Harnessing Pinterest For Your Blog
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When you start blogging, everything can seem a little bit overwhelming. There is so much to learn and so much to do. One thing new bloggers often struggle with is getting to grips with Pinterest. They may have never used it before, or only used it from a personal perspective, rather than a creator or business one.
Harnessing Pinterest For Your Blog
If you’re trying to make more money as a blogger, then one of the best ways you can do that is to increase the overall traffic to your website. More traffic means you can earn more from in-content ads (such as from Google Adsense or Mediavine) and you’ll be more likely to land brand collaborations as website traffic is often one of the metrics used when deciding who to work with.
The main ways in which blogs get traffic are:
Search Engine – Typically from Google, but could also be from Yahoo or Bing.
Social Media – Such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram
Direct – Someone clicking a direct link to your blog, for example, when you send out a newsletter.
While technically Pinterest is classed as a social media platform, it works like a search engine with people searching the site for ideas and then ‘pinning’ them to read or come back to later.
Pinterest can be a great way to drive extra traffic to your blog in the majority of niches, but especially if you write about food or crafts.
However, mastering Pinterest and using it to get additional views on your blog can be time-consuming. And just like Google, they seem to be forever changing their algorithms and best practices and it can be a lot to keep up with.
So for now, I’m going to start with some Pinterest Basics.
First, you’ll need to set up a Pinterest account in the name of your blog. You’ll also want to create a few boards that relate to your niche – so for example, if you’re a food blogger this could be ‘Breakfast Ideas’ ‘Quick Lunches ‘Delicious Cakes’ and so on. This is so you can save both your own pins and some pins from other people that are relevant to your blog.
Making The Perfect Pin
Being totally honest, design is not my strong point. Almost five years into blogging and I’m still tweaking old posts so the design matches up across my whole site. It’s one of those things I really wish I’d got right from the beginning!
When it comes to upping my Pinterest game, one thing I’ve found that has really helped me recently is purchasing ready-made pins. So the design side is already done for, I just tweak them to match my brand colours and add my website to them. It’s a small investment but one that saves me a lot of time and stress!
Getting the size right is important too. Pinterest prefers pins that are long and the best 1000 x 1500 px.
I have also bought svgs which make branding easier. Svg files can easily be scaled to any size without losing quality which makes them perfect for using on pins and for branding on your website. Once purchased you can reuse them as often as you like.
For example, you could buy a floral svg that you add to all of your pins to keep your branding consistent or these fishing svg files which are more text-based but still have a professional look and could be used in lots of different ways across Pinterest, your blog and social media.
Make More Than One Pin Per Post
Whether you’ve bought a template, are using svg files or have made something yourself, it’s always advisable to make more than one pin per post. Typically I make three. One for the post, one to add directly to Pinterest and another to use at a later date if I need to.
Again, having some sort of template and knowing your brand colours makes this easy to do. I tend to do one pin with black writing and red background and then switch it to white on red for another. So it feels cohesive but is easy to do. Depending on the design software you use, there should be a replicate button that makes tweaking colours super easy. I also change the background image. You can see an example of this on the two pins on this post.
Add Video Elements
Video is huge across all social platforms at the moment with the launch of stories on both Twitter and Google. Adding a small video element to your pin can really help it get seen. I tend to use small animated graphics such as stars or arrows and then download the file in an MP4 format before uploading directly to Pinterest. I don’t add video pins to my blog posts.
Make Pins Even If You’re Not Focusing On Pinterest
If you’ve just started blogging and you’re not too bothered about harnessing Pinterest for your blog just yet, I suggest making a pin for every post anyway.
There are two main reasons for this.
Firstly, even if you’re not using Pinterest, your readers may well be. Having a pin image already in the post means they can save it and potentially drive traffic for you without you needing to do anything. Make sure you have share buttons to make sharing super easy. I use ‘Grow’ which is a WordPress plugin by Mediavine.
Secondly, you may decide to focus on Pinterest later on. Going back and adding a Pin image to hundreds of post is majorly time-consuming. Adding one made from a simple template as you go is much quicker.
Those are my tips for getting started with Pinterest and hopefully using to drive some traffic to your blog.
