The Complete Guide to Pinterest Traffic For Beginners

What if you could get thousands of blog views from day one and have an ever increasing stream of Pinterest traffic?

Well, it’s possible.

Your answer and new business friend?

Pinterest.

I remember when I first started learning about Pinterest as a way to get blog views right from the start.

At first, I was skeptical.

I made this guide because I clearly remember the frustration of not being told the whole picture and only getting bits and pieces from posts that were mediocre at best.

I want this to be the ‘be all end all’ guide to getting a solid start with your Pinterest journey and well on your way to making your dream income.

I want to save you the hours upon hours of research and trial and error.

The great thing is, to market your blog or business on Pinterest, you don’t need to be techy, or computer savvy— you simply need a few basic design skills, a scheduler (or not), and some motivation.

There are a couple of specific steps you need to take, especially if you’re just beginning, to start seeing results.

Related: My First Income Report: How This Blog Is Starting To Make Money 

I’ve put together a Table of Contents to help you navigate it more easily!

Table of Contents

How It All Works— The Algorithm and The Pinning Ecosystem
Setting Up Your Pinterest Business Profile The Right Way
How to Do Pinterest SEO for Your Profile and Pins
Perfecting Your Pinterest Images— The Anatomy of a Perfect Pin
Experimenting With The Actual Pinning Strategy/Best Practices
How to Save Oodles of Time With All Your Pinning
Extra Tips, Hacks, and FAQ’s

How It All Works

How does Pinterest work exactly?

The simplest way to explain it is ‘an idea search engine.’

When you log in to Pinterest you’ll be met with thousands upon thousands of ideas or ‘pins’ curated by people just like you with infinite passions and interests from all around the globe.

Each pin includes a title, a description, and a link back to whatever the maker chooses (usually to their site, blog post, product, sales funnel, portfolio, etc).

Related: 30 Easy Side Hustle Ideas for Busy People In Need Of Extra Cash

So if your blog/business is the movie, your pin is the trailer.

And you want to make sure your trailer makes as many people want to see the movie as possible.

To help you sort out your pins, you have Pinterest boards (like the corkboards you pin to in real life) for specific pins to be ‘pinned’ to.

• How can you use it to your advantage?

How can you sell if people don’t know that you’re selling?

Pinterest solves that very problem by exposing you to more people through the pins you create and set into circulation by pinning.

Think of your pins as online billboards (or movie trailers) that lead back to your site.

The idea is that once people land on your site you’ll convert that audience in some way- like through affiliate sales (of which I’ve made a handy guide for complete beginners too!), or digital products, or services, etc.

• The Pinterest Ecosystem

Every time you log into Pinterest, you never get shown the same mix of pins again.

Why?

Because Pinterest is always getting new pins added and/or repined and is always looking for the best pins to show you that match your interests.

It’s a constantly moving conveyor belt of pins.

Kind of like the public board people use to put up flyers of a bake sale or a lost dog.

If you pin your own flyer, it will eventually get buried under newer flyers from others who also want their message displayed.

Pinterest happens just like that except it’s online.

Related: 9 Useful Affiliate Programs for Lifestyle Bloggers To Increase Their Income 

And this is why you constantly have to be pinning great content from your own boards to group boards to get eyes and clicks on your pins that then turn into page views for your blog (and hopefully sales!). More on how all that works later.

For those of you who really don’t know how exactly pinning on Pinterest works, here is a diagram to help you visualize it better:

• How does the Pinterest algorithm work?

If we really want to get into the science of how exactly Pinterest chooses to spread and show each pin according to your pinning activity, here’s the best yet still-murky-due-to-high-secrecy-from-Pinterest-answer:

Pinterest used to have a smart feed (what determines what pins get shown on your home feed) where it showed the newer pins first.

Pinterest’s primary concern is increasing their positive user experience.

Instead of a ‘newer first’ home feed curation, since 2014, Pinterest uses a smart feed that looks at a variety of ‘scorable’ features from each pin that decides when where and how to show it on the platform.

In short, Pinterest wants more than anything to increase their pin recommendation accuracy for a better user experience. This is most likely what triggered their changing of a more linear algorithm of ‘newer first’ to something a bit more complex.

