Where do I start?”
That was a question I asked myself a lot when I first started blogging. With so many strategies and so much information to consume, I had no idea where to even begin…and I tell ya, there were many times where I felt my head just might explode!
Now, almost seven years after starting my blog (and turning it into a six-figure biz), I can look back and truly say there is ONE lesson that trumps them all.
You need two things to make money with your blog:
- The Right People
- The Right Products
If any of these two things are missing, no matter which way you try to cut it, you just can’t get to the money! But here’s the kicker. You can’t get your products in front of the right people if you don’t have TRAFFIC! When you’re not getting much traffic to your blog, it can cause a ripple effect that affects every other part of your blog and business’s growth.
It can affect…
- How many email subscribers you can get.
- How many products or services you can sell each month (or day!).
- How much engagement you get from your followers.
- How much authority and influence you create around your brand.
Yep, it all starts with TRAFFIC!
When I figured out how to rapidly grow my traffic and attract the right people, my email list exploded. And when my email list grew, my sales grew. It was like this domino effect which became the catalyst to massive growth in my business.
So how do you get to the traffic?
In my opinion, the fastest and easiest way to drive traffic to your blog is with…
Pinterest is my go to, my social media BFF and it has totally changed the game for me and my biz. I really don’t know why more bloggers and online entrepreneurs don’t use it but today is the day we get you 100% on board. Literally!
I want YOU to have that same chain reaction of awesomeness, too, which is why I am writing this Ultimate Guide To Positioning Your Blog To Profit with Pinterest to help you learn how to get more Pinterest followers, more repins, and — ultimately — more traffic to your site.
So, if it’s alright with you, I’d love to share with the best ways to increase your Pinterest followers, repins and TRAFFIC.
01 | OPTIMIZE YOUR PINTEREST PROFILE
Pinterest is not your run of the mill social media site. In fact, Pinterest is NOT a social media site at all – it’s a search engine. A visual search engine to be exact. That means that if you want to get found in the Pinterest smart feed, you should be using search engine optimization strategies, which include the use of niche- specific keywords, that relate to your biz and blog content and attract your perfect fit fans (aka your future customers + clients!)
Whenever you are using Pinterest, you should be asking yourself the following questions:
- Who am I attracting?
- Who do I want to work with?
- Who needs what I have to offer?
Because to go from broke to bankable your #1 priority is to create a brand, a blog and a business that serves your tribe. So this is not about you or your interests or hobbies, it’s really about focusing on the people you need to attract in order to grow your profits.
And this starts with creating a profit pulling Pinterest profile.
STEP 01 | BECOME A BUSINESS ACCOUNT
Step one in creating a profit pulling Pinterest profile is to become a business account. Why? Well because you get access to some really cool features like analytics, promoted pins and rich pins. A business account gives you access to Pinterest Analytics. If you want to switch to a business account (which I highly recommend) go to business.pinterest.com to create a new business account or convert your Pinterest personal profile into a business account.
STEP 02 | OPTIMIZE YOUR PROFILE
Your profile should tell people who you are, what you do, how you help people, and who you serve. It should also include a call to action to join your email list and you should include a photo or a logo.
Your profile pic | More often than not, you should be using a photo of your beautiful face especially if you are building a personal brand. People want to be able to connect to a real person. If you’re a business and it’s really not about you, then you could use a logo, but for creatives, influencers, bloggers and small businesses that feature you as the owner, I recommend using your personal pic instead.
Your name | You can use two of your most important keywords here along with your name and or business name. For example, my name is Andrea Bolder | Make Money Blogging + Blogging Tips
Your bio | Your bio is also a great place to stuff (yeah I used the word stuff!) secondary keywords. You only have 160 characters so you want to be strategic! This is where you explain what you do, who you serve and how they can get more of what you have to offer.
For example, I have included a call to action and a link to one of my most popular freebies to help me collect more email subscribers and grow my list. If you don’t have any freebies for people to grab then leave your website address.
