My Pinterest Strategy For 100K Monthly Blog Pageviews
Pinterest Marketing Tips To Drive Traffic To Your Site
If you are among the many Pinterest marketers trying to drive traffic from the social media platform and are getting discouraged by your results, read on! There is no cookie cutter “how to be successful on Pinterest” plan that works for everyone. However, there are some best practices to help you see success – and I’m sharing my step by step strategy that gets me over 100,000 pageviews from Pinterest per month on my mommy blog!
These Pinterest tips for business are tried and true! They aren’t just some vague Pinterest tips and tricks to give your site a few more clicks. I’ve outlined EXACTLY what I do each month to drive 100K pageviews to my blog from Pinterest – and below is the proof that it works!
You can see in the snapshot of my Google Analytics for my mommy blog (LearningMomma.com) above that my pageviews from Pinterest totaled over 100K for July 2019. That’s traffic JUST FROM PINTEREST.
If you’re struggling to get traffic to your blog and you haven’t established a good routine of promoting with Pinterest you’re missing out on a great traffic source!
Getting started with a Pinterest strategy and routine could be just what your blog or business website needs to take off.
You can read the details of my monthly process for promoting my mommy blog on Pinterest to gain 100K pageviews per month below.
(I use the same process to promote my content on this site, but since it’s a new site the views are not as established yet. It does take some time so don’t get discouraged if you don’t see IMMEDIATE results. Keep at it!)
Note: This post contains affiliate links which means if you purchase through one of my links I make a commission on your purchase – at no additional expense to you! Read my full disclosure here.
My Pinterest Marketing Strategy Step By Step
1. Create Several Relevant Pinterest Boards
Before you dive into spreading your content on Pinterest, it’s important to make sure that you have your account set-up for success. Having the right kinds of boards sending the right message to Pinterest about their content matters. You will see much better success with your content if you set up your boards and account correctly. For a detailed guide on how to maximize the value of your boards I highly recommend the ebook Pin Signals By PotPie Girl. I purchased and implemented the principles in her book for both of my Pinterest accounts. She walks you through how to really optimize your Pinterest boards to get them well recognized by Pinterest’s algorithm so that more eyes see your content!
Regardless of whether or not you decide to invest in Pin Signals, make sure that you set-up your Pinterest account with multiple boards that the content of your blog can be pinned to. For example, if you visit the Pinterest profile page for my mommy blog, Learning Momma, you will see that I have boards named Babies, All Things Baby, Baby Schedules, Baby Sleep, and Parenting. All 5 of these boards are relevant for my blog content about my babies’ schedules. I also have boards named Toddlers, All Things Toddler, Toddler Activities, and again, Parenting. These boards are all relevant to my toddler blog posts about things like playdough recipes, printable coloring pages, snack recipes, etc. If you are just starting your Pinterest account you don’t need to have a large quantity of boards, but make sure that you have a good handful that your core blog content can be promoted with.
Again, for how to optimally set up those boards I highly recommend all of the detailed insight in the ebook Pin Signals. It’s content was a great benefit to me in how to keyword my boards.
2. Make Attention-Grabbing Pins
This is the first step in my routine Pinterest strategy! It’s also the biggest missing piece that I didn’t realize for a LONG time with my mommy blog. If you already use Pinterest at all to gain traffic for your blog then you probably have at least one or two Pinterest images in your posts for readers to share to the social media platform. However, I discovered what many other bloggers knew way before me – that Pinterest LOVES new images!! My traffic dramatically improved when I just started making and posting more images for my content – before I even had my whole strategy nailed down.
If you don’t already make many new pin images for your core blog content on a regular basis, start to make at least 1-2 new images per month for those posts!
I go through my cycle of Pinterest promotion about twice and month and make 20+ pin images each time. SO… I essentially pin around 40+ new pin images to Pinterest per month for my mommy blog. That means I’m making 40+ Pinterest images each month! It might sound like a lot, but once you get into a rhythm with it it’s really not very time consuming. I would estimate that I spend a total of 4-8 hours twice a month doing this. (If designing pin graphics is new to you, check out my post on how to use Canva to create free graphic designs – that post will walk you through how to create pin images really easily with Canva’s free pin templates!)
