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Entering in a keyword rich name. Rather than giving your Pinterest account your own name for e.g. Kate Smith. Use relevant keywords in your name, to help your account appear in relevant searches. E.g. Backpack travelling Tips by Kate
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Complete your bio. You don’t have that many characters that you can use for your bio but you can still add a short and relevant description of what people can expect to find in your Pinterest boards. You can use a website like charactercountonline, to help manage your word count. Don’t forget to add a link to your website or blog at the end of your description. A tool like Bitly can be great for shortening your website address, saving on those important characters!
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Include a real profile picture. There can be a tendency to want to avoid sharing your personal picture on accounts. However by including a real photo of yourself will help to build trust and therefore help you to gain more followers. It also makes your account look a lot less spammy!
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Finally, make sure that you choose to have a business account in your settings. This gives you the ability to link your account to your website or blog. Not only that, by choosing a business account, you open the ability to access Pinterest analytics which is an exceptionally useful tool for monitoring popular pins and ultimately growing your account.
2.Create Keyword-Rich Boards
I would recommend having at least 10 boards if you have a new Pinterest account. A board is where you will save images to and so they can be themed on a specific subject. For e.g. backpacking tips, travel budget tips, easy travel recipes, where to stay in Europe etc.
Another great tip for your boards is to create a custom image to upload, which you can then use for your board covers. For e.g. use the same colour background, the same font for the board title etc. This simply means that when Pinterest users visit your account, they will see a consistent selection of boards which look tidy and attractive. Also being able to see the titles clearly will help them to find what they are looking for.
If you are not sure and need some inspiration for this, carry out a Pinterest search for some leaders in your niche, for e.g. travel authors, famous bloggers etc. Have a look at their account and see whether they have custom made matching board covers.
3. Find Leaders In Your Niche
Finding leaders in your niche on Pinterest will really help to promote your account for many reasons. Firstly, you can carry out some research and see how they have optimised their account, what style pins they are saving and what boards they are using etc. This information will help to inspire you and give you ideas for your own account.
More importantly, by finding leaders in your niche, you can click to view their followers and then follow their followers. This is a great way to promote your account because if people are following the leaders in your niche, then most likely they will be interested in what you share. Therefore you have a greater chance of them following you back, and checking out your pins, leading them back to your website.
This can be a useful way for you to grow website traffic. If you can follow between 5-10 people a day, this will help to grow your account.
4. Find Niche Related Group Boards
Group boards are the next level for growing website traffic through Pinterest. A group board is what it sounds like, a board where you can have multiple contributors to the board, people who are able to pin their images to the board, and of course followers of the board.
There are many group boards available for many topics and you will have to explore as to whether some boards accept applications for new contributors. The way they work is that usually, one person has started a board that gains in popularity, people apply by sending a message, to see if they can be added as contributors, so that they can pin to that board. Some group boards have up to 1000 contributors and may not accept applications. However there are still plenty of boards that are accepting applications to join as a contributor, you need to do your research.
A group board is valuable because whatever you pin to that board has the potential to reach all the followers of that board, and some boards have thousands of followers! Thats alot of potential people who will follow your image link back to your website or blog, and alot of potential website traffic!!
Useful Links-
5.Create Pin Images and Pin Away
Finally, the more images that you create and upload to Pinterest, the more pathways you are creating for people to follow back to your website, so get creating images and get pinning!
Not sure what images to create? You can simply create an image with a title over the top for many topics e.g. a blog post title, a product that you have on your website, a quote… get creative and if you are stuck for ideas, check out what the leaders in your niche are doing! I am not encouraging copying but look for some inspiration and make it your own. Dont forget to pin to group boards!
Don’t forget to keep an eye on your Google Analytics before you begin trying out these techniques! By looking at your acquisition in Google Analytics, you can observe how much traffic you gain from what sources, and watch your website traffic from Pinterest grow, as you implement these techniques!
Too busy to create a Pinterest account? Contact me to find out more about Pinterest account creation by clicking here!
I hope that this post, “how to use Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog”, has been a useful introduction for you. Let me know any comments below!
Thank you! 🙂
Emily x
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