(note: you can only get a clickable link in the website field now so make sure to add the link to your freebie there as well as in the bio)
To get detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to fully optimize your Pinterest Profile – get instant access to the Pin It Perfect Challenge here:
02 | CLEAN UP YOUR PINTEREST BOARDS
Just like your blog is filled with content related to your expertise, you want your profile, boards, and pins to attract your perfect fit fans. So, if you blog about makeup, you want to keep boards that are useful or inspiring to people who want to learn more about makeup. You don’t want to keep boards about fishing. Okay! The point here is that you’re looking to use Pinterest as a source of traffic to your blog, so you want your content to speak to your ideal audience.
Here’s an example from MakeupTutorials.com. You can see that they do an awesome job with their boards.
You can see all of their board titles are focused around Makeup Tips and Tricks, Beauty Tips, Makeup Ideas, DIY Makeup, and Makeup Looks, because that is what their target audience is going to be interested in. They are really targeting the specific topics that are helpful and useful to their audience. This is what I want you to do for your boards as well. You don’t want to have anything on your account that distracts your audience from your content.
So here are a few tips that will help you attract more followers and drive more traffic to your blog.
- Change your board names to keyword rich names. For example: Instead of “Snack Attack” name your board “Healthy Vegan Meals”.
- Make sure that every board is optimized with a keyword rich description, so it shows up in the search.
- Brand your boards by creating board covers that match your overall brand style and personality.
- The very first board on your Pinterest account should be a board that is exclusive to your brand and devoted solely to your blog content.
- Place your most popular boards in the top 2 rows.
- Delete or make secret any boards with fewer than 20 pins in them or boards that are not suited to your brand.
03 | CREATE PIN IT PERFECT PINS
Once you have created your boards, branded them, and optimized your descriptions – the next step is to design or brand the individual pins themselves. So what do perfect pins look like? Well, I am so glad you asked…
Your pins should be vertical | I recommend roughly 736 x 1102 pixels. The main thing here is that you want your pin to be tall rather than wide or even square to really stand out in the feed.
Your pins should be on brand | Consistency is key and all of your pins should have the same look and feel to them. Here is an example of a few of my pins. See how I use my brand colors and consistent fonts. I suggest that you create a template or two, where you can basically just change out the text and then use a few different colors that you align with your overall branding.
Perfect pins include large, easy to read text | You want to include text on your pins that is bold and easy to read so people know exactly what to expect if they click through to your post or product.
Include your website link | A great “pin it perfect” pin always has a link. It’s like a brand stamp. Not only does it let people know who and where the pin is coming from, but it also copyrights your images to make sure that no one rips them off of your blog or social media.
Include a screenshot of your incentive | You want to add an image of your opt-in offer or content upgrade to your pin. When people can see the actual freebie, whether it’s a video or an e-course or a google doc, they are more likely to want it because they can visualize it on their computer or in their hands, they can actually see what it looks like.
SEO your pins using keywords | When you are saving your image on your computer and then uploading it to your blog, you want to use the same long tail keywords in the file name as you use in your blog post URL. So, if your blog post topic or keyword is “the best makeup tutorials” then you might save your pinnable image as best-makeup-tutorials.jpg. You just want to name it with some keywords in the file name so that your image is a little bit more searchable.
Make sure your pins are rich pins | This one small change can make a huge difference in the number of repins you get. Rich pins are favored by Pinterest, perform better in the smart feed and they also add extra data to your pins so that your pins will stand out more within the feed.
On the left, we have one that is a rich pin and on the right, we have one that is not. Can you tell the difference between these two pins when you look at them? It all happens in the actual description of your pin. The rich pin has a big bold title that’s taken from the actual website page and links back to the source website. The other pin does not have this big bold title. It doesn’t quite stand out as much within the Pinterest feed.
You can literally set this up in less than 5 mins if you have a WordPress site! If you have Yoast SEO plugin for your WordPress site then the meta tag for rich pins is automatically on all your pages. You just need to validate any link from your site using the Rich Pins Validator.
