How To Use Pinterest To Drive Traffic To Your Blog
How To Increase Blog Pageviews With Pinterest Traffic
If you have a blog then you know that one of the most difficult parts of making your blog successful is bringing in traffic! You may have the most beautifully designed site with the most researched and well-written content that’s out there, but if nobody sees it your blog is not going to grow or make you money. If you’re just beginning your blog it may feel impossible to drive any traffic to it. You might even be tempted to throw in the towel. BUT BEFORE YOU DO THAT – make sure you’ve explored getting Pinterest traffic to your site!
Learning how to generate traffic from Pinterest isn’t hard to do AND with a Pinterest traffic strategy in place, you can see somewhat immediate results! Pinterest is ever-evolving s0 you do have to stay on your toes. However, unlike SEO or developing an email list to drive traffic to your site, Pinterest can bring traffic to your site right from the moment that you start pinning content – even if your blog is small. This makes it an easier way to start gaining traffic momentum so that you remain encouraged to keep building your blog.
When I started my first blog I wrote a few posts, published them, and blasted them out on Facebook. I got a few views that way but quickly realized that driving any actual sustainable traffic to my site was going to be difficult – and wasn’t going to happen just by hitting the “Publish” button. I began to explore other ways to bring traffic to my site and came across resources that recommended Pinterest. As soon as I began actively promoting my blog content on Pinterest, I began to see some growth! It was small at first but as I really began to understand Pinterest and invest in how to approach the platform and develop a Pinterest traffic strategy I began to see significant growth. My blog grew enough traffic through Pinterest alone to apply to a premium ad network and begin to make a consistent part-time income! There are many other ways that I now pursue traffic with each of my blogs, but I still actively pursue Pinterest traffic for each of them – because there is traffic to be had!
(To be clear I DEFINITELY recommend diversifying your traffic sources. However, Pinterest can be one great way to drive traffic to a new or established blog!)
If you’re struggling to gain traffic to your blog (new or old) it’s my hope that this post helps to encourage you that it doesn’t mean you should give up! I want to equip you to dive into Pinterest as a viable source of pageviews for your site in hopes that you can see the kind of success that I have from the platform.
In this post, I’m going to walk you through how to set-up and format your account on Pinterest for business success, how to establish a Pinterest strategy so that you have a plan of action, how to create pins that Pinterest values and viewers want to click on, and how to execute your strategy consistently. It may sound like a lot, but it’s not as complex as it sounds and I promise it’s worth it if you’re struggling to gain traffic to your site!
(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.)
How To Get Pinterest Traffic To Your Blog
1. Set-Up A Pinterest Business Account & Enable Rich Pins
Having the right foundation set-up for your account is key if you want to get good blog traffic from Pinterest. First and foremost, make sure that you have a Pinterest Business account AND that you have rich pins set-up. These two items ensure that Pinterest recognizes your account and your blog URL as that of a creator so that they will appropriately value and present your content to other users of the platform. (It also ensures that you are set-up to run promoted pins if you ever want to in the future!)
If you already have a personal Pinterest account you can convert it to a business account or you can create an entirely separate and new business account. You can find the instructions to do either of these things on this easy-to-understand page from Pinterest.
Connecting your website to Pinterest and setting up rich pins is a little bit trickier, but you can find a great step-by-step breakdown of how to do it here. Scroll down to the subheading that says “Integrate Your Pinterest Account With Your WordPress Website” and start following instructions from there.
They’re a little bit tedious, but with a business account and rich pins in place, you are set-up to begin promoting your content on the platform and getting some page-views to your site!
2. Create Keyworded & Relevant Boards
Once you have your Pinterest account set-up, you need to begin filling it with content! Get your account recognized by Pinterest with boards that line up with the type of content that you publish on your blog and keywords throughout your board titles and descriptions that help guide Pinterest to understand what kind of content you publish. This will help Pinterest to show your content in the appropriate search results, which means more views by people who want to read what you have to share and, in turn, more views!
If you don’t have any boards already in your account, I would recommend creating at least 5-10 relevant boards with keyword descriptions to start with. For each board, I would begin pinning some third-party pins (or pins that are not your own) each day until each board has approximately 40 pins on it. This will help Pinterest to begin understanding what your boards are all about and how to value them for search results before you begin adding your own content to each of them.
If you’re a little bit unsure how to go about all of this, the ebook Pin Signals by PotPie Girl is a great resource to help you build high-quality boards and learn how to research and implement keywords into each of them.
