Easy Ways to Increase Pinterest Traffic
When I started The Busy Budgeter, I spent most of my time working on Pinterest. That strategy worked out really well for me, bringing me to full-time income from blogging within 12 months. I recognized early on that finding easy ways to increase Pinterest traffic was the fastest way to grow my income. In fact, I went from 60k pageviews to 870k pageviews in less than a year and a half!
19 months later, I’m earning more than $24,000/month from blogging and those early efforts to optimize Pinterest have really paid off. Pinterest is a game changer for professional blogging and it’s imperative that you understand how to optimize it as quickly as possible.
Getting to blog full time from home has been a dream come true. If you haven’t started a blog yet but want to, I have a step-by-step guide to getting started here. It’s not expensive. You can actually start a blog the right way for only $3.95/month.
There are a few strategies that I really focused on to grow my Pinterest account quickly so I wanted to walk you through them here.
Update! 6/24/16:
The Pinterest Strategy Guide
I’m making my Pinterest Strategy Guide available (as of right now… you can get it here) in a super easy to follow check list at a fraction of the cost of one on one coaching with me…
You should be able to walk through it and implement my Pinterest strategy step by step all on your own. I have videos available for anything that you’ll need extra help on. It’s listed in the order you need to implement it and it’s appropriate for anyone, from someone whose never head of Pinterest to someone that’s already dominating Pinterest and just wants to see how my strategy is different from theirs.
Not only is it a fraction of the cost of coaching, but I’m also including The Ultimate Brand Cheat Sheet for free to anyone that purchases The Pinterest Strategy Guide until Tuesday night (6/28/16) at midnight eastern time. Email your receipt to [email protected] to collect by then.
You can grab the Pinterest Strategy Guide right now by clicking here.
Get a free image sharer.
I use Sumome Image Sharer for free. It doesn’t slow down my site like the others I’ve used. This adds a bar above your post to easily allow readers to share it their favorite platform (in my case, the majority share on Pinterest).
Sumome Image Sharer also adds a pin it button directly onto the image when you hover over it. Most Pinterest users are used to having a pin it button show up when they hover over the image and this is the number one way my content is shared.
You can get Sumome Image Sharer for FREE by clicking here.
I choose to keep my Pinterest image (1000×1500) at the top of the post. When people share the post on Pinterest, most readers don’t think about which image will perform well on Pinterest (i.e. getting repins) and will grab any. I know that the 1000×15000 images get many more clicks and repins, so I’m making that photo the easiest for readers to pin. Which they usually do.
Fill in your alt description.
When you upload an image into your media library to add to your blog, There’s a field called alternative text. I write my pin description there so that when people share my photo, it automatically fills in my description when it pins it to Pinterest. Go ahead, you can try it with the image on this post.
Pinterest is the best of both worlds, it’s a social media platform but it’s also a search engine. I make sure to use pin descriptions that have tons of keywords in them so that people searching for the subject matter of the pin can find it easily.
For example. If you wrote a post about 10 minute quick meals. You don’t want to have a pin description that says “MMM! These are so good!” You want a pin description that says “I love these quick 10 minute meals! Perfect for quick dinners after school sports and late nights at work! Totally agree with #3 for a super easy fast dinner! We do this all the time!”
The bold text in the example are keywords that someone would search for.
Hint: I don’t write my pin descriptions as myself. It confuses the heck out of Pinterest users who don’t understand that we’re pinning our own content. By that I mean If I wrote the 10 minute quick meals post, I wouldn’t write “You’ll love these super easy quick 10 minute meal ideas that I rustled up for you!” as my description. It confuses pinterest users (most of whom don’t understand what a blog is) and they see your content as possible spam.
Spend a lot of time on graphics.
Pin images will make or break your post. You could have the best post in the world, but if you attach it to a crappy image, no one will read it. I have a step by step tutorial here for how I create pinterest images.
Use group boards wisely.
A group board is a partnership between your blog and the group board owner. They’re essentially giving you their audience for you to market your content to which is unheard of in any other social media platform.
The biggest mistake that I see from new bloggers anxious to make a splash in Pinterest is going after group boards aggressively when they don’t really have pinterest “game”. Meaning, they aren’t really sure what their doing. Their pin graphics aren’t optimized for Pinterest, they have few followers and they don’t have a pinning strategy in place.
Most group board owners wouldn’t allow you on to the group board unless they can see from your profile that you know what you’re doing. If you do get on to the group board, You run a risk of getting kicked off if you spam the board. (Spamming the board means pinning your content too much).
The best advice I can give you is to go slowly, and start with smaller group boards, adding larger ones as you feel more comfortable and as you see success and pageviews from smaller boards.
You can learn more about how to find and join group boards here.
Use Boardbooster to automate your strategy.
Boardbooster was a game changer for me. Boardbooster is an absolute genius tool that lets you automate your Pinterest strategy. I have a video that explains how to setup and use board booster here. But the idea is that it lets you loop your content through your group boards without you touching it. That means, you have the ability to get massive pageviews while spending very little time on Pinterest itself.
In fact, thanks to Boardbooster, I spend only 4 hours a month on Pinterest, which is shockingly low considering how many pageviews I get from Pinterest.
The key is to use the reports that Boardbooster gives you for free to a/b test your strategy. Make a small change in your strategy for at least two weeks, analyze the results and keep the best performing practice. This isn’t 100% guaranteed, since we don’t blog in a vacuum and things are always changing around us (like algorithms) but if you continue doing this, you’ll always be improving something in your system and then it’s hard not to grow.
