You might have heard the buzz that Pinterest is a total game-changer in blogging. Speaking from our own experience, we can confirm that the buzz is precisely correct. When diving into the blogging world, if you overlook Pinterest, you will be missing something huge. The magic of Pinterest for bloggers lies in its visual appeal. It’s all about the imagery on Pinterest. And you know what they say? A picture speaks volumes. In this scenario, those volumes can turn into loads of views and click for your blog.
This platform acts as a visual search engine that can significantly amplify your content’s visibility and reach. What sets Pinterest apart from other platforms is its user intent. People very often look for inspiration, tutorials, and resources on Pinterest, making it the perfect place to showcase your blog content to an audience that is already on the lookout for new ideas and information. By leveraging Pinterest’s extensive network, bloggers can tap into a source of traffic that is not only large in volume but also high in engagement and potential for shares.
Are you looking to kick-start your blogging journey? Get an extensive idea of how to use Pinterest for blogging from this article.
Just like Google, Pinterest in and of itself is a search engine—garnering as many as 465 million users a month. Nearly half of all U.S. Pinners (45%) have an income exceeding $100,000, and 80% of weekly Pinners have discovered a new brand or product on the platform.
So, whether you run an eCommerce blog, personal blog, or any other type of blog, you’ll want to use Pinterest to promote your content and help you make money with blogging. Here are step-by-step instructions on how to use Pinterest for blogging and achieving goals, as well as learnings from our own experience.
How to use Pinterest for blogging
- Create a Pinterest Business Account
- Optimize your Pinterest business profile
- Create boards that are aligned with your blog
- Create Pins from your blog posts
- Optimize your Pins
- Take advantage of Pinterest business features
- Proactively drive traffic to your Pins
- Measure performance and optimize
1. Create a Pinterest Business Account
To start promoting your blog on Pinterest, you’ll first need to create a Pinterest Business Account. A business account allows you to access features such as Pinterest Business Hub and Pinterest Analytics that support blogging for businesses where you can keep track of Pin performance and audience interactions. A business account also gives you access to Pinterest ads and rich Pins, including article-rich Pins that allow you to sync information from your blog to Pinterest.
Utilizing a Pinterest Business Account allows bloggers to improve their online presence, increase their audience reach, and boost website traffic. The comprehensive analytics provided by Pinterest Analytics empowers bloggers to drive decisions based on data, refine their content strategy, and interact more effectively with their audience. Through Pinterest’s array of features and advertising choices, bloggers can enhance brand visibility and compose compelling content that resonates with Pinterest users.
Create a new business account for free, or convert your personal account into a business one. Note: you can always convert a business account back into a personal account or link up to four business accounts to your personal one.
2. Optimize your Pinterest business profile
Enhance your Pinterest business profile by strategically incorporating key details to boost your visibility on search engines and social media sites. A massive number of Pinterest traffic originates from Google, making this optimization particularly valuable for reaching a wider audience.
To optimize a Pinterest business profile effectively, start by ensuring your profile reflects your brand’s identity. Use a recognizable profile picture, ideally your company logo, and fill out the bio section with concise, keyword-rich descriptions of what your company offers. Additionally, claim your website to add credibility and enable the tracking of Pinterest-driven traffic.
Further, you need to create well-organized boards with clear, descriptive titles and populate them with high-quality pins that include detailed descriptions, relevant hashtags, and direct links to your products or resources. Keep the audience engaged by replying to their queries, and use Pinterest Analytics to monitor performance and refine your strategy over time.
3. Create boards that are aligned with your blog
When you start creating your Pinterest boards from scratch, you find a realm of infinite creativity waiting to be explored. Start by fashioning a board that echoes the essence of your blog, paving the way for a seamless organization of pins that resonate with your audience.
Devote a specific board to your blog, serving as a virtual showroom to exhibit your brand identity and unique style. Delve into selecting top-notch content that captivates readers and leaves a lasting impact. Ensuring this board is aesthetically pleasing is paramount in crafting a welcoming experience for new visitors.
Further, enrich your blog’s narrative by branching out into diverse topics through additional boards. For example, if you run a food blog, you can design Pinterest boards dedicated to various cuisines, mouth-watering recipes, and eye-soothing food photography. This approach not only facilitates your followers in locating specific content but also showcases your proficiency and passion within the culinary domain.
Infuse a touch of creativity into your board titles and descriptions to entice users and enthrall them to explore your content further. Strategic placement of relevant keywords can elevate your visibility within search results, driving more traffic to your boards.
Forge connections within the blogging community by collaborating with peers or influencers to co-curate boards, expanding your reach, and tapping into a broader audience pool. Active participation in relevant group boards and sharing engaging pins can foster meaningful
4. Create Pins from your blog posts
There are two main ways to create pins from your blogs:
● Upload images or videos from the mobile Pinterest app or site
This option arguably allows you the most control, alongside the option to create multiple pins from one post with headline variations and image options using a text-to-image generator.