If I’m using Photoshop to make my pin images I size them to 400 x 600 pixels and if I’m using Canva I typically stick to their template size of 735 x 1102 pixels. If you’re just diving into Pinterest I recommend starting with those sizes, but if you’ve already been using Pinterest for awhile it could be beneficial to experiment a little bit with which pin sizes perform best for you. Some people have found that longer pins perform really well for them.
To make as many pins as I do every month I also need a lot of photos to include in them! For awhile I used free stock photo sites to download photos to use. However, I was warned about potential legal ramifications from this! (Even though they are on a free site, sometimes photos can be illegally uploaded there and it can come back to bite you). I also learned that purchased stock photos perform much better on Pinterest since Pinterest favors unique content! This proved true for me. My traffic from Pinterest did improve without any other changes when I started using purchased stock photos instead of free ones.
It is an investment, but I HIGHLY recommend purchasing some good stock photos to use in your pin designs. I love Deposit Photos for both my mommy blog and this one. They have a great selection of photos for many niches at a very reasonable price!
3. Upload The Pins To Tailwind
Ok, once I have my 20+ pin images designed and downloaded to my computer in .jpeg format, I upload them all into the Pinterest scheduling program Tailwind. If you’re not familiar with Tailwind it is an online program that links to your Pinterest account to let you schedule out your pins to post automatically. At a really reasonable monthly price, using Tailwind has been essential to my Pinterest Strategy. If you don’t already have a Tailwind account, you can try a free trial of the program here to see if it’s a good fit for you.
(If you’re not into using a scheduler, check out the course Pinteresting Strategies by Carly Campbell. She walks you through a manual pinning strategy that many have seen huge success with. I benefited greatly from the content of her course even though I use Tailwind!)
To upload my 20+ pin images in Tailwind I simply login to my account, select the little publisher megaphone on the left-hand menu bar, and click on “drafts.” Once in the drafts screen I click on “upload images” and select all of the .jpeg files of my pin images in my folder to upload. You can also drag and drop your image files into the drafts screen to upload them.
4. Add URLS & Descriptions (With Hashtags) To Pins In Tailwind
After all of my pin images are uploaded into the drafts screen in Tailwind, I add the correct URL and a pin description to each one. To edit the URL for each pin image you can click on the existing URL (probably just the URL of your site’s homepage) of the draft pin and paste in the URL that will link that pin directly to it’s corresponding post. To enter a description for the pin, just type or paste your description into the area labeled “Enter A Description.”
This part of the process can be really long and tedious if you write new descriptions and manually find and paste in the URL for each pin every time you upload new images. I did it this way for far too long! To speed things WAY up, I now keep a Google Sheets spreadsheet with all of my post URLs in one column and the corresponding pin description in a second column. When I go to fill in the URLs and descriptions on my draft pins I simply find the correct post in my spreadsheet and paste in the URL and the description. It saves A LOT of time!
I also make sure that all of my pin descriptions for my pins are keyworded and feature several appropriate hashtags. You can find keywords simply by searching for your pin’s main topic in the Pinterest search bar and looking for the words that Pinterest suggests in the blocks right below the search bar after you click enter. You can also find hashtags for your descriptions by searching with a # in the Pinterest search bar to see suggestions as you type.
5. Add Some Of The Pins To Tailwind Tribes
Once I have all of my draft pin images uploaded, URLs pasted in, and descriptions pasted in, I then make sure that I add any pins for relatively new content (or any pins that I just think look particularly catchy for that round of scheduling) to some of my Tailwind Tribes. If you’re not familiar with tribes, they are basically groups on Tailwind where you can pin other people’s content on a particular subject and add your own content to be pinned by others.
I would not say that this part of my Pinterest Strategy is vital for gaining traffic to my site, but I like to do it for a little bit of additional reach.
To find tribes to join on Tailwind simply click on “Tribes” in the left-hand menu bar and click on “Find A Tribe.” You will be able to search for tribes to join in your niche.
