From 0 to a Reach of Over 450,000 in just 3 Months: A Pinterest Case Study
If you’re like most online marketers, you’re wondering how you can capture traffic from Pinterest.
Most people think it’s hard or takes a ton of time to start seeing traffic from Pinterest, but that’s not the case.
In this case study, I’m going to show you how I helped Ben at The Wired Runner literally go from 0 to a reach of over 450,000 and a daily click-through rate of over 50 in just 3 months.
Starting From Zero on Pinterest
When I started working with Ben in early September 2018, his Pinterest profile had only 2 boards, both of which were mostly empty and a grand total of 4 followers.
Today, The Wired Runner Pinterest Profile has 16 boards and is a part of a handful of group boards with over 150 followers.
When I checked the analytics before getting to work, the impressions, click through rate, and reach were all 0.
Three months later they were:
Impressions = 6,230
Click Through Rate = 58/day
Reach = 458,266
The First Step Was Setting a Solid Foundation With a Great Pinterest Profile
Like I mentioned earlier, the profile was basically starting from zero. Your Pinterest profile has so many great opportunities to optimize to help you with your reach even when you don’t have a lot of followers.
These are the steps I took to help get it off the ground:
You Should Have a Minimum of 15-20 Personal Boards
The easiest place to start is to create on-brand personal boards, if you have a board that is off brand, make it a secret board.
For each of your personal boards, make sure you are categorizing it accurately with Pinterest.
Each Board Should Be Optimized With a Keyword Rich Description
Each board allows you to craft a description, you want to be sure to include several keywords in this description, without keyword stuffing.
Your descriptions should be written for humans rather than just algorithms. Meaning you should use complete sentences.
Lastly, board descriptions are not the place for hashtags, they aren’t clickable in board descriptions, keep hashtags relegated to your pin descriptions.
Make Sure Your Personal Boards Look Full
You don’t want people looking at your profile and seeing a bunch of empty boards. Make sure each board has a minimum of 5-6 pins each so that at a glance they look “full.”
Don’t worry if what you’re filling it up with right now is not your content, you can add your content later.
Step Two Was Creating Great Pins for The Site’s Content
Strong performing pins are:
- visually appealing
- have keyword descriptions
- Include relevant hashtags, no more than 5
Here are some examples of pins that have done well:
Step Three – Consistently Pinning
Pinterest likes pinners who consistently Pin. We’ve used Tailwind to ensure pinning everyday. Tailwind is a Pinterest approved scheduler that makes it easy to remain a consistent pinner.
You can log in once a week and schedule out an entire weeks worth of Pinterest content. I always make sure at 50%-80% of the content scheduled is The Wired Runner content.
Step Four was Having a Bit of Luck
There is a lot you can control on Pinterest which increases your chances of being lucky. Part of the reason for the big jump was a Pin going mini-viral in November.
Even after the traffic from that particular pin slowed down, The Wired Runner’s Pinterest profile maintains a reach of over 300,000, which is really good considering how old the account is and the fact that we still have less than 200 followers.
Bottom Line
If you want to increase your chances of succeeding on Pinterest make sure you optimize everywhere you can. Set a solid foundation with your Pinterest profile, create great pins, and pin consistently.
Check out the video below to learn more about Ben’s experience working with me: