Marketing your Blog on Pinterest

If you read my post about 5 Biggest Mistakes you are Making as a New Blogger than I am sure you noticed I talked about the importance of marketing your blog on Pinterest. In my opinion, Pinterest is by far the easiest and fastest way to get organic traffic to your blog. How do I know this? In my first month of using Pinterest to market my blog I went from 1 user (my mom) to a little over 12 thousand new users. HUGE growth! Pinterest is completely worth your time and BEST OF ALL it’s FREE! It doesn’t get any better than that!

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When I first started blogging I read so much about the importance of using Pinterest, however I felt that most people left out some of the important details like:

• how to set up Pinterest,
• make pins,
• upload pins and
• then what to do with them after.

Sure there are tons of paid Pinterest for Bloggers courses out there but I wanted to offer you the information for free! In the next series of posts I will do my best to explain the basics of using Pinterest for bloggers.

But first of all, why Pinterest?

Pinterest has over 250 million active users!

Pinterest users commonly use Pinterest to help plan purchases and get shopping ideas.

Over 2 million Pinterest users save shopping pins daily!

More than 80% of Pinterest users are women! Millennials use Pinterest as much as Instagram!

40% of Pinterest users have household incomes of more than $100K!

So what does this mean for your blog?

In a nutshell, that means that there is untold potential for finding new readers for your blog from Pinterest! People go on Pinterest every day looking for things to buy and ways to spend their money! It is all kinds of smart for you to use this to your advantage!

Also important to note: Did you know that the average Pinterest pin has a life of 7 months! To put that in perspective the average tweet life is 7 MINUTES and the average Facebook post life is 30 MINUTES. We are comparing MONTHS to MINUTES ladies and gentleman!

What does this mean for you?

Pins last a long time on Pinterest. That means that time you spend developing pins is time extremely well spent!

For more details on Pinterest Statistics check out Omnicoreagency.com. This article has tons more interesting statistics about Pinterest!

So, how do you even go about designing pins?

To design pins I prefer to use Canva.com. Canva is a great online graphic design tool. You can use Canva to edit photos, overlay text, and create beautiful custom graphics for your blog and Pinterest! There is an excellent free version that I used for my first 3 months as a blogger! Once my business starting picking up a bit I did invest in the paid version so that I had a bit more versatility. But honestly you can get really far just using the free version of Canva. I can’t recommend Canva enough!

How should your pins look?

No matter what program you use to design your pins there are a few things you should keep in mind.

1. Pins should be vertical and around 735pxX1102px. This gives your pin its best chance at standing out on Pinterest while not risking the chance that it will get cut off. Canva automatically sizes Pinterest Pins using this exact dimension. I try not to vary too much from this size.
2. Pins should be easy to read! Watch out for scripted font and difficult to read colors!
3. Use high-quality images! Dark and out of focus pictures do not do well on a visual board like Pinterest. For free stock photography check out Pexels.com, Pixabay.com, and Unsplash.com
4. Don’t forget to include your website name somewhere on the pin
5. Use branded colors and fonts as much as possible. This provides brand recognition for your website and encourages users to click on your pins more often.

Uploading a pin on Pinterest.

• First, log into your Pinterest account.
• Click on the red circle with the plus sign on it.
• Click “Create Pin”

Drag your Image or Upload from your computer. I prefer to download my pin off of Canva and drag it from the recent downloads bar when I am ready rather than saving it to my computer. But that’s just a personal preference.

New Pin view

Type a description of your pin into the space. Make sure to use relevant keywords and hashtags to increase your pins chances of being found when searched on Pinterest.

Add the URL from your post. Don’t just link to your homepage! It’s important that you link directly to your post.

Lastly, choose the board that you are uploading this pin to. The first time I upload a pin to Pinterest I prefer to upload it to my “Best of BBHW” board. This is a collection of all my pins and posts in one place. I highly suggest you create a “Best of….” board. This will save you lots of time later.

There you have it. Now you know how to upload your own pin onto Pinterest.

So, what next?

Well, if you are ready to take your Pinterest game to the next level it is time to invest in a Pinterest marketing program like Tailwind.  Tailwind allows you to schedule pins in advance! This is a huge time saver! You are also able to loop pins so that they get repinned on a regular basis! Tailwind also gives you access to something called Tailwind Tribes. Tailwind Tribes are groups of like-minded bloggers that are helping each other share and grow content. Tribes can be crucial for growing your Pinterest reach. Especially in the beginning when you are just starting out! Grab it with my affiliate code here. Your first 100 pins to Pinterest are free or your first 30 posts on Instagram! Get it girl!

Did I answer all of your questions? Let me know in the comments if there is anything else that you want to know! Also, do you have any tips or tricks? Comment below and let me know! Let’s grow our blogs and businesses together!

Cheers!