Growing your Blog with Pinterest

With so many social media sites to promote blog content, it can be difficult to figure out where to put your effort any any given time. I used to think Facebook was the top promoter until I discovered Twitter. With Twitter referral traffic quite variable as well, I attempted to promote some posts via Pinterest.

I was shocked at how quickly I learned the value of Pinterest as a tool to help generate blog traffic and gain new readers!

My photography skills are mediocre, at best. My design skills are lacking, but thankfully have solicited the skills at various times to design things like my header or social media icons. So the thought of making “pretty” pins is something I struggle with, but seeing how it has had some success for other bloggers, I thought I would give it a try.

I trialed one post, which I thought I did a pretty good job at making a “pinnable” image for. You can find that pin here.

Now maybe it was the topic, and maybe it was the awesome writing itself, but this pin has been shared over 300 times, which for a small, growing, blog like mine- is HUGE! Because of that pin, the post was not only pinned and shard over 300 times, but it brought over 1700 page views to my page in the past two months, accounting for 23% of incoming blog traffic for that post.

To give another example, let’s look at my overall blog stats from the beginning of the year; June is when I started to make more of an effort on utilizing Pinterest in my business model.

Yellow  is Pinterest; green is Facebook mobile; blue is Facebook, and the light lime color happens to be from a Paleo website tha loved my avocado ice cream recipe.

The beauty of Pinterest is that your posts become highly visible to so many who you may never even have reached in your normal marketing. Pinterest isn’t usually niche-focused, so if someone is following a person who posts recipes, for example, but that person also has a fitness board, they will be exposed to all those others posts, too. It is a gold mine for bloggers to expand your readership and grow your blog!

Some other tips are:

1. Pin at prime times, such as late in the evening when most people are idly skimming the app;
2. Use thorough descriptions in your pin descriptions which will make them more optimized and searchable;
3. Find like-minded pinners and follow relevant boards (you have an option to only follow one board at a time if you choose, rather than their entire profile!). Similar to Twitter and Instagram, often the more followers you have, the more people who will follow your back;
4. Request additions to Group Boards, which will expand your network even further (you can join my Crossfit: Community board here!);
5. Create a separate image to “pin” and upload it yourself outside of your blog. For example, I used the image above to fit within the image size on my blog, but I have pinned this image in a different size to make it more aesthetically pleasing on a pin board.

I am still not super creative at all, nor do I make the prettiest, most pinnable posts, but do know that my little efforts I have made have had increasing success in the Pin-world so far!

Your turn..
Are you on Pinterest?
If you are a  blogger, have you ever considered the impact of Pinterest on your blog stats?
Do you have a top Pinterest tip?
Share your favorite Pinterest board of yours below for me to check out!