Use evergreen content | So we know that the best content is evergreen content and the same applies to your Pins. Evergreen content is just content that is timeless. It’s as useful today as it will be in one year, Now depending on your niche it may be beneficial to use seasons and reference specific times of the year but when possible make your pins evergreen so people will want to click your pins all year round.
04 | OPTIMIZE YOUR BLOG TO PROFIT FROM PINTEREST
Once you have strategically designed your pins to maximize the number of people clicking through to your site, the next step is to leverage those pins to grow your email list, increase sign-ups and boost your sales.
Include at least one pinnable image in every blog post | Besides my blog’s feature image, my pinnable image is the first image you will see in every one of my blog posts. These images are larger, longer, the text is bigger, and designed specifically to be pinned onto Pinterest. Plus, every one of my pins is always linked to a freebie or content upgrade to boost subscribers.
Install a Pin It button for your blog images | Make it as easy as possible for your blog readers to repin your pins. Install a pin button on top of your images so your readers can easily share your post to Pinterest.
Add a Pinterest Share button to your website | I use the SumoMe Share plugin to add built-in social media buttons which include Pinterest, to all my pages and posts. This plugin makes it super easy for visitors to share content and we all know that the more people share your site and content, the more viral traffic you get. And ultimately that means more sales!
Install a Pinterest Follow button |Similar to the share button, the Pinterest Follow button makes it easier for your blog readers to follow you off of your blog.
Embed a Pinterest board in a blog post or your sidebar | Invite your followers to follow your profile or a specific board. This is great for any seasonal boards you have. Just grab the Pinterest widget here and embed it on your site.
These are all small but very powerful things you can do today to begin boosting your Pinterest following, repins and traffic.
Want more strategies on how to grow your Pinterest followers and repins on Pinterest? Take The Pin It Perfect Challenge today! (It’s FREE!)
05 | LEVERAGE PINTEREST GROUP BOARDS TO BOOST YOUR PINS
Marketing your personal boards on Pinterest is the bomb.com all by itself, but when you are able to strategically leverage the efforts of other people…it can be explosive. So just how do you get your pins in front of thousands of people and gain some social cred at the same time?
Group Boards!
Group boards have the ability to:
- Get your pins in front of thousands of pinners.
- Get your blog or biz noticed by influencers in your industry.
- Increase your chances for viral pins
- Get tons of targeted traffic to your site
- Get even more followers on Pinterest
Being able to pin to group boards that already have thousands of followers drastically cuts the need to have thousands of followers on your own Pinterest account. So joining group boards allows you to get your pins in front of other people’s followers without having to grow your own followers. It’s a strategic move that pays off big.
You might be asking yourself, how do I find a group board to join?
Well, what I recommend is that you do a search for boards using relevant keywords. So, you can go on to Pinterest, type in a few keywords, try some different words that are relevant to your niche, the topics that you blog about and then hit enter and sort by boards.
Another great place to find relevant group boards to join can be found right here Board Booster Best Group Boards.
When you find a group board you’d like to become a contributor of, you need to actually ask the board owner to send you an invite. You can usually find instructions on how to contact the board owner in the group board description.
So which ones should you join?
You want to look for boards that have lots of people pinning to them, you want it to be an active board with quality pins. You also want to join boards that are pinned to frequently.
06 | AUTOMATE YOUR PINTEREST MARKETING
Now the key to winning at Pinterest is pinning consistently. But, here’s the thing with Pinterest. Unless you are creating content every single day or multiple times a day, you need to be pinning other people’s content to keep your profile active and growing. In order to grow your Pinterest following, you need to pin relevant and niche specific content all.of.the.time!!!.
This means that every single day you need to be pinning anywhere between 50 – 100 pins. Well, don’t cuss me out quite yet…because one of the best things about growing your traffic on Pinterest is that you can literally set it and leave it using automation tools like BoardBooster.
BoardBooster is a scheduling system that allows you to publish new pins as well as loop or automatically re-pin (basically revive and recycle) your old pins so that your account is always active and content is constantly running through your boards. BoardBooster is one of the most popular Pinterest tools out there because it allows you to:
- publish your pins during the optimal times (when your followers are most likely to notice your pins).
