
How To Use Pinterest To Drive Traffic To Your Website
- Posted by Adam Smith
- On 05/12/2018
Are you a business-owner who keeps hearing all about the wonders of Pinterest and how it can send tens of thousands of potential customers your way every single month? Does the thought of getting started on Pinterest totally overwhelm you?
Do not fear, Topline PR’s Vicky Smith is a Pinterest expert who has used this fun social media site to increase the traffic to her personal parenting blog by more than 500 per cent in just six months.
Here she gives some of her top tips on how to make your Pinterest account a success.
Let’s get pinning!
Your Pinterest profile
Pick an SEO rich name.
What’s in a name? A LOT actually! You want to pack your profile name with keywords to help your target readers find you. You need the name of your blog, of course, but you also want to explain what you do in a few words.
For example, if you are a children’s clothing brand than you want to get those key words in there.
Switch to a business account.
This is an absolute essential. Having a business account gives you access to more stats and means you can enable rich pins.
Enable rich pins.
When you enable rich pins your pin descriptions look way sexier and more professional. It adds additional information into your pin description and just looks better for a reader searching for information.
I felt really daunted at the prospect of doing this step, but it’s actually really easy! There’s a brilliant step-by-step guide here: https://help.pinterest.com/en-gb/business/article/rich-pins
Write a killer description.
Make sure you pack your description with keywords and explain what you do in order to get your ideal reader’s attention.
Pick a good profile image.
If you are a larger business, use your logo. If you are a one-person band, try using a picture of yourself. It’s social media and people like to see the face of the person whose content they are consuming.
The content
If you’re going to get repins and drive tons of traffic to your site, you need to create great content.
Pinterest users LOVE how-tos, guides and helpful posts. Content that solves a problem for your reader or teaches them something new performs the best.
If you struggle to think of what content to write, think about your ideal reader and what their problems might be. What do they need help with? What do they want information about?
Waitrose uploads dozens of beautiful recipe images. This drives customers to their site who then go on to buy their groceries from the retailer.
Think about a clever, attention-grabbing headline that your ideal reader just has to click on.
Lists are brilliant, and for some reason odd numbers do really well! Chuck in inviting language such as “secrets” and you’re onto a winner. For example:
11 secrets to making your baby sleep through the night
OR
7 ways to relax this Christmas
Having a blog or some free content on your website will benefit your business. People will visit you to consume information and stick around when they see your brand is fantastic.
The Pin
This is the best part of Pinterest, making beautiful pins!
I use Canva which is an absolutely amazing app, and the best bit is you can use it completely free!
There are some in-app purchases for better images and better templates that you can make, but there are plenty of free goodies on there that mean you don’t have to spend anything at all.
When I first started using Canva I would use their templates and simply insert my headline and chosen pictures into it. I changed the colours to match my blog’s own design and that was that!
The standard Pinterest pin size, the one that most people use, is 736 x 1104.
However, after learning that even taller Pinterest images perform better, I decided to try my hand at designing my own Pinterest template after custom-making the size.
These days I use 736 x 2000 and it’s these taller pins that definitely catch more readers for me!
To design your own pin in Canva, simply scroll to the option that says create your own design, set the pixel width and height, then add text and images as you see fit.
You can buy stock images for sites such as Shutterstock or find free stock images on Pixabay.
It’s a good idea to create more than one pin per post. This gives your content a better chance of being seen and picked up!
Your pin description
This needs to be both chatty and nicely written, as well as contain all your key words. So, for example, with a pin about breastfeeding in the early weeks, you want to get the words breastfeeding, newborn, baby, mum, mom, mama, early weeks, and parenting. But don’t just list them, weave them into proper sentences.
For example: Do you plan to breastfeed your baby? Breastfeeding in the early weeks can be tough for new mamas, so I’ve got lots of tips for new parents who want to give breastfeeding a go with their newborn.
Pinterest boards
A good starting point is 20 boards, each with around 50 pins. I know this seems like a LOT of work, but you don’t have to do it all in one day, and actually once you get pinning you’ll find yourself really enjoying it!
When you first create a board, Pinterest will helpfully suggest content for it, which I suggest you scroll through and use to your advantage to get your started.
In terms of what your boards should be, you need to break down the topics that are relevant to your business niche.
Think about the information you provide to your reader or what your customers will be searching for and break it down into sub topics.
You should definitely have a board when you pin ALL of your own content. Mine is called The Mummy Bubble blog posts. As if Pinterest wasn’t organised enough, you can now create sections within boards. My blog board has sections on baby, toddler, breastfeeding and blogging.
By having a board for your posts, as well as boards about the various topics you cover, you can give your new pins a running start by pinning to several of your own boards! For example, I will pin a post about breastfeeding to my own blog posts board, and my Breastfeeding tips board.
Give every board a brilliant description packed with key words. Think of the search terms your reader will be using when researching the topics contained in the board and sprinkle them into your description.
Group boards
One of the biggest secrets to my success is group boards. I have lost count of how many I am a member of, but it’s at least 40!
Most of them are parenting centric, because that’s my niche, but I’m also on quite a few generic blogging boards.
Finding group boards can seem really daunting, but it’s really not! How do you find group boards to join?
I did a combination of things. Firstly, I found a profile of a successful blogger in a similar niche to me, then I scrolled through all of her boards to find out which group boards she was a member of.
Instructions on how to join a group board will be in the board description.
I then clicked through to the board and read in the board description what I needed to do to apply to be a member of the board. Most will ask you to follow the board, follow the board owner and send an email to the board owner. Make it a polite and positive message about what you can bring to the group board!
Pinning strategy
So, you have your boards set up with pins already on them and you are a member of several group boards, what’s next?
Now you need to implement a pinning strategy.
There’s some suggestion that the more you pin the better, though some people are saying by doing this you are spamming your followers.
In my opinion the ideal number of pins per day is 30 to 50. Pinterest wizards say 100 pins per day is the ideal number, but this is a LOT to do!
I’m going to show you how to save loads of time when pinning in my next top tip, so don’t panic if you’re wondering how on earth to find the time to do all of this pinning every single day!
When it comes to pinning, you want to pin more of other people’s content than your own. For every pin of your own you add, you need to be adding 10 from other people’s boards.
Find great pins from other businesses and individuals by looking at group boards (you should be sharing other people’s content from your group boards anyway as that’s how group boards work), checking out what’s trending under the search section and just seeing what pins Pinterest recommends for you based on your interests.
I tend to dip in and out of Pinterest four or five times a day and pin a few each time. This seems to keep my views up nicely and it’s so easy to just quickly pin a few when I have five minutes when it becomes habit.
I hope these tips have been useful and it’s given you an idea of how to make Pinterest work for your business. If you would like to chat to us about how we can manage your Pinterest account and get more customers knocking at your door, just give us a call or drop us an email!
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