What exactly does this mean for you?

Nothing and everything.

It simply means you should be aware of Pinterest as a helpful addition to your business but also be careful to not see it as your sole provider of traffic.

So, if Pinterest changes their algorithm here and there is it still worth adding to your content strategy?

Most definitely.

If you’re not quite convinced, here are a few additional stats to give you a better idea of the power of Pinterest: (screenshot of business page)

Otherwise, let’s dig in a little deeper.

Setting Up Your Pinterest Profile The Right Way

Successfully setting up your Pinterest account requires you to change your mindset.

Don’t look at Pinterest as just a place for pretty pictures and ideas.

Think of Pinterest like a search engine.

Think of Pinterest like you would think of Google.

What does this mean?

This means thinking like your ideal customer and brainstorming how they would search for what you offer.

You want to make sure you’re as findable as possible.

Have your mindset changed and ready to go? Alrighty.

Let’s start with setting up the basics.

• Setting up your business account

The first part of successfully setting up your Pinterest account is opening a business account.

This way, you get access to analytics that you otherwise wouldn’t get through a personal profile.

Before you open your business account, have you set up your blog yet?

This way you can enter your domain name when you register.

Visit https://business.pinterest.com/en and click ‘Join as a Business.’

If you already have an account, don’t want to lose the followers you already have, and want to turn it into a business account you can:

Log in to your personal Pinterest account.

Then visit https://www.pinterest.com/business/convert/ and fill in the required info.

Tada! Your new (or converted) Pinterest business account has been created!

• Enabling your rich pins

Along with your new Pinterest account, enabling rich pins is an important step in the pinning process.

Enabling rich pins means that for every pin you repin, at the bottom of each, it’ll include your favicon, title, and a brief description.

Enabling rich pins does two things for you:

1. It helps you gain recognition through your pins as you share and re-pin
2. It helps establish more cred and increases engagement

To enable rich pins for your WordPress site (assuming you already have a blog up and running with at least one post) the easy way, there are just a few steps you’ll need to take.

First, download Yoast SEO as a plugin if you haven’t already done so.

Then, once it’s downloaded and activated, on your WordPress dashboard, click on it and choose the ‘social’ tab.

Once there click on ‘Facebook’ and move the slider to enable ‘add open graph meta data.’

Once you’ve done this you can now go to the Rich Pin Validator, enter any URL from your site and hit ‘validate.’

It can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours for Pinterest to approve your rich pins.

If you’re getting an error message make sure your permalinks, found under ‘settings’ in your WordPress dashboard, are set to ‘post name.’

Sometimes Pinterest will have trouble validating your pins if your URL’s are long and winding.

How to Do Pinterest SEO for Your Profile and Pins

SEO is a huge part of Pinterest.

If you plan on skipping parts of the Pinterest strategy, don’t choose SEO to skip.

Since Pinterest works as an ‘idea search engine’, it needs help finding relevant content with the help of your keywords.

It works much like Google uses SEO (search engine optimization) to find the best information that matching your search words.

Related: 30 Easy Side Hustle Ideas for Busy People In Need Of Extra Cash

Let’s take a closer look.

Say you’re searching for ‘dinosaur cakes’. You’ll get something like this:

Pinterest will give you frequently searched suggestions to narrow your search and will even include board suggestions relevant to that keyword. Like this:

This is where your pin titles and descriptions play a huge part in being ‘findable.’

You want to make sure your pin titles, descriptions, board names, board descriptions, and profile descriptions all have the keywords that you’re trying to be found through.

This is a big reason why you do not want to give your content ‘cute’ or irrelevant names.

To the point and directly relevant works best.

Going with our dinosaur example, a board named “Dinosaur Cakes” will have better chances of being found in our example search than a board named “ Scarylicious Dino Cakes.”

Because people will not be looking for dinosaur cakes with those search words.

See what I mean?

While doing great with SEO throughout your whole profile won’t guarantee you’ll be the first suggestion for every single search of that keyword, it’s still a fundamental part of your strategy and always works in your favor to increase your chances of being found.