3. Establish A Pinning Strategy
This is the part of using Pinterest that is ever-changing. Pinterest is constantly changing their algorithm which, in turn, means bloggers are constantly needing to change their strategy for adding content to the platform. In general, you will always do well to consistently add new pin images with links to your site to Pinterest. The frequency of how often to add them, how many to add each day, what time to add them, and similar variables are always changing! Right now a general rule of thumb is to publish new pin images to just one board each without posting the same URL on the same or back-to-back days.
If figuring out a Pinterest strategy feels overwhelming, I highly recommend the course Pinteresting Strategies by Carly Campbell. It was a total game-changer for me when I was trying to figure out Pinterest with my first blog and it’s an extremely helpful resource that walks you through all of the details about when to pin, how many pins to pin, which boards to pin them to, etc. You can read more and purchase the course here.
Whether you use a resource to guide you or develop a strategy on your own, it’s helpful to have a plan in place for how you want to add content to Pinterest to build your traffic from the platform. Just pinning on an occasional whim is most likely not going to help you grow your pageviews.
4. Create Pins!
Once you have your account and boards set-up and a strategy in place, you need to create Pinterest-friendly images to pin! There are a lot of ways to do this even if you’re not a graphic designer, so don’t panic if digital design is not your thing. There are several online design programs out there that are friendly to non-designers including Canva and PicMonkey. I’m not very familiar with PicMonkey but I’ve heard good things about it. I personally use Canva to create most of my pins – and they even have a free version so you can get started without paying a cent! You can get started free with Canva by signing up here. I also have a tutorial available here to help walk you through how to set up an account and how to use the program.
Once you have a Canva or PicMonkey account, you can access Pinterest pin templates to help you design images in a Pinterest-friendly size and style. You simply need to add your blog post title and text to them and add a personal or stock photo. While some of these design programs provide stock photos that can be used, be careful using them as there are sometimes legal complications to their rights! You will also often find better results from your pin designs if you use a unique photo that is not being used by many others from the free libraries on design sites. I purchase and download all of the images for my blogs from DepositPhotos. They have a fantastic selection and are very affordable! You check out their library here.
You will get better and faster at designing pins the more you do it, so just jump in and get started!
5. Pin Your Pin Designs According To Your Strategy (Or Schedule Them!)
Once you have your pins created, you simply need to pin (or upload) them into Pinterest according to your strategy. There’s a lot of debate in the blogging world about manual vs. scheduled pinning, but the bottom line is that you just need to get your pin images added to Pinterest consistently. Pinterest has a scheduling feature that allows you to upload images (with all of their data) and schedule them to publish at future dates for up to two weeks. If you don’t want to pay for a subscription scheduling service this is a great way to go! Simply click on “create pin” in Pinterest and use the “+” to add images and the little clock at the bottom of each one to schedule them out. (Don’t forget to also add a pin title, description, and your URL!)
I personally like to work in batches and schedule ahead a lot more than 2 weeks at a time, so I use Tailwind to upload my pin images and schedule them for publishing to Pinterest. Tailwind allows me to upload images in bulk and schedule them at specific times many months into the future. It saves me a lot of time since I can upload months at a time to “set and forget” my Pinterest promotion. You can sign up for Tailwind here.
Whether you use a scheduler like Tailwind or publish your pins directly through Pinterest, the important thing is just to pin according to your strategy and get your unique designs out there.
6. Be Patient & Consistent With Your Strategy
Last but not least, be patient as you begin to engage with Pinterest and execute your strategy. While using Pinterest is faster than many other ways of gaining traffic to your site, it does take time to see growth. So hang in there. Don’t give up if you don’t immediately see a boom of traffic to your site. It doesn’t mean that it’s not coming. Keep pinning consistently and you should see growth over time.
(If you don’t see any growth in traffic after a month or two, I would recommend re-evaluating your pinning strategy or getting some feedback on the design of your pins. There is traffic to be had from Pinterest, so if you’re not seeing any growth after some time you may need to make some changes!)
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Getting traffic to your blog can feel hopeless and overwhelming, but engaging with Pinterest can bring you growth! If you set-up a solid account, follow a targeted strategy, create clickable pins, and consistently add them to the platform, Pinterest can be an extremely valuable source of traffic for your blog.
Do you want to dive into getting Pinterest traffic in even more detail? Make sure you check out Carly Campbell’s course, Pinteresting Strategies. I can’t recommend it enough. She walks you through all kinds of details to help you iron out your Pinterest strategy and learn how to drive traffic from the platform. She also updates it for all past purchasers as Pinterest makes changes to their platform over time – so you never have to guess at what the best strategy is for your pinning even when Pinterest updates!
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