Whether you realize it or not, Pinterest is less of a social network than it is a very sophisticated search engine. So knowing how to make pins well will not only grow Pinterest traffic, but it will also send plenty of traffic to your blog!
While Instagram and Snapchat are having their moment in the sun as the fun, cool new social networks, Pinterest is silently one of the biggest drivers of traffic to some of the greatest websites.
Dao Nguyen, the VP of Growth and Data at Buzzfeed (who remains one of my biggest traffic referrers to this site) stated: “Pinterest is BuzzFeed’s second largest social network referrer. It also has a much longer lifecycle than other social networks, often driving traffic to posts months after publication. In fact, more than half of BuzzFeed’s traffic from Pinterest goes to posts published more than 2 months ago.”
Crazy, right? If you’re still not convinced, check out all these testimonials from companies using Pinterest for their business and growing website traffic from pins.
If your Pinterest account is still a personal account and hasn’t been converted to a business account, you better get on it! Having access to Pinterest business account allows you to see analytics and metrics for your pins. Plus, you’ll have access to promoted pins!
So, here’s how to make pins efficiently and optimize your Pinterest strategy:
- Just like with your blogging niche, you should have one board that centers around a topic you will produce consistently and pin. This is the board you will be focusing on from now on. Make sure to spend time making this board grow and make it as specific as possible to your niche, with the most valuable information you can find!
- You need to start promoting your Pinterest account on other social media channels! A lot of fashion bloggers are already doing this to send traffic to their Instagram account. You need to be doing this to send traffic to Pinterest because a viral pin there could mean hundreds of thousands of clicks to your website!
- Just like with other networks, you need to learn how to be involved with your community. So, start familiarizing yourself with group boards and begin engaging with people by liking and commenting.
- Remember to always re-pin your posts! Focus on re-pinning your most pinned posts first and then evaluate why other pins didn’t perform as well. It could be because of how you make pins. Use the six pointers below for best optimization.
A straightforward example of an effective pin. Use crisp, compelling images. Experiment with typography for visual impact.
How To Make Pins That Stand Out:
- Obviously, this is a visual platform, so make sure your graphics are bold! It’s always best to use a bright color within your pin images. So, even if you have an image you’d like to use, create your brand color’s shape overlay and use that as a space for the text.
- Quotes perform very well on Pinterest, so don’t be afraid to throw some of those in the mix.
- Focus on vertical images. These perform the best. You might have noticed that I made a switch over to having my featured images be vertical for the majority of the time. This is because I’m using these images as my Pinterest pins.
- Create a roundup of other visually compelling posts related to your blog niche. You can place a grid of very visually appealing images while introducing your readers and pinners to great new content from other content creators.
- Focus on providing very useful infographics. Consider what you would repin and use for reference as your guide for content creation. You can hire someone on Fiverr if you struggle with infographic creation.
- Make sure to give your pin a good description using keywords. Do a 3-4 sentence caption and give your readers a reason to click on your fabulous pin.
Leave a link in the comments to your Pinterest board and let me know what your biggest challenge with using Pinterest is!