Now that we’ve understood how SEO and keywords can work with you or against you depending on how you use it, how exactly do you go about searching for the best keywords?

• Finding your keywords

Fortunately, finding Pinterest keywords can be as easy as making a quick Pinterest search and doesn’t really require fancy keyword research tools.

Say we own a pet rock business and want to bring more traffic to our pet rock blog. As we search for that keyword we’ll get suggestions right away.

If your business is all about pet rocks, keywords that we could target for best results could be:

• Pet Rocks for Kids
• DIY Pet Rocks
• Pet Rock Crafts
• Pet Rock Painting Inspiration

Once we get your hands on our set of keywords (remember, they’re all subcategories that fall under your main niche and that you’ll most likely be writing about if you’re in the pet rock niche) you can then start to use them in your pin description, your board description, your profile descriptions, etc.

Let’s look at how you can apply your newfound keywords to each section of your profile below.

• Setting up your profile description

Your Pinterest profile is the very first thing anyone who stumbles across it will see.

You want to make sure it says exactly what you’re all about and what you do.

A good profile description includes:

• Your main keyword(s)
• A little bit about you
• A great descriptive title
• A call to action
• Your site link
• A great profile picture (ideal size is 600 x 600 pixels according to Pinterest)

I know, right? Seems like a lot. But it’s doable. Meera from MeeraKothand.com does a great job of this.

Take Note: According to a scientific study, a great profile picture contains a ‘squinty’ genuine smile, teeth showing, no shades or anything covering your eyes, and contains color. While this doesn’t mean you have to have all these things in the picture you choose to show your best self, they’re still factors to take into account as you make the best impression possible J

• Setting up your boards 

But wait. What are boards and why do you need them?

On your Pinterest profile, boards are just a way to keep your pinning organized under categories. Here is a snapshot of a set of boards from Teal Notes.

A clean set of organized boards will help keep you organized and will give a good impression to people that stumble across it.

To set up your boards, as you’re logged in to your Pinterest profile, just click on ‘create board.’

After you name it and hit ‘create’ you’ll have a chance to add your board description. This is one of the places where you can include your keywords.

Setting up your board descriptions functions a lot like your pin descriptions. You want to make sure they’re:

1. engaging
2. they describe what content will be pinned to your board
3. they include your keywords for that board topic.

To add a board description, click on your board, then click on the pencil icon at the top.

Here is a screenshot of how I’ve set up a board for Website design tips:

• How many boards should you create?

It’s widely recommended that you have at least 15-20 boards for your each on a subcategory in your niche.

Notice that’s a minimum. You can definitely create more as you see fit.

As an easy example, if I blog about ‘dinosaur cakes’ and do some keyword research, my boards could be categorized as:

• T-Rex Dinosaur Cakes
• Dinosaur Cake Design
• Favorite/Best Dinosaur Cake Recipes
• Dinosaur Cake Toppers
• Dinosaur Cake Frosting Ideas

… and so on.

Take Note: It’s good practice to make you first group board a board with your site name where you only pin your own pins as you publish more content.

To Illustrate, my first group board is named ‘Teal Notes’ and it ONLY has my own pins in it.

Strategically adding extra boards to your site that are loosely tied to your niche but that could point back to your profile through a search is a great way to be found on Pinterest.

If I blog about Dinosaur cakes, after creating specific boards that all target my most important keywords relevant to my blog, I can add additional boards on:

• Dinosaur party supplies
• Dinosaur inflatables
• Dinosaur Crafts/ Party Gifts
• Dinosaur coloring pages

It’s all about targeting the keywords surrounding your topic as best and as straightforward as possible so that Pinterest can read them accordingly and put them in front of the right audience when they search for those keywords.

• Board covers

Now we are on to board covers! If you’ve followed along, you’re making significant progress (that took me months to make, ha!)

To add a dash of organization and overall clean look to your Pinterest profile you can add board covers to make your content more visually appealing.

Mariah Coz, from Femtrepreneur, does a great job of this on her profile:

When you make your own covers, the ideal cover size is 217 x 147 pixels and can be made with easy design software like Canva or Picmonkey with your board titles.

