So, what’s the deal with Pinterest for bloggers?  For anyone that is familiar with my content, it’s no secret that I just gosh dang love Pinterest.  Even on my low blog traffic days, I still receive a good trickle of views from my best pal Pinterest.

Before I added Pinterest to my blogging toolkit, if I didn’t have time for Twitter, my views would be a BIG FAT ZERO.  This was pretty depressing, I was putting so much time and energy into my blog posts. FOR ZERO VIEWS?  Cry.

*Full Disclosure – this post contains affiliate links.  I would never promote anything I hadn’t tried, tested and LOVED.  The opinions expressed below are my own, I have not been compromised by the sway of the mighty dollar!  Check out my full policy here. 

After a string of self development posts, I have been itching to get back to my old faithful; blogging and social media tips.  Before I had settled on the Pinterest theme, I did some reconnaissance.   Enter the surprising results from my recent Twitter poll. ⬇️

Whilst I was relieved to see that other Bloggers felt the same as me about Facebook, I assumed Pinterest would rank up there with Twitter.   Re Facebook … aside from the comment exchange threads, I find Facebook a useless exercise.  What about you?

When I interacted with my blogging colleagues in the comment section, a lot of people said they were just getting to grips with Pinterest.  I can completely understand this!  It can seem really overwhelming at first.  I have also been responding to a lot of beginner Pinterest questions on both Twitter and via my Pinterest Community.   This along with the Twitter poll results have given me some food for thought.

I have previously written posts about specific aspects of Pinterest.  But given the results of the Twitter poll, and the feedback I have received from other bloggers, I have decided to do a round up of my top 5 Pinterest tips to date!

What’s the Deal with Pinterest for Bloggers?

Don’t get me wrong, Pinterest isn’t without it’s flaws.  But for the most part (providing you know how to use it of course) it is an extremely helpful tool to boost your blog traffic and gain exposure even when you are not using the platform.

Pinterest is a visual search engine, so ‘the google of graphics’ if you will.  But unlike other social platforms (I’m looking at you Facebook) Pinterest doesn’t penalize you when other users exit the platform to read your content.  The whole point of the platform is to direct people to external sources.  Be it product pages, blog posts or any other external link.  This leads me nicely to my next point.

The numbers don’t lie yo!  As of 17/09/2018 the total number of monthly active Pinterest users was 250 million.  That’s 250 million users actively seeking relevant information, inspiration and tips.  Plus if you hope to make money blogging by recommending products, there are 2 million users saving shopping pins to their boards daily.

Major excite!!

If the numbers aren’t selling it to you, no worries!  You could always check out 5 Awesome Twitter Tips for Bloggers instead 🙂 For those that want to stick around, don’t worry, the preamble is now over.

Let’s get to it!

1. Convert to a Business Profile and Claim your Website

If you are really serious about making your blog a business, you need to reflect this in your social sharing also.  It’s time to ditch that personal profile, and convert to a Pinterest Business Profile instead.   Not only does it look a heck of a lot more professional to Pinterest viewers, you gain access to awesome analytics too.

You can follow these instructions directly from the Pinterest Help Center to convert your account.  It’s quick, easy and FREE!  We love free!

After you have converted to a Pinterest business account, I suggest claiming your website.  This will verify your sites authenticity, plus your profile picture will show up next to anything that has been pinned from your site.

Once again Pinterest has a really clear cut guide to claiming your website here.  You can use the Yoast WordPress Plugin to add the required meta tag to your site.  OR for those of you that are on the WordPress premium plan, you can follow my previous tutorial via the link below ⬇️

How to Verify your Pinterest Account WITHOUT a WordPress Plugin

If you want to know why/how I eventually migrated from WordPress Premium to Self-Hosted click the link below.  *Spoiler Alert* it was mostly for the Plugins AND I wish I did it sooner! ⬇️

Switching from WordPress Premium to Self-Hosted: What Happened?

2. Make your Pinterest Profile Outstanding

Now that you have a Business Pinterest account and have claimed your website the REAL work can begin.  Yep, you heard me.  You better WERK!  Those of you that frequent my virtual abode on the regular, will notice that I refer to the importance of building a strong foundation, like A LOT.  Your Pinterest profile is no different.

