As a business owner, you may have encountered the word Pinterest and perhaps even have a personal account. Pinterest is a social media platform that acts as a highly visual search engine. It allows you to share, discover, and save ideas on boards to keep them organized. Learning How to Use Pinterest to Drive Traffic to Your Blog can help if you are into blogging.
For a long while, Pinterest has been overlooked as a worthy platform for businesses. However, businesses are now realizing that it is an effective social media platform in driving traffic to your business blog. If you are yet to create a business blog, check this detailed guide on how to create a business blog from scratch.
According to recent Pinterest statistics, there are more than 2 billion searches on Pinterest every month. As of June 2019 when this article was written, Pinterest’s audience report showed that there was more than 366 million users monthly. The report also indicated that more than 85% of Pinterest users go to Pinterest when starting a new project.
For a business owner, this automatically rings traffic which you can maximize on to grow your business. What’s better is that you can use Pinterest, even for a local business. While a third of Pinterest Users come from the US, two-thirds of the traffic is global.
The principle behind Pinterest is straightforward. You create images for your products, link your pins back to your website, and drive traffic back to your website. Pinterest enables users to search and save images.
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How to Use Pinterest to Drive Traffic to Your Blog
Before I share the crazy ways on How to Use Pinterest to Drive Traffic to Your Blog, I want to make sure you know all about Pinterest. This is Especially the terms used and how to set it up.
Why Pinterest?
Pinterest is a visual search engine where people share and find inspirations as well as discover new products. As reported on Pinterest for business by Hootsuite, Pinterest is now the third-largest social network, after surpassing Snapchat at the close of 2019.
The total number of searches per month is over 2 Billion, with over 80% users being women. Nevertheless, male demography has been growing immensely. The majority of its users are millennials and adults between ages 30-45. If your target audience lies within these categories, you can maximize on Pinterest to draw traffic to your blog.
With a two-thirds of the userbase being global, many people use it to discover new products. The majority of the users access Pinterest through their mobile devices which increases its accessibility and greatly influences the users buying potential.
Related: 6 Crazy Ways to Make Money On Pinterest Without a Blog
The statistics, if nothing else, show you that you can leverage on Pinterest to grow your blogging business by generating traffic.
Understanding Pinterest: Commonly Used Terms On Pinterest
There are some terms that you will often come across while using Pinterest and it is key to understand what they mean.
Pin – They are ideas, images, or videos, that people create, save, or find. In most cases, the Pin has a website linked to it.
When you click on the pin, it directs you to the website where the image is. Pins can be saved and they can also be shared among users.
Board– This is a collection of pins (images) that have a common theme. Pinterest boards help users to organize and sort out their pins. The boards can be named or arranged as one desires.
Private Board – This is a board that only you can see and it never appears on your profile.
A Repin– This is where you pin something from another person’s board. A repin helps you reach a larger audience as it is like reposting your pin.
Pinner– This is a common phrase used to refer to Pinterest users.
Setting Up Pinterest for Your Blogging Business
1. Create A Pinterest Business Account
Pinterest is no longer a playground for sweaty carpenters and cooks. If you have a blog, you should learn how to use Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog.
Rather, it’s an important social media marketing strategy that should help you generate reach for your business blog.
Creating an account is the first step towards using Pinterest as a tool to grow your online business. Pinterest has two kinds of accounts: Personal and Business. The difference between these two accounts is access to Pinterest analytics.
For the business account, you can view your Pinterest analytics, create advertisements, and promote pins.
Pinterest analytics helps you understand your presence in Pinterest by showing you how your content is performing on Pinterest. The analytics can help you know how good your content strategy is and where to tweak it.
If you already have a personal Pinterest account, you can add a business profile to it so that you can access both profiles with a single login.
Alternatively, you can open a business account that is separate from your personal account or convert your personal account to a business account.
2. Optimize Your Pinterest Profile
Your profile communicates and reflects who you are a blogger. Thus you want to make sure that your audience can find you with more ease.
- Profile Image
Your profile image is one of the essential parts of your profile. Often people tend to use logos for their images. This works fine. However, if you desire to add a personal touch it is best to use a headshot of you.
- Your Profile Name
Pinterest works just like any other search engine. That means that keywords play a big role. It is highly recommended to add keywords that are related to your business in your profile name.
Adding keywords to your profile name can help you optimize your account to be easily found. Pinterest has a 30-character limit. This means you have to scale down on the words you enter. As such it is best to select the most relevant keywords.
You can use one main keyword for your title/profile name section. For instance, if you blog on Health and Fitness, you can write “Name/Health and Fitness blogger” in your title
- Your Bio Description
Right beneath the tittle section, you have a profile description section. You can use this section to tell pinners what you are all about. Just like the profile name section, this is a great place to include your targeted keywords based on your blog’s niche.
Aside from using keywords, you can also include your blog’s URL in your profile description. Adding your site’s URL encourages potential pinners to visit your new site.
Related: How to Protect Your Pinterest Account
3. Optimize Your Pins
Pins are the language spoken on Pinterest. They capture and captivate your potential audience’s attention, drawing them in. All pins that you create on Pinterest are made public and anyone can view it.