To add a board cover make sure you upload your cover image first by clicking on the ‘plus’ icon on the top right of your profile.

Then, click on Boards > Edit > Change Cover.

Pinterest is a visual platform, and taking the time to create appealing board covers is a great way to garner attention and stand out.

Perfecting Your Pinterest Images

You want them to catch people’s eye in the middle of all those pins.

Otherwise, how else will they be enticed to click on the awesomeness your blog is ready to offer them?

When you make your pins, seemingly tedious factors like size, color, and overall branding has a great impact on your pin strategy.

Here are a few things to take note of.

• • • • • Your pin size

Pinterest is a vertical image world.

You don’t want to make your pins wider than they are tall.

This is because taller pins work better on mobile screens and the way Pinterest is structured to show images.

A standard Pinterest image size is 735 x 1102.

Here is a screenshot of Pinterest images live to get a better idea of the ratios ( I know, it can be hard to visualize pixels in your head).

You wouldn’t want to be the square pin in the middle of all those tall pins that are getting all the attention 🙂

• • • • • Your pin colors

The color of your pins is yet another deciding factor in your re-pin rate and exposure.

According to a study made by Curalate, an image curation company, the most effective pins are:

• • • • • Pins with more than one color
        • Red gets two times more re-pins than its blue counterparts
        • An image that is overwhelmingly colored can do just as bad than an image that is underwhelming colored (think black and white)

Striking the right balance for your own pins might take some playing around with your creativity as you design them and see what fits best.

A bright pin like XO Sarah’s is bound to get your attention.

• • • • • Your pin signature

A great way for an audience to identify your brand is by ‘signing’ your pin with your brand logo or name, here are a few examples:

• • • • • Your pin titles

Think about it. Pin titles are the first thing people see.

They are the deciding factor in whether anyone cares enough to read beyond the headline. I think I read somewhere that out of ten people that read your headline, only an average of about two will click.

You want to make sure your headline game is strong!

There is a whole science in the creation of headlines. An easy way to come up with a catchy title is remembering a nifty copywriting tip of the four U’s—

Is it “Useful, Urgent, Unique, and Ultra-Specific?”

There are also sites like LinkBait Title Generator to help you come up with a creative title that speaks to your intended audience and draws them in.

Four basic guidelines to coming up with great pin titles are:

• • • • 1. Remember that your pin title does not have to be the same as your blog title (so there is extra room for eye-catching creativity)
        2. Aim for actionable words and ‘you’ words- so it’s about what’s in it for your audience and not about yourself
        3. Make it big and eye catching
        4. Remember to check for turn-off spelling errors

To illustrate a little better, compare these two headlines and ask yourself, which one would you click on first?

– How To Set Up Your Social Media in 5 Easy Steps So You Never Have To Schedule It Again

– How to Set Up Your Social Media Fast

• • • • • Your pin branding

Oh, Branding! Branding your pins can be yet another way to create an online presence and make your pins recognizable.

A big part of branding is being consistent.

Though consistent does not always mean the same thing over and over again.

That’s to say, you could choose to be consistent in the range of colors in your pins, or a certain font pairing you use throughout.

Your branding could be that you use all the colors of the rainbow and only keep your fonts and text alignment consistent.

There are a million ways to go about making your perfect unique pin that stands out yet isn’t an exact copy of the next one.

It’s important to experiment and remember that you might not get your pins right the first time or even the second, but with some experimenting, you’ll eventually get to a pin style that works best for you.

Here are some pins you can use for inspiration:

• • • • • Creating a good pin description

Oh, but you aren’t done with creating your perfect pin just yet.

Don’t skimp on pin descriptions.

Why?

It’s precious SEO real estate.

You’ll want to include (not stuff) your targeted keywords in it.

Crafting a good pin description tells your readers what your pin is about, makes your pin more ‘findable’ on Pinterest when it includes keywords, and is simply good practice overall.

A good pin description revolves around four main guidelines:

• • • • 1. It describes your pins and includes your keywords
        2. It doesn’t just stuff keywords in one big nonsensical chunk
        3. It’s at least 3-5 sentences long (enough to do it justice)
        4. It has an appropriate call to action

You pin description can look something like Elna Cain’s from the TwinsMommy.com blog.