A Pinterest profile acts like a store front.  It needs to be engaging and easily found by  your target audience(s).  AKA don’t scrimp on the SEO when creating your profile wording.  This means including keywords and being specific about who you are and what your Pinterest profile will achieve.

SEO also extends to your board descriptions.  Consider who you are trying to attract and what phrases and terms they would use to find your content.  Is there more work that needs to be done in this regard?

I have a practical tutorial focusing on Pinterest profile improvements that you can access via this link ➡️➡️➡️  5 Steps to Improve your Pinterest Profile.

In the post I outline how to achieve the following:

• Step 1. Create a Pinterest Board for YOUR Content
• Step 2. Set Appropriate Pinterest Board Cover Graphics
• Step 3. Set Pinterest Featured Boards
• Step 4. Arrange your Pinterest Boards Appropriately
• Step 5.  Selecting Pins for your Pinterest Profile Cover

I have included detailed instructions, print screens and my reasoning for each step 🙂  I do hope you enjoy!  It’s time to build that strong foundation.

3. Create Awesome & Pin-worthy Graphics

So, this is ALWAYS suggested in these kinds of Pinterest posts, and there is good reason.  Pinterest is first and foremost a VISUAL search engine.  People log on to Pinterest looking for the most eye catching visuals.  A Pinterest user will look at the graphic before anything else, including your post title and description.

How can we make this work for us?  Add your post TITLE to your image! 

This way people know what your post is about, rather than having to scour for the title and or description.  I also read somewhere that pins with human faces on them tend to perform poorly?  I haven’t trialed this myself yet though, so I can’t tell you from my own experience.

Image size is also important.  You need to use vertical pin images. It’s worth noting that as part of the new Pinterest changes, extremely long pins (e.g. Infographics) are now being penalized.  So it’s best to stick to the typical pin dimensions (600 x 900 pixels)  unless you want to negatively impact your Pinterest reach. 

If you aren’t a design wiz, you can use FREE software such as PicMonkey or Canva  to help.  Both have awesome Pinterest image templates to choose from and are very user friendly even for the technophobes among us.  I have recently been trialing another free piece of design software, so I will let you know how that has gone in a future post.  Keep your eyes peeled.  You know I love my geekery!! 🙂

4. Schedule with *Tailwind

Ah Tailwind my love!  Another staple in my Blogging tool belt.   Tailwind is an EPIC TOOL (the good kind, not like Steve from finance) that can help you harness the power of Pinterest … even while you sleep.  I don’t know about you, but I love sleep, in fact I am a sleep aficionado.  It is my love of uninterrupted sleep that has lead to my deep appreciation for the automation powers of Tailwind.

A lot of people overlook this crucial fact … To get anywhere with Pinterest, you need to be CONSISTENT with your pinning.  This means pinning daily.  I pin about 40 times per day with Tailwind, and then manually pin on top of that.  40 times per day may seem a little extreme, but believe it or not, I’m actually quite a conservative pinner.  I know a lot of folks that pin anywhere from 80 to 100 times per day!  Imagine trying to achieve those numbers manually?  Shudders.

 – Smart Scheduling*

It’s not just about HOW MUCH you pin, it also matters WHEN.  To get the most from Pinterest you need to be pinning at different times both day and night.  This is because Pinterest has a WORLDWIDE user base.  Remember how much I said I love sleep?  Yeaaaah I’m not getting up at 2am UK time to start manually pinning for my American pals.  I love you guys buuuut, sorry not sorry!

Enter Tailwind’s smart schedule, which is a little slice of genius in my humble opinion.  The smart schedule feature creates a calendar of recommended posting times based on the behavior specific to your audience.

Tailwind users can rejig this calendar over time based on the most up to date habits of your audience.  You can even increase your publishing time slots.  Woo!  For example, when I was new to Tailwind, I started out with about 10 scheduled posts a day.  I have been increasing my publishing slots overtime.