● Use an RSS feed
Are you curious about how to use Pinterest for blogging using an RSS feed? It’s simple! Pinterest pins can be created from an RSS feed of your blog or website and streamlined by using online tools and services that automate the process. This approach ensures that as you update your blog or website, new content is automatically formatted into pins and shared with your Pinterest boards.
Pro tip: As you think about which blogs to share on Pinterest, consider prioritizing the blogs that you already know work well. Use your Top Blog Posts report to identify your most viewed or liked posts. Check that these articles are optimized for conversion (i.e., include relevant CTAs and subscription forms), then see how Pinterest can increase blog traffic and/or sales.
5. Optimize your Pins
As with any distribution channel or search engine, several factors impact the performance of your Pins. Your Pins may appear in multiple places: users’ home feeds, Pinterest search, “Related Pins” sections, and Shopping features.
Pinterest itself states that a “winning” organic Pin is:
- Inspiring and visually compelling: Keep in mind that most people enter Pinterest on their mobile devices.
- Worth sharing: The more that your posts are saved or followed, the higher your chance of getting seen on Pinterest.
- Well-written: Make sure your Pins always have a robust and relevant description, title, thumbnail, and link. Incorporate the best blog titles that compel people to click.
- Timely and fresh: Pinterest recommends publishing content on a weekly basis and offering something unique in your Pins.
“Posting consistently on Pinterest is key,” notes Rebecca Tomasis, SEO expert. “Pay attention to your visuals—especially your cover image—and headline. From what we’ve seen, these have had the most impact on click-through rates on Pinterest.”
Keep an eye on Pinterest Trends, a free tool that shows top keyword trends for a specified time frame and region. Back this research up with the Pinterest search bar, i.e., type in a keyword to see a list of frequently searched phrases. Take these keywords into account when writing your Pin title and Pin description, as well as your alternative text.
“If you’re already optimizing your blogs for SEO, make sure that your efforts are reflected on Pinterest,” says Tomasis. “You don’t need to reinvent the wheel each time—rather, the same logic you apply to optimizing blogs on your site can be applied to your posts on Pinterest. For example, even if you adjust a headline for Pinterest, that headline should feature your primary keyword.”
“You don’t need to reinvent the wheel each time—rather, the same logic you apply to optimizing blogs on your site can be applied to your posts on Pinterest.”
Additionally, spend some time browsing Pins in categories you want to target and taking note of popular Pins. You may find that specific audience segments favor certain types of content over others.
6. Take advantage of Pinterest business features
You might be unaware of how to use Pinterest for blogging, leveraging the special Pin formats as well as advertising tools; let’s have a look-
Rich Pins are intended to support different types of websites. They include:
- Product-rich Pins: Lets you include pricing, product information, and availability right on your Pin. Rich Pins automatically sync information from your site and can be an excellent way to streamline content creation while providing more informative Pins. (However, it’s worth noting that with a business account, you can always schedule pins up to 30 days in advance from iOS and Android or up to 14 days in advance from the desktop interface. Pinterest lets business users schedule up to 100 pins in advance.)
- Recipe-rich Pins: Recipe-rich Pins provide an excellent way for food bloggers, recipe creators, and other food enthusiasts to share their recipes on Pinterest. With the ability to add title, serving size, cook times, ratings, diet preferences, and ingredient lists to your Pin, you can easily showcase your delicious creations and make it easier for users to find and save your recipes.
- Article-Rich Pins: These will offer the flexibility to incorporate headlines, descriptions, and author names, along with website links and purchase options. They will elevate your presence on Pinterest and empower businesses to offer detailed insights on products and services, aiding Pinners in making informed choices while scrolling through their feeds.
Furthermore, Pinterest offers several different ad types that can complement your organic strategy. You can refine targeting by different criteria (e.g., keywords, interests, location, etc.) and/or retarget former website visitors or people who’ve engaged with your Pins in the past.
7. Proactively drive traffic to your Pins
If you play your cards right knowing how to use Pinterest for blogging, it can become a consistent traffic generator for your blog. That said, building the momentum can take time—especially if you’re brand new to Pinterest.
Your best bet at gaining traffic is to take the initiative and drive traffic yourself. To that end, make sure to:
- Engage with followers and fellow Pinners: As with any social media platform, engagement is a two-way street. If you want other Pinners to follow and repin your content, you should expect to do the same and build more authentic relationships.
- Tap your team: Invite your team members to help generate activity around your Pinterest boards through their personal profiles. You may even want to consider spotlighting your employees on your business account, helping to show the human side of your brand.
- Grow your personal brand: While you have your business account to host your content, it never hurts to spend some time growing your own Pinterest presence. Build your own following and community, and use your platform as another place to share and further elevate your business’ content.
- Promote your Pinterest presence: Use your other social accounts or websites to draw attention to your Pinterest profile. Add Save to Pinterest to your blog posts and/or Pinterest Follow buttons to make it easy for your readers to engage with your brand wherever they want.
As your articles get more traffic, shares, and pins, you can look forward to greater visibility of your content overall.