• • • • • Making your pins

Like I said before, you don’t have to be a design guru to create damn good pins.

Some design software you can use to create your pins are:

• • • • • Canva (free version)
        • Picmonkey (free version)
        • Adobe Illustrator (monthly fee or expensive download)
        • Ink Design (free)
        • Apple Pages (for Macs)
        • Paint (free)
        • pinthemall.net (free)

Creating perfect pins isn’t up to the software you use, but to how much time you’re willing to put into them.

Here’s what my pins looked like the in very beginning:

And here is what they’re looking like now (I’ve made some progress!):

Creating better pins and outdoing yourself is definitely a process.

As time goes on, creating pins for your business becomes easier, and as your business grows and your time becomes more valuable, you can always outsource your pin creation to knowledgeable virtual assistants (but that’s some advanced shiz for another post ;).

• • • • • Does the perfect pin exist?

I was curious if there was a ‘perfect pin’ out there.

Turns out, the perfect pin is a delicate combination of all the elements discussed in this guide. It’s all about experimenting and being persistent.

Here’s a screenshot of a ‘perfectly eye catching pin’, as found through a Curalate study:

Finding Your Group Boards and Getting Accepted

Now it’s time to join some nifty group boards.

When it comes to strategic pinning, group boards are indispensable.

You can’t do without them, or rather, you’ll have a hard time (really really hard time) growing at a faster rate on Pinterest.

Why?

Because group boards are like a gathering place.

They are where a bunch of pinners go to join and pin their content and where Pinterest also crawls through for pins to show in their feed.

And unless you join them, you can’t pin to them.

• • • • • How exactly do you go about finding group boards?

While many bloggers have suggested finding boards through pingroupie.com it’s not the most efficient way to do it in my experience.

There are two easier ways to go about it:

1. Stalk your favorite blogger’s Pinterest profile. Chances are they’ll have some group boards they are a part of that you’ll want to join as well.

2. The easiest way? Just download my main opt-in. Not only does it have a list of more than 75 group boards to join sorted by most popular categories, it also has a TON of other traffic generating places and strategies all in one place for you. What took me literal months to gather and figure out can be yours in this value-packed guide…for free.

Found the group boards you’re interested in pinning to?

You’ll have to join them next.

• • • • • How can you join a group board?

Joining Pinterest group boards isn’t rocket science once you get a few pointers down.

As you visit the group board page, they’ll usually have directions on how to apply (screenshot). Like this:

When you apply to group boards (usually through an email):

• • • • 1. Follow their directions to a T
        2. Be polite
        3. Make sure you adhere to their group board rules so you don’t get kicked off

Often, they’ll ask that you send an email requesting to join.

Here is a screenshot of a successful group board email I sent that got accepted:

The key is to always be polite, and provide all the info they request (sometimes they’ll want your Pinterest username or a link to your site and/or a brief description).

Tada!

After going through the process of joining group boards, you should have a healthy amount of boards to pin to.

• • • • • What is the optimal amount of group boards I should join?

My answer: It depends on your ambition.

As of now, I’m part of about 27 boards. While I don’t think (or have heard) of an optimal number of group boards to be a part of, the more you are part of the better.

This way, as you progress and look at what is working and what isn’t, you up your chances of finding the most active group boards (that can be done through Tailwind analytics) and pin to those the most.

Take Note: A great (and highly recommended) way to keep your group board applications in order is to use a simple spreadsheet like Excel or Google Docs.

This way you can keep track of when you sent a join request, whether you were accepted or not, or which group boards you can come back to in a few months to try to join again if you didn’t get a response.

Sometimes group board managers take weeks to get back to you. This is ok. Patience is key.

• • • • • What response rate can you expect from join requests?

This varies from person to person.

From personal experience, I logged 50 group boards I wanted to become a part of, researched them and sent them emails (took a while and a whole lot of patience) and about 30 responded back.

That’s a 60% response rate.

Experimenting With The Actual Pinning Strategy

This is where I couldn’t find any information on when I first started and I was about ready to pull all my hair out.