Pins contain three basic parts: title, image, and description. You can maximize these components to ensure that your pins are easily noticeable.
a. High-Quality Images
- High-Quality Images. The quality of the images that you share has the power to put odd pinners or to draw them in. Images with low resolution easily put off users as compared to high-resolution images. As such using high-quality images can help you draw in more users.
It also helps to use close up images. If you do not have any images of your own, you can use high-quality license-free images from sites such as Pexels and Unsplash.
- Use Images With The Right Dimensions. On Pinterest, vertical images tend to perform better than horizontal ones. Pinterest mainly recommends the use of a 2:3 aspect ratio which means that the width of your image is 2/3 its height.
- Use Well-lit Images. To get the attention of pinners, it is better to use pins that are bright with less or no clutter. Sometimes, having images that are simple and minimal can help your pins to stand out.
- Use Images With Minimal Faces. Images with minimal or no faces often bring in more traction as compared to images with faces. Based on your niche, adding images with faces may or may not convert. As such, you can consider using images with a partial face.
b. Creative Titles
Gaining a new audience on Pinterest is your ultimate goal. You want to draw in as many pinners as possible. One of the ways to do that is to create an attractive title that will spur curiosity in the user.
Pinterest allows you to create multiple different pins for a single blog post. This means that you can have multiple titles for the different pins. You can then monitor which title brings in more traffic.
The tittle motivates the users/pinners to click on your Pin. It is key to ensure that the title resonates with your Pin’s content.
c. Captivating Description
Pinterest often shows the best pins available more than it does new ones. That means you want to ensure that Pinterest thinks of your Pins as great.
You can do this by using very enticing sentences in your description. These sentences should also contain the keywords that your audience is searching for.
Alongside keywords, you can also add a call to action. For example ” click to read the full post” or “Save for later”. Hashtags can also be included in your description. If you are not certain which hashtag to use, simply write the hashtag symbol and Pinterest will give you some suggestions.
d. Apply Rich Pins
Rich Pins- These are pins that contain more information as compared to ordinary pins. Rich pins are useful when you desire to add more meaning and context to your content. They help the pins stand out more in the Pinterest feeds.
Rich pins are used for products, articles, apps, and recipes. Depending on what your niche is, you can apply more than one of these types of rich pins. Article pins will serve you best in driving traffic to your site.
Pinterest Boards
Pinterest boards play a big role in drawing more traffic to your site. Boards contain related pins. You can use boards to attract the attention of your potential users as well. The difference between boards and pins is that users/pinners can follow your boards based on their interests.
When users/pinners follow your boards, they are able to see your latest pin in their home feed every time you upload a new pin on the board. This helps increase the number of people being reached by your pins which in turn drives more traffic to your site.
To make the most of Pinterest boards here is what you can do:
- Create Relevant board names. Depending on your niche, it is important to create board names that are relevant to your niche. For instance, having a CrockPot Recipe Ideas board may not align well with freelance writing Tips board.
- Use keywords as your board names. The purpose of using keywords is to allow your boards to be more easily ranked on Pinterest search. Using keywords as your board names will allow Pinterest to identify what your profile is all about with more ease.
- Optimize your board description. Just like the pin’s description, you can add keywords in your board’s description based on your niche. This allows you to leverage the search engine properties of Pinterest.
- Add pins to your boards on a daily basis. It is paramount to be consistent when posting Pins on Pinterest. Whenever you post a new pin on your boards, the pin is presented at the very top of your pinners’ news feeds.
- Add pins to relevant boards. Not only is it important to pin consistently, but it is also important to pin on relevant boards.
- Have a board for your blog posts. Having a dedicated board for your blog posts allows users who are following your board to easily access your site. It is an effective way to drive more visitors to your website.
Additional Tips To Explore
1. Learn How Pinterest Search Works
In order to know which kind of pins your potential audience is looking at, you can use Pinterest auto-complete search results. Like any other search engine, Pinterest gives you auto-complete options. The auto-complete options can help you know what content to optimize on in your site.
2. Make Use Of Pinterest Analytics
The main purpose of having a business account is to have access to analytics. Pinterest analytics helps you know which pins are performing well, which ones need some tweaking, and which boards are performing best. This information is very critical when driving traffic to your site.
Pinterest analytics also helps you understand your target audience as you gain very helpful information on their online behavior.
3. Know The Right Time To Pin
To maximize user engagement with your pins, it is important to understand how your target audience behaves online and what times work best for them. With this knowledge, you can maximize the time and days when your pins go up.
4. Verify your website
Verifying your website on Pinterest helps you rank on Pinterest search results. Once your website has been verified, you can be able to run advertisements on Pinterest.
To verify your website, you would need to upload your website’s URL. It is paramount to note that you can only claim one website for one Pinterest account.
Conclusion
Pinterest is a worthwhile platform to pursue as a blogger. You can use it to direct traffic to your website. There are many ways that you can explore to make the best out of Pinterest. Such are: using high-quality pins, including very catchy titles, applying rich pins, optimizing your profile using keywords, adding keywords to your pin and board descriptions, using Pinterest analytics as well as verifying your website.
And that’s how to use Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog. Every business should try this platform to draw in more users to their website.