8. Measure performance and optimize
To understand the impact of pinning, you can use a powerful tool, Pinterest Analytics. Here is an overview of the key metrics you can track and how to accumulate some meaning from them and redesign your strategy on how to use Pinterest for blogging:
- Impressions measure the number of times your Pins were displayed on a user’s screen. High impression rates mean people are seeing your content and can indicate that a Pin is trending on the platform and/or aligns well with Pinterest’s algorithm.
- Total audience is the number of unique users who saw your Pin for a specified interval of time (e.g., day, week, month). When impressions are higher than the total audience, it means some people saw your Pin more than once.
- Saves track of how many times your Pin was saved to a user’s board. High save rates mean your content is a hit since people are taking the time to add it to one of their Boards.
- Engagements count when a Pinterest user clicks on or saves your Pin.
- Pin clicks represent the total number of clicks on your Pin, including clicks that lead to content on and off Pinterest.
- Outbound clicks measure the total clicks to the destination URL in your Pin.
- Video views are the number of video views that last longer than two seconds.
Analyzing things like impressions, saves, and engagements can help you understand your top content—the Pins that resonate most with your audience—as well as low-performing content. These metrics can also uncover fresh insights into audience behavior, including the types of content they typically engage with and how they interact with your brand on Pinterest.
“The most important thing is that you spend time with your data,” says Tomasis. “Once you’ve posted enough on Pinterest to have enough data to look at, look at what pins users save and which pages they click through to. Then, try and post similar content.”
Other metrics like affinity, conversion insights, and demographics can indicate audience preference or provide more context to the engagement that you’re seeing.
In addition to analyzing these metrics, it’s a must to track and compare your performance on a regular basis. This will bring forward the trends and patterns in your audience’s engagement with your content and also identify any potential changes.
FAQs
How do I grow blog traffic on Pinterest?
While every Pinterest strategy may vary depending on many aspects, to get expected traffic, you need to know how to use Pinterest for blogging and follow some general best practices:
- Do your research: The best way to maximize Pinterest’s potential is to conduct keyword research focusing especially on Pinterest. Identify popular search terms related to your blog niche and strategically incorporate them into your content, including Pin titles, descriptions, and alt text. Spend some time browsing Pinterest and exploring popular content, or use Pinterest Ads to get keyword suggestions.
- Add intrigue: Take some time to create intriguing and compelling Pin titles that encourage curiosity (and clicks). Pair good titles with great images so that your Pins tell a story. Pins are more narrative than, say, a Tweet or an Instagram post. All the elements work together to create a vibe.
- Leverage Rich Pins: Rich Pins are designed to pull data from your website into your Pins automatically. They display your profile name, image, title, and description directly on the Pin image. They work by using metadata to populate Pins with additional details about your business. A huge benefit of using Rich Pins is that they update automatically based on changes on your website, ensuring that the information displayed in the Pin is current.
- Be consistent: Remember, consistency is vital. Pinning weekly with high-quality, fresh content is recommended. Using a scheduler can automate this process and ensure you’re consistently active on the platform.
How long does it take to get blog traffic from Pinterest?
Having blog traffic from Pinterest can show different timing and impacts. Just like with any social platform, some Pins might quickly gain traction and go viral, while others could take months. The duration to achieve substantial traffic from Pinterest relies on various factors, such as your content quality, audience size, engagement within the Pinterest community, and the incorporation of relevant keywords and visuals in your pins.
Usually, it might take a few weeks to a couple of months to observe a significant rise in blog traffic coming from Pinterest. Keeping up with sharing top-notch, visually captivating posts can speed up this journey. Interacting with fellow users by sharing their content, joining group boards, and using Pinterest analytics to monitor progress can also swiftly boost traffic growth.
It’s important to remember that Pinterest is a platform where content has a longer lifespan compared to other social media channels, so pins can continue driving traffic to your blog over an extended period. By implementing a strategic approach to Pinterest marketing and regularly optimizing your pins, you can enhance your chances of attracting blog traffic from this visual discovery platform.
While there’s no guaranteed timeline for when you’ll get traffic, you can increase your odds of getting seen by proactively promoting your Pins, following Pinterest best practices, and testing multiple Pins from one piece of content.
How do I measure the success of my Pinterest strategy?
Use Pinterest Analytics to track the performance of your Pins and boards. Look for metrics like impressions, clicks, saves, and traffic to your blog to understand what works and what doesn’t. Sharpen your knowledge of how to use Pinterest for blogging and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Pinterest Analytics is a powerful tool that can help you track the performance of your Pins and boards. By analyzing metrics such as impressions, clicks, saves, and traffic to your blog, you can gain valuable insights into what content resonates with your audience and what doesn’t. This information allows you to make informed decisions about your Pinterest strategy.
One of the key benefits of using Pinterest Analytics is the ability to track your Pins and boards over time. This allows you to see trends and patterns in your content’s performance, which can help you identify successful strategies and areas for improvement.