- Spread out your pins so that they are published over time to avoid overwhelming your followers and increase the chance of engagement.
- Set it and leave it. You have daily activity on your boards without having to manually do any work.
- loop your pins so that you can continue to promote them and push them on Pinterest on autopilot.
This is entirely hands-off and I rarely spend any time on Pinterest anymore. You can simply pin to your secret boards, and BoardBooster will publish the right number of pins from your secret boards to your public boards at the right time. OMG, it’s genius and your traffic will explode as a result. Occasionally, I will go into Pinterest and just pin something straight from my feed, but for the most part 90% of what I pin is automated and that’s why it takes me very little time to do. Boo-yah!!
So how does this automated magic happen?
Check out the video below on how to Schedule Your Pinterest Pins on BoardBooster!
So if you want to give BoardBooster a whirl, you can start automating your pins today and get your first 100 pins free with Board Booster. Go here to get your first 100 pins (no credit card required).
07 | PROMOTE THE HECK OUT OF YOUR PINS
We’ve reached the end of this EPIC guide and now it’s time to pull it all together so you can begin to easily and systematically increase your blog profits even if you’re starting from zero. But first, let’s do a little recap! We’ve covered…
- Setting up a business account on Pinterest.
- Creating a killer profile that shows people how you can help them.
- How to build Pinterest boards that attract the right people.
- How to design powerful pins that convert.
- How to grow your following by optimizing your blog
- How to automate your Pinterest strategy with BoardBooster
You’ve learned a massive amount about how to position your blog to profit with Pinterest, but how can you leverage all of that knowledge to see more traffic, email subscribers, and sales right NOW?
Here is the strategy to use when you are just getting starting with Pinterest:
- Go to the Pinterest search bar and type in a keyword. Try using one of your board names.
- Under the search bar there are categories (pins, people, and boards.) I want you to click on “boards” and start following the boards that come up from your keywords.
- Follow the first 50 boards. If you can follow 100 today, go for it. This shouldn’t take you more than 3 minutes. Seriously!!
- Ideally, you should get followed back by 10-20% of people’s boards you followed.
- So if you follow 50-100 boards today you should gain about 5-20 new followers.
So what’s going to happen?
This is going to add highly targeted pins to your smart feed plus it ensures that your feed doesn’t get clogged up with pins you are not interested in. #winning!
Now if you have been on Pinterest for a while and have already begun building a following here are 5 additional strategies you can implement to boost your followers:
- Pin relevant content (not just your own) to your group boards at least 1-3 times a day
- Follow and connect with other pinners in your niche.
- Promote your Pinterest account on other social media platforms.
- Join a Pinterest promotion Facebook group or a Tailwind “Tribe”
- Send an email to “Follow me on Pinterest” to your email list.
And the awesome thing about Pinterest? That traffic just grows and grows over time as those pins get more repins an exposure.
For more strategies on how to grow your Pinterest followers and Repins, take the Pin It Perfect Challenge. Sign up here (It’s FREE!)
Pinterest isn’t just that place where chicks share pics of cute pillows, DIY crafts, and recipes…Pinterest is a powerhouse when it comes to driving traffic to your site. So, if you have been struggling to drive traffic to your blog, grow your email subscribers or convert scrollers into sales, Pinterest is the cure.
I’ve given you a ton of options on how to start using Pinterest to grow your followers and get more repins, and believe me, there’s lots more to share, but take some time to explore the tips I’ve shared with you to see how you can begin positioning your blog to profit with Pinterest today!
PinPinterest is a scheduling and marketing tool for pinterest that is free to use and runs on the cloud. It is mobile optimised and has Pin Scheduler and Speed control options.
The best feature of PinPinterest is its sophisticated algorithms running in the background, which detect pins relevant to my business and pin them on my account. Also, it makes sure my account does not get banned by running at a safe-speed.
I just love PinPinterest for my Pinterest account 🙂