Simple Pinterest Strategies to Grow Blog Traffic

Simple Pinterest Strategies to Grow Blog Traffic

Why I’m writing this post? If you will see this is majorly a food blog. So why suddenly these blog traffic and pinterest strategies stuff I’m writing. Because this is my most searched topic before.

“How To Grow Your Blog Traffic With Pinterest ?“

“Pinterest Marketing Strategies”

“Pinterest Traffic Tips” etc etc.

I did lot of reading, research and experiments and it took me a lot of while to develop a solid pinterest strategy.

And finally I found some simple yet effective pinterest strategies that helped me grow my monthly unique viewers, engaged audience in pinterest along with growth in blog traffic.

I just love pinterest now. If you wonder if pinterest really sends traffic to your blog then the answer is YES. It really sends huge traffic to your blog.

Since you have landed here, I’m sure you must be struggling to get traffic or traffic from pinterest and keen to get some good pinterest marketing strategy to drive huge traffic to your blog.

If yes, then you are right. You will get few simple and real tested pinterest strategies to grow traffic.

Do you know Pinterest is not a social media platform?

I must admit that I was unaware of this fact before starting my blog and joining pinterest (which I did lately).

Pinterest is a search engine just like google. But the difference is that this is a visual search engine which will show you your interest and search result in picture format.

So if you have got nice and impressive images, there are chances you will get more views and this will bring in some more traffic to your blog. And eventually you will earn more.

Traffic = Page Views = Money

So all these are linked and with more traffic we can earn more money which is our ultimate goal and motivation point.

Though there are many sources of traffic to blogs like organic, referral, social media and email marketing, but out of all pinterest is one source that has potential to skyrocket your pageviews to lakhs.

And many bloggers are achieving this result earning big fat 6- figure earning from their blog.

And as a blogger that is our main goal and dream. Even if you have many sources of income like affiliate marketing, product selling etc the basic requirement is driving traffic to blog.

I have realized this fact very late indeed. In fact I was unaware how can I take help of pinterest to grow my blog. I was busy in creating content of my blog which is equally necessary. But if nobody sees my content then that is of no use to me.

My learning: If you are a new blogger then don’t be dependant on organic traffic initially because it takes time to build authority in google and also difficult to rank on page 1. So my suggestion, while keeping best SEO practices for your blog posts focus more on building your pinterest account (which is an essential part of blogging) which will bring more traffic with little efforts and for free..

Pinterest is an easy source of traffic if you crack the code with your strategies. We need to understand how pinterest works.

No strategy works overnight to do any magic.

You need to work consistently. Consistency is the key of success. If you are adopting any method you feel working for you the best, you should consistently do that for 3 – 4 months minimum to expect any result.

Pinterest is a bed of experiments. You need to try and experiment what works best for you and your content. There is no such proven formula to get 100% success in Pinterest. It’s algorithm keeps on changing. And you need to do your experiments.

What Does Monthly Unique Views Mean?

Your monthly unique viewer reach is a part of your overall reach on this platform. More viewer means your pins reach and viewability increases and possibly more number means more reach . So readers can see your pins in their smartfeed by Pinterest. This will help driving more traffic to your blog.

When I saw an increase in my monthly viewers my page views also increased and now my maximum traffic source is Pinterest which gives me 70 % of whole traffic and 90 % of referral traffic.

Since google considers this as social media platform, you will find your pinterest traffic under referral or social traffic in google analytics.

Some statistics of my blog and pinterest account

I have started pinning seriously from April this year. And it’s just 2.5 months. In initial weeks of April I have somewhere around 30 – 40K monthly unique visitors.

Then also I was using Pinterest but without any strategy. I used to create content, i.e. 2 – 3 new posts and pin them to respective boards and group boards. That’s it. I used to get 50 – 75 sessions from Pinterest. Or some months 100 + sessions.

Right now when I’m writing this post ( 25th June ) my account has grown to 500K + monthly unique viewers. I will share the figure how much I have reached by end of June. And hopefully by next 4 – 6 weeks I will reach near my goal of 1M + monthly views.

(updating by end of june it’s 580K+)

Why I’m excited about this growth is it’s not yet 3 months. I have 2 semi viral posts that drove 1K+ traffic each. Other posts are also giving me impressive response. My followers increased from 100 to 800+. By end of this month (July) I can reach 1K+ followers (possibly).

Also my pinterest traffic increased by 3X on average for last 3 months.

This post will share some steps I did and you can too to increase your Pinterest reach and grow to over 1 million monthly viewers.

Two Basic Steps:

Create Business Account: –

You must be knowing this fact that you should have business account in pinterest. If you have not converted the personal one then do it immediately as it will give you direct access to your audience and statistics of your pin. You will learn not only who is pinning what but also demographics, interests, impressions and engagements of your pin.

