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Why am I sharing these Pinterest strategies with you? It’s because if I can do it so can you. I admit, I got busy and neglected my Pinterest account for my blog. Then I noticed that I was getting more traffic from Pinterest than my other social media accounts put together.
What I realized is that Pinterest is more than just a social media platform; it is actually a search engine that rivals Google! I mean think about, where do you go when you need a new recipe? Try a new weight loss method? Get inspiration for your shabby chic room décor? If you are a woman especially, you turn to Pinterest.
My i40Club.com lifestyle blog about health and fitness for WOMEN was obviously a prime candidate to do well on Pinterest, this was my target market. And I was missing out.
I buckled down and made some changes and focused on my Pinterest strategies. In less than 6 months I went from 68,000 average monthly viewers to over 1 Million viewers on Pinterest. Now the exact amount fluctuates somewhat but I have not been below 700,000 views since I started doing the tips below.
Here is where I started, with 68,000 average Pinterest views
What I am going to share with you here are the Pinterest strategies I did step by step to increase my Pinterest views to 1 Million!
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links or ads. At no additional cost to you, if you click on a link in this post and make a purchase I will receive a commission of your purchase from the vendor.
Increase Your Pinterest Page Views – Step by Step Pinterest Techniques
I Updated My Pinterest Boards
The first thing I did was clean up some boards. I consolidated boards that were too similar such as Healthy Eating and Healthy Recipes; really they were the same thing. I added descriptions with relevant keywords to all my boards. I also made sure they were in the correct category.
Pinterest Strategies TIP: If you search Pinterest, you will come up the keywords for example a search of Healthy Eating – you find tags such as recipes, nutrition, breakfast, smoothies, on a budget etc. These are the words people are using to find things on Pinterest. If you incorporate them in your Board and Pin descriptions, they will find your content too!
Some people swear that board covers make things look neat and more professional. In my opinion I do not think it makes a big impact but what I did do was make all the images used for the cover of my boards a complimentary color.
While I was at it, I also created a new i40Club Popular Pins board. I use this board to pin all the new content from my website. The advantage is that when I re-pin I can find all my website Pins in one place and when a visitor wants to see what i40Club is all about, the can also go to this board and find all my websites most relevant Pins.
I Updated My Pinterest Pins
For the most part I left my current pins as is but as I did with the Pinterest Boards, I tried up add/update my Pin descriptions. I am still working on this and tried to make sure they all have proper descriptions, again using relevant keywords.
Should you delete older Pins that perhaps do not have the optimum vertical image etc.? Personally I would not. I have heard of many instances of older pins going viral. I had a Pin like that, that suddenly took off and started generating over 40,000 impressions a day. It was an older Pin and not optimized so sometimes you cannot predict these things. My advice is to let sleeping dogs lie.
I also made sure I was using Rich Pins, Pinterest does a good job at explaining how to use them.
I Added New Content Regularly to My Blog – i40Club.com
So Pinterest (and Google) loves fresh content and loves for that fresh content to be added consistently. If you want to gain any momentum, you must add new content to your blog regularly. I would say at least once a week is good for an average. If you can do more great or if you can only do a really great post a couple times a month that could work as well. The bonus is that when you have fresh blog content, you then also have fresh Pinterest content.
I Added a Pinable Image to Every New Post
The real key is to make sure that each new post that you do add to your blog has at least one great pinnable image. If you can add more than one image, even better.
Pinterest Strategies TIP: You can go through your older blog posts and add new images – it sometimes works like magic to make posts fresh again!
What makes a great image?
The perfect Pinterest image is not just a matter of taste but there are some legitimate things you can do to make it stand out. They must be vertical – 600 x 900 is the optimum size. Bright or light colors work best. You need a catchy title that is easy to read. And the better the image, the better the Pin. Here is a great article the covers the basics of Optimizing Pinterest Images.
How can you make your own great Pinterest images for your posts? There are some great photo editors:
In addition, there are some awesome places to get free stock images. My favorites are:
If you do get stuck or feel you are not creative enough to create some great images, you can get someone create some for you on Fiver, the outsourcing site.
I Joined More Group Boards
Group boards are one of the most important ways to get your Pins out there to be seen. (You know it’s a group board when there are 3 circles instead of one on the board profile picture.) If you only pin to your own boards, for the most part, only your followers will see them. Pin on a group board and you get exposure to all the other Pinners and followers of that board. If one of then re-pins your Pin, your exposure just doubled without you doing anything.
Joining Group Boards can be tricky when you are just starting out. The good news is however that other Pinners are also just starting out and are happy to get you to join.
Bloggers keep recommending Pin Groupie I have not had much success reaching out via this source. I have found the below methods more useful:
- Network! Ask pinners in your niche, and blogging buddies.
- Facebook groups: Some are dedicated solely to Pinterest group boards like this one
Pinterest Strategies TIP: Finding Pinterest Group Boards – Find people in your niche or influencers and see what boards they joined.
I Started Pinning Consistently
The number one change I made that I think made the most difference is that I started Pinning consistently. The number of Pins per day is not as important as pinning on a daily basis. There is an ongoing debate about manual pinning vs using a scheduler but there are merits to both and I do both.
The scheduler I use is Tailwind. I choose Tailwind because it is it is the only Pinterest approved scheduler app. This means that technically all the other schedulers are going against the Pinterest Terms of Service so I wanted to play it safe. In addition, I signed up for a trial of Tailwind and BoardBooster at the same time and I preferred the functionality of Tailwind and its interface. Some people swear by BoardBooster but I personally found it a bit confusing but admittedly I did not use it very much.
Update: BoardBooster closed down on June 28, 2018. Apparently since they were not officially sanctioned by Pinterest, their approach to pinning was no longer allowed.
With Tailwind I can schedule Pins for weeks at a time and it gives you the ability to set it at optimal times. By using the boards, I can schedule pins to related boards all at once and I can use an interval – usually I set it at one day – do the pins are spaced apart and I am not spamming my followers.
My Results with Pinterest
You can see that since I started using Tailwind, the number of people who see my pins increased by 235% and the number of people who act on my pins increased by 424%. That’s pretty AMAZING!
I still do some manually pinning everyday but infrequently. I will re-pin 2 or 3 of my Pins a few times a day when I get a chance. Since the jury is still out about which method is better, it does not hurt to do both but there is no way I would have gotten the same traction without Tailwind. If you want to see if it works for you, you can try Tailwind for free.
These are my personal results, but Tailwind also publishes the Typical Results of Tailwind Members every year, so you can see exactly what the average growth rate looks like for their members. You can find links to our typical results page for Pinterest here: https://blog.tailwindapp.com/typical-results-of-tailwind-for-pinterest-members/
The Last of the Pinterest Strategies: I Joined Tailwind Tribes
The other thing I love about Tailwind are the Tribes. Tribes are like Group Boards and offer the same functionality but are way easier to find and join. Once you Pin to a Tribe, your Tribe can pin and re-pin. Generally, in order to share one of your pins to the group, you must first share another member’s pin. There are Tailwind Tribes of all interests and your re-pin rate will be higher when you select Tribes specific to your niche.
If you get a Tailwind Plus Plan you get the option to join 5 Tribes and make 30 submissions per month to those Tribes.
Psst, if you want to try out Tailwind’s other features or a power up for Tribes, here is a link to try Tailwind for free.
Bonus if you sign up, I will add you to a Pinterest group board 🙂 Just follow me on Pinterest and reach out!
PIN ME!
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