There is no one way to succeed with your Pinterest strategy.

There are, however, best practices you can use as a solid foundation for your strategy.

You’ll most likely have to do some experimenting with the time, boards you’re pinning to, and type of content you’re pinning. And you can make this a lot easier with the analytics Tailwind provides for your pins and group boards.

• • • • • Finding what works for you

How much, how often, and how you pin depends on your niche and your ambition.

To illustrate, some popular pinning strategies that works for bloggers are along the lines of:

• • • • • Pin 30% of your content on group boards and 70% of other pinner’s content on your own group boards amounting to about 100 pins a day using Tailwind 

• • • • • Pin a mix of 70% your content and 30% others’ content amounting to about 75 pins to group boards and your own boards using Tailwind 

• • • • • Pin a given number of your pins to group boards and others’ pins to your own boards manually…every day.

Some pinners post a mix of their own pins and others’ pins to both group boards and their own boards daily using whatever ratio works best for them.

I’ve constantly read the theme of posting mostly your own content to group boards and other’s content to your own group boards. I’ve also constantly read of pinners pinning 50, 75, even 100 times per day.

Do you see what I mean when I say that there is no one magical pinning strategy?

That’s why in the beginning you have to experiment. Experiment. Experiment.

To Illustrate and give you some more examples, check out these posts by Rebekah Allan from RebekahAllan.com and Suzi Whitford from Start A Mom Blog on their own pinning strategies:

Suzi’s- How To Semi-Loop Your Pins With Tailwind

Rebekah’s- 9 Step Pin & Re-pinning Pinterest Strategy

• • • • • Algorithm changes

While yes, Pinterest in many ways is the traffic shizzle, it’s also, just like Facebook and Instagram, subject to random and often caught-me-by-surprise algorithm changes.

And algorithm changes can affect how frequently your pin gets shown to others, or change the criteria for what makes a good pin.

What does this mean?

This means that, as I said before, it’s not the best idea to have Pinterest be your only traffic provider, and using other strategies like consistent SEO, other social media platforms, building an email list, and building online connections are always a plus and can serve as a damper to any algorithm changes in the future.

• • • • • Mindset

When pinning, like with many things in business, it’s important to have a consumer mindset and get in your ideal audience’s shoes.

When creating your pins, take a minute and ask yourself:

• • • • • What do they like to see when they jump on Pinterest?
        • What are they most likely searching for?
        • How are they searching for those things?
        • What would delight or draw them in?
        • What’s the best way to build trust with them and keep them coming back?
        • Best times to pin

To increase the chances of your pins being seen, according to Hubspot, the best times to pin are:

2 – 4 am and during the evening every day.

5 pm on Fridays

8 – 11 pm on Saturdays

• • • • • Promoting your pins for increased traffic

Promoting a pin means you can pay Pinterest to show it to more people based on a targeted audience you select.

If you have the money to spare and choose to go that route, here’s a quick guide to get started.

To quickly promote a popular pin and have it reach more people, you can hoover over that pin on your profile and you’ll see a red ‘promote’ button.

Take Note: Promoted pins are currently only available in US, CA, UK, IE, AU, & NZ. Make sure you have a business account set up to be able to promote pins.

After hitting the promote button, you’ll be met with some options.

Your daily budget: This is how much you are willing to pay each day to promote your pin to your targeted audience.

Pinterest determines cost on a per-click basis.

This means you’ll pay a certain amount within your budget to Pinterest for each click you get.

That will all depend on how much competition there is for your particular keywords and how much your competitors are paying.

So, naturally, the bigger your budget the better your ad will do.

Related: 30 Easy Side Hustle Ideas for Busy People In Need Of Extra Cash

Duration: For duration, you get to choose a period of time that you want your pin promoted for.If after your promoted pin is active you’d like to change this, you can always do so in the Ad Manager section.Keyword Targeting: You can add the keywords you want your pin to show up for when your target audience searches for them.You can add keywords and separate each by a comma.Once you set up your guidelines and submit, they’ll ask for your credit card information and your address, and you can then send it in for approval ( which takes about one business day).