Verify your domain: –

This is very important. You should verify your domain with pinterest. This is an easy step and you can go ahead with pinterest instructions to do it. The process is about inserting the meta tag html file to your website database. That you can do by pasting the tag to your header section or upload by using filezilla. For accessing filezilla you need certain user id and password details which you will get from your hosting provider (like godaddy in may case).

Once it’s verified you are all set to grow. But how? Follow next instructions.

Grow Your Blog Traffic With These Simple Pinterest Strategies

Perfect Pin: –

Create perfect vertical pins – Pin Size is very important to standout in the crowd. Pin only vertical images. The ideal size is 735 X 1105. You can customize to 1000 X 1500 size or any 2:3 ratio.

If you see in smartfeed, you may notice some pins are extra long ones. These are called as giraffe pins. I also make 1 giraffe for each post. I use 1000 X 2100 for giraffe post (1:2).

Use large and clear fonts that are nice to read and catchy to eye also. Avoid fancy fonts that are difficult to read.

Use best images that describe your purpose. Use free stock photos or click for yourself. For more artwork use Canva or PicMonkey. I use Canva and I love it. This is simple and easy to use also. It has free version and paid also. Till now I’m using free version. If required in future I may upgrade to Canva Pro which is a paid platform. But you will get awesome stuffs there.

If you are a food blogger you can use best of your pictures captured.

If you want to improve your photography you may like to buy this Food Photography book by Negi from RecipeTin Eats. This is an awesome food photography book I have read. So improve your quality of photographs if you want to stand out in the crowd of this visual search engine Pinterest.

Make 4 – 5 different vertical pins for 1 post. 3 – 4 long pins and 1 giraffe pin.

Pin Frequently:-

If you want to grow in pinterest and grow through pinterest then this is really important point. You have to pin frequently, say minimum 40 – 50 pins a day.

Well when I’m saying 40 – 50 pins, you don’t need to do that all in one go. Do in gaps. e.g. Say do it in 4 batches in whole 24 hours or 18 hrs.

Now comes what to pin?

Don’t do much of self promotion only. Pinterest doesn’t like self promoting that much. You have to share others pin also. And less or more the rule goes by 80 / 20 principle. For that you have to pin 80 % others pin & 20 % your own content pins. So if you have to pin 4 of your pin you should always pin 16 – 20 of others pin also.

The numbers may vary but the logic is pinterest likes it if you share others content as well.

Also study your audience and their interest from your analytics. Try to pin such posts initially that your audience likes to pin and you get maximum clicks for that.

Once you reach your target audience you can reverse the 80 : 20 strategy. And if you are a new blogger you will get that time to develop more and more content to pin that will drive traffic to your blog.

So if you are a new blogger then focus on creating great content and follow these simple yet effective steps. I guarantee you will see growth in your numbers as well.

Consistency is the key.

If you are willing to grow your traffic with pinterest, then you must consistently keep pinning every day at least 4 – 5 times. The more the better. But don’t exceed 80 – 100.

Also take gaps after you pin 10 – 15 pins. Don’t do it all in one go.

Ideally you should pin 4 – 5 new pins everyday. Pinterest loves new content.

So 4 – 5 new pins sounds little tough? Reduce to 3 new pins. But make sure you are pinning 2 – 3 new pins daily.

So what is considered as new pin?

1. Pin from a new post/ new content
2. New image/ pin from an old post

So now 4 – 5 new pins is not difficult if you have lots of content ready on your blog.

Personal Boards Vs Group Boards :-

PERSONAL BOARDS Vs GROUP BOARDS

This might be a controversial point. Difficult to choose personal board or group board. Well I will cover that in my next coming post.

For now do 3 things:

1. Create 10 – 12 personal boards.
2. Pin 1 image to 5 – 6 relevant personal board.
3. Join active group boards.
4. If you are a part of group board, stick to their pinning rules.
5. Also repin others content to your relevant personal board.

This is another broad topic. So I’m planning to create another post on this.

I have seen 3x growth in my traffic every month with these simple yet effective pinterest strategies.

Hope you will too grow with Pinterest following these few simple steps.

If you are a side blogger and don’t get time at all for pinning, there are scheduling partners like tailwind. Though I have not started using tailwind yet, but in future I’ll join that too. But I’m pretty convenient with manual pinning strategy and getting results without investing anything into it.

So brief summary of post:

1. Pin frequently
2. Pin quality content/ image
3. Only vertical pins
4. Use giraffe pins also
5. Pin others stuff more
6. Create more useful content

These may sound very small but implementing small changes brings a lot of change in real. So try out these steps.

Also as I said Pinterest is a bed of experiment and it’s really fluctuating. So keep on experimenting until you figure out what works best for you.

These are way proved simple pinterest strategies that have worked well for many big bloggers as well.

I would love to hear back from you if you are implementing these strategies and seeing any development in your blog traffic.

Also stay connected on social media. Here I would request you to follow me on pinterest @mydaintykitchen.

PIN IT FOR LATER