To add your pin image to a tribe simply click on “Add To Tribes” on your pin image in drafts and you will be able to select which tribe(s) to add it to. Just be sure to read and adhere to the rules for each tribe before adding your pins. Some tribes require you to repin at least one or two other pin(s) for every pin you add, etc. Some tribes also prohibit posting certain types of content (like recipes) or unrelated content.
6. Schedule All Of The Pins To Post
When I have all of my draft pin images ready and added to any tribes that I want to, I schedule them all to post! First I go through and click in the “Type A Board Name” field for each pin image to type in the boards that I want it to post to. (This is where having several relevant boards for your content from step 1 comes into play.) Type in all of the relevant boards that you want the pin image to post to.
For my posting with my mommy blog, I use board lists for this part. You can create a board list by going to “Board Lists” under “Publisher” in the left-hand Tailwind menu. Using board lists allows you to select a list of boards instead of entering every individual board name when you click to enter boards for each draft pin image. I have lists for pregnancy related pins, toddler related pins, and baby related pins for my mommy blog. I simply select the relevant list for my draft pin image and add to it any additional boards that I want the pin to post to or delete any that I don’t think are relevant to that specific pin. I find using board lists to really help me speed up this part of the scheduling process and not miss any boards that might have slipped my mind in the moment!
After I have entered boards for each draft pin image, I click on the “Use Interval” button in the left-hand corner of the draft pin image. (This button will only appear if you have multiple boards entered for the pin.) Here I schedule out when my pins will post to each listed board! I always set my interval where it says “1d” to 2-3 days and I generally keep my interval type on “Open Time Slots.” If I am uploading my new pins close to when my previously scheduled pins are running out I leave the “Schedule First Pin At” to it’s default date and time. However, if I’m scheduling new pins out before my previous batch has run out I often change this date and time to the first day in my schedule that starts to look empty. I then try to start half of my new batch on that date at various times and half of it for the following day at various times. You can see where empty spots in your schedule are under the “Your Schedule” off to the right hand side of your screen. Once I have all of this interval information updated I click on “Set Interval.” I repeat this process for each of my draft pin images.
(DO NOT click on “save changes” once you’ve entered multiple boards for your pins or Tailwind will then list each pin multiple times for each board that you indicated, making it almost impossible to easily set intervals on them – so keep saving changes all the way until you enter boards for each pin. After that DO NOT hit save!)
Once I have my boards listed and intervals set for each pin, I click on “Schedule All Drafts” at the bottom of the screen. This schedules them all out to automatically post to my Pinterest account!
Note: You can change your “Schedule” in Tailwind to add additional time slots for pins to post each day or to remove or change any. Just click on “Add / Remove Time Slots” in your “Schedule” window. I keep mine set to post approximately 10-18 times each day.
7. Fill Gaps In The Tailwind Schedule With Pins From Tribes
After I schedule all of my own created pins to post, I often still have some gaps in my schedule that are blank. (You may have none if you have a ton of content or you may have a lot of them if you’re still building your content and don’t have a whole lot of posts yet.) I fill any gaps in my schedule by going into my tribes and adding images there to my queue or scheduling them to multiple boards with intervals just like I did my own. This helps me to fill my schedule for consistent posting. It also helps me to maintain any required repin counts for my tribes so that I’m able to keep adding my pins without breaking any tribe rules!
8. Do It All Again!
Once I’ve created my pin images, uploaded them into Tailwind, added the URLs & descriptions in Tailwind, scheduled them to post, and filled my empty schedule slots with tribe content, my cycle of Pinterest promotion is done!
One cycle like I outlined above usually covers about 2-3 weeks of time, so then I start creating new pin images to do it all again.
NOTE: I ALSO RUN A FEW OF MY TOP PERFORMING PINS THROUGH TAILWIND’S SMARTLOOP FEATURE TO KEEP THEM CONSISTENTLY POSTING IN ADDITION TO THE ABOVE ROUTINE. I can’t say that I saw a huge jump in my traffic when I began using Smartloop but I wanted to be sure that I disclosed it for full transparency about my Pinterest strategy!
If you can get yourself into a rhythm with your Pinterest promotion it’s really not hard to maintain and it is WELL WORTH IT for the traffic that it can bring to your site!