You can track the performance of your promoted pin in your Ads Manager.

How To Save Oodles of Time With Your Pinning Strategy

While there are a couple of automated pinning tools out there to choose from, I’m going to be biased and talk to you about Tailwind the most.

Why?

It’s simply the pinning software I’ve come to know, trust, and love after using it for a while.

But first, what are the other alternatives?

• • • • • Manual pinning

Manual pinning should be a part of your pinning strategy as often as possible even if you have an automated pinning tool (in my experience).

While pinning software helps shave off countless hours and does the bulk of the pinning for you, Pinterest does like seeing pinning activity, likes, and shares that don’t always come from software.

While increasing your traffic by deciding to manually pin all of your pins on a daily basis is viable, your best and most optimized bet is signing up with a pinning tool.

This is especially true if you value your time and don’t want to spend it all glued to a Pinterest screen!

Don’t get me wrong. I am definitely not bashing manual pinning for the sake of selling you a pinning tool.

But when it comes to saving time, especially if you’re going to go with an aggressive pinning strategy, a pinning tool makes a lot of sense.

• • • • • Tailwind

This is one of the reasons why I preferred Tailwind from the beginning.

They are an MDP (marketing developer partner) with Pinterest and you’ll have no risk of being banned for using them.

To add to my Tailwind gush, some of the cool and useful time-saving features of Tailwind are:

• • • • • Board Insights: You can see which group boards are performing best through virality and engagement scores (super, super useful!)
        • Pin insights: You can see which pins are performing the best and getting the most repins
        • Profile insights: See how well your profile is performing
        • It’s super easy to schedule your pins in as little as a few minutes with group board lists you get to curate
        • It chooses optimal times for you to pin your best content
        • It’s affordable (only $10 bucks a month!)

If you’re serious about getting traffic on a solid start I highly recommend signing up for Tailwind and making it your trusted pinning sidekick! ☺

Believe me, you’ll need it. Especially during those busy days when you’re up to the ceiling with boatloads of things to do!

Take Note: Tailwind has recently come out with a new Tribes feature where pinners can join tribes and pin and re-pin other’s content (much like the way Pinterest group boards work) Many bloggers have seen their traffic pick up by using Tailwind tribes, and you don’t even need to have a Tailwind account to use them. Check them out and join some (you’ll have to get a free Tailwind trial account first)!

Extra Tips, Hacks and FAQ’s
Here are some extra tips and frequently asked questions to help your Pinterest game!

Get design savvy and pair two fonts together

Pairing two fonts together in your pin design gives it some versatility and personality.

Just remember to stay away from ugly fonts like Papyrus or Comic Sans (yucky).

And stay away from overdoing it. Usually up to 3 fonts works best before things start getting visually messy.

Create helpful infographics

You can use free design software like Venngage, made specifically to help you make infographics in a matter of minutes.

They can help bring traffic to your site. We are visual creatures, and this means quick infographics with valuable info tend to be eye catchers!

Pin around the clock

While there are best times to pin on Pinterest, pinning around the clock with your Tailwind scheduler is always a good idea.

Play it safe and don’t assume that your pins will only be seen during daylight, and pin around the clock instead (Tailwind has a helpful feature to help you find your best pinning times).

Make three or more pins for each post

This is a golden nugget if you’re a beginner and don’t know it yet!

Creating more than one pin per post means more ‘meat’ to work with while you’re pinning and a more points of entrance for that link.

Once you get a feel for which pin design is performing better, you can either stop pinning the ones that aren’t working, use the ones that are more frequently, and/or rethink your pin design strategy.

Use Google Analytics to look at your Pinterest traffic numbers

If you haven’t yet installed Google Analytics (an absolute must, and it’s free), use this post to get started.

It’ll show you helpful stats like how many people are visiting your site when, from where, and how.

Once you install it, on the left hand menu, you can click on: Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels > Social > Pinterest, to look at your Pinterest traffic numbers broken down for you.

Keep gender in mind

The Pinterest audience, as of 2014, was a whooping 80% female with only 20% male. Though studies since then have shown a rapid growth in male participants.

This means your pins are likely to do better if they are visually appealing to a feminine audience.

Keep demand in mind

When pinning and thinking about how much demand there will be on Pinterest for your pins, it gives you some perspective to take a look at what the most profitable blog niches are.

Naturally, the more in demand your niche is, the higher the likelihood your pins will be clicked on more often.

Some of the top blogging niches that are likely to be the most lucrative are:

• • • • • How To Make/Save Money
        • Health and Fitness
        • DIY/Crafts
        • Fashion
        • Tech

While this shouldn’t discourage you from blogging about your passions, it’s always good practice to have a realistic expectation of what you can achieve with your given niche.

Make pins to convert to more than just page views

This is where you get into converting traffic and some slightly advanced territory.

Pinterest doesn’t just have to be used to convert clicks into page views.

You can use Pinterest to grow your email list (a must), make a sale, or show a product.

How? Make pins that link back to them!

You can make a couple of pins for your opt-in freebie so people can click the pin, land on your opt-in page, and (fingers crossed) sign up!

Same goes for a sales page. You can make a pin around an e-book or a course you’re selling to showcase your product.

Remember, pins don’t just have to revolve around blog posts.

How can you rearrange the order of your group boards?

You can simply drag and drop to change the order of your group boards.

Should you erase old pins?

You can. If you have the time and energy. Or you can just not re-pin them and let them be. There is ongoing debate about whether this is healthy or not so there isn’t a clear answer (unless you work at Pinterest! In which case, can we be friends?)

Why is pinning other’s content so important/why should you. Wouldn’t it make sense to only pin my own stuff?

Only pinning your own stuff all the time can seem spammy, which is a turn-off. You want to make sure you ‘spread the pinning love around’ and pin content from other pinners as well.

Pinterest also seems to like it when you engage with content other than your own (which makes sense).

The ratio with which you do it is up to the strategy that you find works best for you. Some bloggers claim 20% of their content and 80% of others’ content work well for them, while others claim pinning 80% of their content and 20% others works for them.

You have to find what balance works best for you.

Do you have to keep making pins for the same post every week?

Nope. Once you make your set of pins for whatever link you want them to link back to, you just have to make them once and pin them over and over again.

How can I hide my pins in my blog posts if I don’t want them to show and take up too much space?

If people come across your blog and want to share it on Pinterest, they’ll have a hard time doing so if you don’t include your Pinterest pins in your posts.

But, adding all or one of your pins to your post can take up too much space, or it might not go with how you want your posts layout to look like.

Thankfully, you can add your pins to your post and hide them.

That way, whenever someone is reading your post, they’ll only see your pins if they decide to share your post.

To do this, when you write your post on WordPress, click on ‘Media’ in the top left hand corner and upload your pin(s).

After you’ve added them to your post ( I like adding them at the very end to avoid confusion), go to ‘Text’ view in the top right hand corner of your editor page.

Once you scroll down and find your image ( it usually starts with ‘<img’ ) insert it between this image code where it says ‘your image code here’:

• • • <div style=”display: none;”>YOUR IMAGE CODE HERE</div>

      There you go! 🙂 Make sure you preview your post to make sure it’s working.

How can I add ‘Pin It’ buttons or Pinterest Boards to my site?

To add Pinterest ‘Pin It’ buttons to your site along with your Pinterest boards, you can use the Pinterest Widget Builder to make a personalized set of boards and buttons for your site.

Does it matter where you re-pin your own pins from?

Pinning from your own blog posts is always a good idea.

Pinners, Keep On Pinning!

Download the blogger tool kit to get a long list of more than 75 group boards to join, along with email scripts, and tons of other resources to help you grow your business/blog traffic.

With Pinterest, patience. Is. Key.

While building your Pinterest traffic takes time, some getting used to if you’re new, and consistent effort, you’re bound to see a significant increase in traffic that, as of now, is almost unique to the platform (not to mention it’s free)!

Phew! Take your times reading over the guide and making sure you understand the content so confusion can be a thing of the past. J

Now it’s over to you— are there any pinning practices you’ve learned to avoid? Any you’ve found to be profoundly useful? Share your unique Pinterest traffic experience with the rest of us below!