This strategy has helped me grab high pageviews from Pinterest while taking very little of my time to maintain it (it took a while to set up), which lets me focus my time on Facebook and SEO to make the same strides there that I did in Pinterest.
These are great tips! I am surprised at how many bloggers do not write in the alt description on their images. It makes a huge difference!
SumoMe is one of my favorite blogging resources, but I have not tried their Image Sharer app. I am definitely going to try that one out now! Thanks for sharing.
As my Pinterest traffic has gone down recently, I decided to finally sign up for Boardbooster. I am hoping that it helps! Once I get a handle on my strategy anyways. 🙂
When using SumoMe’s Image Sharer app, for the “bar above your post” are you referring to the share buttons below your title and above your image?
These are awesome tips! Thank you for being so specific in your what services/software you use – I come across so many blog posts where they give vague tips, but no real info. Thank you!
You’ve done it again. Every time I see a new post from you, especially a blog related one, I know it’s going to be awesome.
This came at a perfect time for me because I’ve been struggling with my Pinterest strategy for a while now. My boards are in desperate need of being streamlining, but I feel ready to tackle this whole Pinterest world now!
My most popular pin has consistently been about how to include your husband in pregnancy, but very recently, my post about how I handled pain during natural childbirth has taken over. It’s always so interesting to see what pins convert best.
Thanks for the wisdom and encouragement!
Amazing post! I always enjoy reading your posts and I am very inspired by your journey in blogging.
I like your ideas about being careful about group boards and going slowly. In fact, I would love to read more about it in future posts. This is something I have been having to figure out for my blog and PInterest account.
I am in the EBA now, and working on creating images and “storing” perfect pins. I am starting to see results which is quite exciting. So please keep the blogging tips coming!
My best performing pin right now is a post I wrote about preventing teacher burnout at the end of the school year. It is the first one that reached 1k repins and it is awesome-now I have to think how to repeat that with every pin:)
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/462744930444801707/
Thank you!
Maria
I needed some good Pinterest advice and specific tools to use to boost my blog traffic. This is just what I need right now while I’ve been thinking anyway about coming up with a Pinterest strategy. Thanks so much!
Oh snap! The alt tags! I have been doing this wrong. Ok, so I am going to try your suggestion and write in 3rd person as well. These are good tips! Thanks for this, Rosemarie!
Thank you for sharing these tips! It really helps out newbies like myself. I am in the “am I really going to start blogging” phase. Yes, I have decided I am. Thanks again for all of the info you post.
You have such helpful information here. Hope these tips will help with pinterest traffic 🙂
I found your pin from other bloggers, I clicked this. I am very happy to find your pin so your Pinterest traffic tips really help me to know what I should do with my Pinterest. I’ve pinned yours in my Pinterest. Thank you very much!
Awesome post… great information. Thank you for sharing it.
You are so welcome!
Thanks for these tips! Very useful, and love the point about bolded words being keywords – that’s so helpful!
– Ayelet from Strength In Words
I am so glad it was helpful 🙂
Thanks so much for shring this. Pinterest is one of my favourite social media, btu I haven’t really found the strategy that works for me. I like your tips, I’ll certainly follow them 🙂
Fantastic information! I found you on the Merry Monday Link Party. 🙂 Thank you for this great post!
Hi Rosemarie, Great post, especially helpful for a tech-challenged person like me! Thanks! Blessings, Janet
I feel your pain! Thank goodness you don’t have to be overly tech savvy to be successful at blogging 🙂
Great info! I use SumoMe’s Image Sharer already and it is great, but now I need to go back and enter alt text for all of my images! Thanks for the tips!
Happy to help 🙂
I totally agree that Boardbooster is a game changer! I cannot believe the difference it made once I got it set up. Thank you for sharing your great Pinterest tips with #HomeMattersParty – I always enjoy your posts. 🙂
I’m currently working on upping my Pinterest game. I think I have images and descriptions down, so it’s the other part: getting followers and developing a pinning strategy that works.
I’m reviewing and implementing a strategy now and hope to see good results from that. So far, so good. Average viewers are up and others trying out the same strategy are reporting good stuff.
I definitely need to work on streamlining the process – creating images takes a lot of time and I’m kind of pinning “willy nilly” because a scheduling tool isn’t in my budget. But we do what we can, right? 🙂 Baby step by baby step.
I found this extremely helpful! Thank you 🙂
I spent a lot of time looking for a tool I can rely on to schedule my Pins. Lets be honest..we can’t spend our whole day on Pinterest, and if we don’t do it, we can’t make it big :-/ So the solution? A scheduler… Literally tried and tested almost every noticeable tool on the internet..even got a couple of accounts banned, and then got to know about www [dot] PinPinterest [dot] com. Gave it a try, and since then, haven’t looked for any other tool. Great tool, great features.
I like the way it intelligently learns and pins only pins relevant to my business to my boards. I normally schedule a week’s pins on mondays and it does the rest 😀 It does all the Pinterest-related operations on Auto-Pilot, so yes, it is literally my Pinterest Media Manager 😀
The ads keep coming up, so its a bit annoying, but other than that, PinPinterest is truly the tool you’d want if you want to rule Pinterest B-)
The Pinterest Strategy Guide Is Sold Out! I hope to get it next time, thank you again.