How to Quickly Grow Your Blog With Pinterest
If you’re blogging for money, then I’m sure you know just how important it is to get people to your blog and on your email list. In this post, I break down how to grow your blog with Pinterest.
Most people think it has to take a lot of time to build up both, requiring you to constantly be posting new content, but that’s not the case.
In this post, I’m going to show you how you can grow your blog and email list quicker and consistently with Pinterest without having a crazy blog posting schedule.
Focusing on Pinterest I saw at 900% increase in click through rates
I’ve been blogging for over four years. However, I didn’t really start getting traction in building traffic to my site and my email list until I really started focusing on Pinterest a couple of years ago.
Within the span of few months, my email list has skyrocketed and my traffic more than doubled.In fact, the traffic coming from Pinterest to my site increased by over 900%. And this isn’t an anomaly, anyone can do this. It’s just a matter of understanding the power of it and how to harness it to benefit your site.
Even when I took a break from regularly posting new content on my blog, my email list continued to grow because of Pinterest, I’m going to explain why that is in this post….
Pinterest is Designed for Content
First things first, Pinterest is designed for content.
People go to Pinterest looking for blog posts and recipes and really any site based content. While it does get lumped into the social media pile, Pinterest is actually a search engine.
Because while you do perhaps interact with other pinners every once in while it’s really all about sharing and getting content shared.
Every content creator’s goal is to make that content easy to find. So once you understand that, you’re able to better position your content to be found.
For example, you know to use keywords that people are searching for when you put together descriptions for your images. If you’ve ever been on Pinterest you also know that it’s a visual platform so all the keywords within your description matter, but the image is just as important.
Images Matter Just As Much as The Description
The image is what people see first before they read the description and the Pinterest algorithm does have a way of somewhat reading the images well. So while both are important, yourdescription really won’t matter if you don’t have a decent looking Pin.
When I started to gain traction, it was after I went back to the drawing board in the creation of the Pins. I start focusing less on the conformity of my Pins and more on visual appeal. Making sure to always include my logo in a small font somewhere on the edge of each image.
Before:
After:
Do Pins Need to Be Part of a Recognizable Brand?
Now, I know what you’re thinking, aren’t your images supposed to be recognizable as part of your brand? For years I thought it was important that my Pins all looked alike and part of a recognizable brand.However, the reality is that wasn’t getting me very far.
By using images that suited the topic of the posts and then fonts that look good together, my images started looking better and getting more traction.
Though, yes I do tend to use the same few handfuls of fonts and font combinations.
I don’t worry about if the Pins all look alike. The same goes for colors, if my brand colors work with the image, great, but if they look horrible on the image I’m not gonna let that stop me from using other colors if it’ll make the Pin look better.
Ultimately, the goal is to get users to click on that Pin and go back to my website. And branding with just your logo is fine.
Pin Description Basics
Successful pin descriptions have a few things in common:
- they touch on a pain point,
- explain how the content solves the problem,
- invites them to take action, with a call to action and
- includes 3-5 hashtags.
Here’s an example for this post:
Are you struggling to grow your email list? [hit pain point] Find out how Pinterest can help you to grow your email list faster in this post. [solution] Check it out now! [call to action] #pinterestmarketing #emailmarketing #bloggingtips #listbuilding [relevant hashtags]
Also, note that I write in complete sentences, I don’t just list out a bunch of keywords. Write for humans, not algorithms.
So once you get the basics of really strong pin images and descriptions down, it’s a matter of being found.
Sort of like trying to win a popularity contest. And while you can certainly just pin to your boards you’re going to go a lot further a lot faster if you’re pinning to group boards and Tailwind tribes.
Group Boards and Tailwind Help to Expand Your Reach
Tailwind tribes and Group Boards are designed to help expand your reach.
Group boards are boards on Pinterest with multiple contributors. They usually have rules such as pinning another’s content for every one of your pins you add. That reciprocity helps ensure that everyone’s getting some sharing love.
If a board doesn’t have reciprocity happening it’s probably not a great group board and you’d be better off not sharing to it.
Similarly, Tailwind Tribes do the pretty much the same thing.. It’s actually partnered with Pinterest so you get the best analytics and it makes scheduling super easy. Tribes are something they rolled out about a year ago or so and they were similar to group boards except they’re typically a little easier to manage and get invited to contribute to.
Tailwind Tribes exists in the Tailwind platform which is a Pinterest scheduler.
Tailwind Tribe Display Pins By Time Posted
The initial rollout of Tailwind Tribes was a beta but they have finally released the full product which includes the ability to search and find Tribes.
One of the best features with Tribes is that it shows you your sharing ratio, so how many other people’s Pins are you sharing versus submitting your own. Which makes it easier for the Tribe manager to find out who’s not following the rules.
One of the benefits that Tailwind Tribes and group boards have over the Pinterest smart feed is that both Tribes and group boards display content based on when they were posted, with the most recent pins being shown first.
The smart feed, on the other hand, shows the user, pins they are most likely to be interested in, no matter when they were pinned originally.
So when you’re trying to get your new content out there and seen right away, group boards and Tailwind Tribes are a great way to do that because your content will be displayed right away.
And to show I’m not making this up, here are some of the results I’ve seen by utilizing group boards, Tailwind Tribes, and pins that don’t all look alike.
Before: 196 referrals
After: 1,868 referrals
As you can see the amount of clickthroughs to my site increased by over 900%.
How to Grow Your Email List with Pinterest
No not only did focusing on Pinterest help me to grow my traffic to my site but it also helped me to add tons of email subscribers to my email list. And I’m not just talking about opt-ins in the posts that people were going to from Pinterest.
I found that creating a landing page which has an opt in for each the content upgrades otherwise known as free resources, I had on my site and then creating multiple pins for each of those landing pages and promoting them really helped to drive opt-ins quickly.
These landing pages have become some of my highest converting pages, with some having a conversion rate of over 30%.
Because while it’s great if they read your post and then opt into your list, you don’t actually need users to read your post in order for them to opt-in to your list. Email marketing – which is a direct line to your audience doesn’t require them to read a post.
I went from barely converting any readers into subscribers to converting more than 2% of my traffic. Which if you have 10,000 pages a month is over 200 subscribers each month joining your list.
List Growth Over the Last Six Months
Bottom Line on Growing Your Blog With Pinterest
If you’re looking to grow your blog and your email list, Pinterest is the way to go. While I know it can take a lot of work and effort to get up and running, to see the results makes it absolutely worth it. Especially since those results will continue even if you need to take a break.
If you’re struggling to find the time to do all the scheduling and creating amazing images and multiple images for each page or post then look at hiring a Pinterest VA. Either way, if you do it yourself or hire it out, you can grow your blog quickly with Pinterest.
Related: