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Reading Time: 10 minutesAre you sick of not being heard on social media?
Are you ready to get serious about driving organic traffic to your blog?
The answer?
Pinterest.
It’s no big secret that Pinterest is king when it comes to blog traffic and organic reach but here’s a secret for you, Pinterest isn’t magic.
That’s right!
While Pinterest will drive traffic on its own here and there if you really want to ramp up your game you need a SOLID strategy.
After trying out a new pinning strategy, I went from zero organic reach to 26k on Pinterest in four weeks.
And no it wasn’t a fluke!
I tested this strategy out on a brand new blog and grew my Pinterest reach by over 60k in less than 4 weeks!
I couldn't believe how quickly this strategy worked and I was so excited that I knew I had to share my answers with you!
As you can see, by week four I had grown my Pinterest reach by over 90k and it's still growing!!
Please remember these are my personal results with the use of a solid manual pinning strategy and Tailwind. If you'd like to see other people's results check out the Typical Results of Tailwind for Pinterest Members!
You can also grab my free Pinterest checklist where I give you 17 hacks that you can use to skyrocket your traffic with Pinterest!
What Does Pinterest Reach really mean? And Does it even matter?
Pinterest reach means the number of people that see your profile every single month.
This means your pins are showing up in their smart feeds, your pins are being seen! If you have a reach of 100k then 100k people see your pins in a month and so on.
And uh yeah it matters!
The more eyeballs you have on your pins, the more opportunities you have for people to click through to your blog, then onto your email list and then sign up for your paid products!
My blog traffic also increased by thousands as my Pinterest reach increased and I didn't even use any paid ads!
Whoop whoop.
If you don't have a blog just yet, what are you waiting for??
They're awesome!
If you haven't started a blog yet, start here.
Don't worry, I leave all the techie language and fluff and just give you the good stuff.
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links which means I may receive a small commission if you choose to use my link to purchase.
I'll say that again, Pinterest is NOT a social media platform and therefore doesn't work like one.
It is a search engine similar to Google so if you want to rank higher on Pinterest, you've got to use strategies that work on search engines.
This means utilizing keywords everywhere!
Your bio, your pins, your pin descriptions, your name, your boards and board descriptions, you get the idea, use keywords!
So what in the heck is a keyword?
Keywords are terms that your audience is searching for.
How to Lose 10 Pounds in Two Months
Six Ways to Drive Traffic with Pinterest
These are just words that search engines pick up and see as valuable because they know a certain audience is looking for them.
If you want to drive traffic with Pinterest, you've got to be using words that your audience is looking for.
The theme is, serve your audience with your pin titles, if they can't find your pins, they won't come to your blog and no relationship will be built.
How do you find these magical keywords?
On Pinterest of course!
Go to the search box at the top of Pinterest and type in a specific term. I typed in “how to lose weight” and look what all popped up!
These are terms that that audience is searching for.
Can you write a blog post for any of these questions?
Can you create a free opt-in answering these questions?
That's how you build a community, that's how you drive massive traffic back to your blog and that's how you attract your tribe!
Not only is Pinterest a search engine, but it's a visual search engine.
This means that not only do you have to be using keywords, but you need to have eye-catching graphics to go along with it.
Think of your pin like a door.
You have bright shiny twinkle lights with a giant sign that says free chocolate cake.
Then you have another door that's brown with a sign that says there's quicksand behind it.
Which door do you think your audience is more likely to open?
Yeah, the big twinkly shiny one with chocolate cake!
Make sure you are using pins that stand out, they are clean, the titles reflect what your audience is going to get if they open that door, and make sure they are branded to your business.
The titles that seem to do the best are ones that create curiosity while also answering a question.
Six Ways to Grow Your Natural Hair
The Number One Kitchen Gadget You Need This Summer
I need to know what that kitchen gadget is and I really want to learn how to naturally grow my hair, so I'm going to click on those pins and see what they're all about.
Pinterest is specific about what size pins they want and they only want verticle pins.
The size I use for my pins is 600×900 and I use Canva.com to make them.
Canva has the exact Pinterest template you need to create amazing pins!
I'm a visual learner and love examples so let's look at two different pins to get a better idea of what works well on Pinterest and how your audience is seeing your pins.
While the style is very minimal and light and bright which tends to do well on Pinterest, I have no idea what I will find once I click on this pin.
What kind of spring inspiration?
Is it spring home decor?
Is it spring flowers outside?
This pin leaves me with a lot more questions than answers and I would usually just scroll on past.
Of course, you may get a few people that click through to the post but most will not.
If this pin said, 10 Budget-Friendly Spring Inspired Home Decor Pieces, I would have a better understanding of what I'd get and be much more likely to click through to learn what those 10 budget-friendly decor pieces are.
While this pin could be lightened up just a tad to make it a bit brighter, it has done well on Pinterest.
This pin tells you exactly what you're going to get once you click through to the post.
You're going to find a tutorial on how to make a rope basket for less than $7.
If that's something you're looking for, you will click through because you understand exactly what you will get and you may be curious on how to make your own rope basket.
This pin also uses the actual rope basket as the image in the pin which tells Pinterest twice that yes, the blog post is indeed about rope baskets.
Pinterest looks at the image, use of keywords and descriptions when deciding if it will push pins out into the smart feed for others to see.
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There is so much to learn when it comes to Pinterest marketing, going viral, driving traffic, creating posts, making graphics…and it's always changing because it's the internet.
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As you know I'm a huge advocate for Tailwind but I have learned that Pinterest also wants you to be utilizing their platform.
Viewing your analytics, pinning a few pins manually here and there and checking out the trending section from time to time.
This means I spend maybe 10 minutes maximum manually pinning on Pinterest.
Frankly, I don't have the time to be spending too time within Pinterest but manually pinning a few of my own pins as well as a few relevant pins from the smart feed shows Pinterest that I am an active pinner on their platform.
Just like anything else though, the key to Pinterest is consistency, and no one has time to sit on Pinterest manually pinning for hours at a time, so I schedule most of my pins to be pinned through Tailwind which is a huge time saver for me!
Group boards are one of the best things about Pinterest because they allow you to be seen by thousands and hundreds of thousands of people even if you are just starting out!
Simply put, group boards are Pinterest boards that have multiple contributors, which means you can join these group boards and get the benefit of their followers.
And most group boards have a large following which helps you quite a bit!
But you can’t just join any old group board and call it a day.
The key to group boards is to find relevant ones that align with your niche.
That means you can’t just join “Viral Pin, Pin All” group board and expect a ton of traffic even though they may have a ton of pins and followers.
Pinterest has recently stated they prefer group boards that are specific.
If you sell DIY kits and you join, “The Best DIY Group Board”, Pinterest will actually favor that board and will begin pushing your pins out for others to see.
The point here is to be as specific as possible when searching for group boards to join.
You also want to make sure they are utilizing keywords in their board titles as well as monitoring the board.
If you notice a group board that is supposed to be about DIY and it has a bunch of food pins in it, I wouldn’t recommend joining because it’s not being monitored correctly and Pinterest will notice.
How do you find group boards?
The way I personally find group boards is by going to profiles of top influencers in my niche and joining the group boards they are apart of.
I find this to be the easiest way to find quality group boards without having to leave Pinterest.
This is an example of how a group board would look >>
The profile picture shown in the left corner shows multiple images. If this wasn't a group board it would just have one person's profile picture.
This board also uses keywords in their title of the board and is very clear as to what they have within their group board.
They also have clear instructions on how to join their group board >>
This brings me to my next point, how do you join group boards?
Follow the instructions they've specified within their board description. Most will tell you to email them or write them on Pinterest.
Remember to include your Pinterest email, the group board you want to join and your Pinterest profile.
Unfortunately, there's no set number of pins that guarantees you doing well on Pinterest.
You could pin 50 pins a day and do well or only pin 20 pins a day and also do well. The key to Pinterest and driving the most traffic is to be as consistent as possible.
But life happens.
Sometimes there will be days you won't even be able to touch the platform which can drastically decrease your reach and your traffic.
For a few weeks in December of last year, I wasn't pinning anything except maybe one or two pins here and there.
My Pinterest reach dropped by over 100k in just a few short weeks!