– Combat Blogging Overwhelm

Tailwind has a great mobile app too.  I put the app to good use when my brain is fried from Bloggers overwhelm.  There is always SOMETHING to do when you run a blog.  But sometimes you just need a simple task that requires little mental energy, but still helps your blog to grow.

I personally hate knowing that I’m too exhausted to accomplish anything of real consequence and just stagnate instead.  When this happens I chip away at the little things that eventually equate to greater things.  Such as sitting on my couch in my cookie pants searching for awesome pins to add to my tailwind queue.  This is for you future Rach!

Tailwind Tribes*

Basically Tailwind Tribes is a tool that enables you to grow your own reach whilst helping others grow too.   I get most of my Pinterest Pins from Tailwind Tribes.  Each Tribe is full of high quality content.  This means that I have a steady flow great content to help me pin consistently.  It is also a great way to get your own content seen and shared by the right people.

You don’t need a paid membership to access Tribes on Tailwind.  This is excellent news for those that wish to collaborate with other awesome Pinners at no cost.  Anyone can join Tribes for free and even schedule their first 100 pins at no extra cost!  Woo!

As a side note, Tailwind can also be used to schedule to Instagram.  Personally I’m not a big Instagram advocate or user, but it’s a great feature of your Tailwind Pro Plan to cover both platforms 🙂  You can also use the Instagram Hashtag finder through Tailwind which is pretty sweet! ⬇️⬇️⬇️

If you are curious about Tailwind and want to try before you buy, use this ➡️➡️➡️ referral link ⬅️⬅️⬅️to Start your FREE trial with Tailwind.  You will also get an extra month free on me if you choose to sign up 🙂 If you don’t sign up, no biggie, you will still have access to the free version of Tribes to find awesome content to Pin!

5. Master *Pinterest with Ell

Last but by no means least, is this flippin’ Pinterest revolution*!  Let me start by saying I spent a lot of time considering which Pinterest course to purchase before I finally made the leap.  I struggled because I wasn’t exactly a Pinterest noob at the time and I had done a lot of research already.  I didn’t want to pay for a course that just explained everything I already knew.

I was doing OK on my own, but my average monthly Pinterest views and engagements started to stagnate…and then completely nose dive. It was at this point that I had to drop my ego trip and accept that I needed something else to take me to that next level.  This course came highly recommended from bloggers that I respect and trust so that put my mind at ease.

PLUS when I looked at the break down of sections within the course, I noticed that Ell highlighted that you could skip the basics in the first few sections and get to the more advanced knowledge if you wanted to.  I appreciated that Ell had catered for beginners, but folks like me had the option to skip ahead.

I must admit I went back to the first few sections of the course once I’d digested the more advanced knowledge, and this veteran still discovered something new about the basics of Pinterest.  Obviously I can’t reel off everything in the course as it’s not my material to share!   But I can give you an overview of what is covered and the parts that resonated with me.

What I LOVED About it

Ell provides a fantastic insight into Tailwind.  I wasn’t using half of the functions it offers, I was literally just using Tribes and basic scheduling but there is SO much more.  Ell also provides some really awesome pinning strategies, along with ratios and examples.

Ell also provides exceptionally clear examples of what to look for in a Tailwind Tribe.  It turns out I was wasting my time with like 3 out of 5 of my Tribe memberships.  She also gives a clear run down of what to look for in your group board memberships!

I never fully understood how much I should pin of my own content vs other peoples.  Ell makes this exceptionally clear and provides multiple examples depending on where you are in your Pinterest journey.   PLUS I really appreciated the section discussing the importance of great Pinterest graphics, that not just look great, but convert too.

Ell keeps the course up to date with new Pinterest changes.  This is so helpful and makes me appreciate the content so much more.  When the new Community feature was added recently, Ell updated her Pinterest course within days to reflect the changes.

Don’t take my word for it though.  Check it out for yourself by clicking the image below.⬇️⬇️⬇️

Did you find my top 5 Pinterest tips helpful?  Did I miss anything?  I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

P.s. If find my content useful and enjoy what I share, why not buy me a coffee? 🙂

P.p.s. If you enjoyed this post why not check out my previous post ‘A Practical Guide to Social Media Marketing for Business.’