But luckily, this is the age of the internet and you have tools that can actually pin for you at your disposal!
Like I've talked about before, I'm pretty dang obsessed with a tool called Tailwind.
So why in the heck is Tailwind so special?
Well first, Tailwind (free trial) is actually an official Pinterest Marketing Developer Partner for Content Marketing.
Which basically just means, Pinterest trusts Tailwind which is extremely important in my book.
Not only that, Tailwind actually pins my pins to Pinterest for me.
They also pin other people's pins that I've specified so I don't have to be chained to my laptop trying to repin my heart out.
Tailwind (free trial) saves me time, stress and overall piece of mind. I know my content is getting out there and I love the team behind Tailwind.
Okay okay, enough gushing.
But they also have another really cool feature called, Tailwind Tribes. If you hate trying to get into group boards, then you'll love this feature.
Tailwind Tribes are very similar to group boards but they are much easier to get into and often easier to find.
You can join different tribes from your Tailwind dashboard.
Similar to group boards, each tribe has their own set of rules you need to follow to stay in the tribe but don't worry, they're pretty easy to abide by!
You also want to make sure to find and join niche specific tribes because people are more likely to repin your content if they think it will benefit their audience.
If you'd like to learn more about Tailwind and Tailwind tribes and see a complete break down of how to use them, you can check out this post.
I truly believe you should try out something before you purchase it. You wouldn't buy a car without a test drive, right?
As you can see Pinterest isn't magic and it's not going to work unless you put in the work and set the foundation first, but once it starts working it's pretty incredible!
I encourage you to try out these strategies and see how they work for you!
Don't forget to pin this for later!
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Great tips!! I have recently been working on spending more time on Pinterest and creating new pins. I have really been seeing a big difference.
Thank you so much, Ayanna! That’s fantastic to hear! Pinterest is a seriously amazing platform for bloggers!
Love all these tips!!! I definitely need to spend more time searching for keywords.
Keywords are so so important when it comes to being found on both Pinterest and other search engines, but it does take some time to find the right nows that your audience is searching for! Thank you, Brandi!
Such great tips! As soon as I started treating Pinterest like a search engine it changed my outlook completely! I need to dig into Tailwind, it is intimidating!
That’s fantastic, Amanda!! I never thought of Pinterest as a search engine either and then when I did, whoa, everything fell into place! Tailwind is definitely intimidating at first but once you get the hang of it it’s so worth it! I have a blog post on Tailwind if you’d like to check it out where I break it all down to make it a bit less intimidating! If you want to check it out >> http://thecreativegirlbosstribe.com/how-to-use-tailwind-to-grow-your-blog/
I love reading about people pinterest strategy, I find that there’s always something to learn!
Me too, Mimi!! There’s so much to learn and things are always changing!
These are such good tips!! I just started to really utilize Pinterest more and I can tell a big difference. I’ll have to try your tips out too.
Angela
Thank you so much, Angela! That’s so fantastic to hear!! Pinterest is awesome and definitely my favorite platform!
Love these tips! Still working on my Pinterest strategy and every little tip helps!
Thank you, Lane! Pinterest is incredible for traffic and these tips should help you quite a bit!
HI Emily,
Thanks for the great sharing especially on Pinterest keyword. Will revise some of the boards accordingly.
Glad you enjoyed this blog post and found it helpful, Zaini! Keywords on your boards will really help you quite a bit for driving traffic and being seen on Pinterest!
Thanks for sharing Emily. I really believe that Pinterest rewards users for spending time on their platform so I agree with you 100%
Thank you! Pinterest definitely wants its users to be using their platform, using the analytics feature, checking and adding boards, etc. which can help in the long run!
This is a great post. I really need to start using Pinterest to increase my blog traffic so this will help a lot.
Thank you so much, Phill! These tips should definitely help you to grow your traffic quite a bit!
Great article! Pinterest is my #1 source of traffic! It’s amazing!
Thank you, Nikki! Pinterest is my number source of traffic too and it’s all free!
Nice article. I’m new to the Pinterest game and this helped me a lot. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Luis! Pinterest is definitely a long game but worth it!