Fully Booked VA Blog

How To Use Pinterest to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

Kristin is one of my favorite people lately.

She approached me towards the end of 2015 about doing Pinterest marketing on my behalf. I wouldn’t say I’ve been burned before, but I have spent money on advertising and marketing that I’m not positive I received an ROI for.

So when she asked me to hire her to boost my Pinterest presence, I was a little leery at first. But then she followed up when I asked her to, my gut said yes and we started working together in January, 2016.

And boy am I glad we did! I had a decent Pinterest presence before, but after working with Kristin these past several months, it’s exploded. If I’m doing my math right, it’s like a 726% growth in less than five months! 

Read on for tips to do it yourself or consider taking her brand new course, Pinterest Presence for a step-by-step guide to killing it on Pinterest. Take it away Kristin!

If you’re not utilizing Pinterest for your blog, you are missing out on a free and valuable marketing tool for your business. Pinterest currently ranks as the fourth best social media site to share your blog’s content. It has also been a game changer for my blog, Believe In A Budget.

Fifteen months ago, I was a brand new blogger.

I knew nothing about how to grow my audience, except that I should focus on SEO, long tail keywords and use Google’s keyword planner for my blog posts.

After a couple of months of spinning my wheels and not making any progress on increasing my blog’s traffic, I decided to shift gears and devote my attention to Pinterest. Because I was a visual person, Pinterest made total sense.

From the standpoint of a Pinterest user, you simply do a search in the search box and row after row of images pop up. Most people will click on an image because it is the most appealing or they like the short description written below the picture.

While I struggled with applying traditional marketing techniques to rank well in Google search results, I knew I could use Pinterest to my advantage.

Not only could I create Pinterest pins that could stand out, but writing short pin descriptions came naturally.

In less than a year, I went from 1,000 to 160,000 monthly page views, with 90% of my traffic coming directly from Pinterest each month.

(Gina’s Tip: Because Kristin is all booked up and not taking any more clients, I teamed up with her to offer a one-of-a-kind course that will teach you how to leverage the power of Pinterest in your virtual assistant business. There’s a seriously high demand for Pinterest management services, so you should get in on the action.)

While paying to promote pins is a good option for some people, I don’t pay for promoted pins and instead rely on organic growth.

In one of the biggest surprises to many other influential pinners, I only have 2,500 Pinterest followers. This proves you don’t need a large following to do well on Pinterest!

So how do I drive so much traffic to my blog each month?

5 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog Using Pinterest

1. Create a board consisting of your blog’s best content.

I like to call this board “The Best of (insert your blog’s name)“. This board is not only where you want to pin your blog’s best content, but can also act as an online portfolio if you offer freelancing services.

2. Write a really great profile and board descriptions.

Aside from creating amazing pins, you want your entire Pinterest presence to be top notch.

(Gina’s Tip: If you’d like to polish your blog graphic skills, check out these four tips.)

There are three different opportunities to rank well in Pinterest search results – Pins, Pinners and Boards.

Many bloggers choose to focus on creating the perfect Pinterest image, but this is only utilizing 33% of the Pinterest platform.

Creating a dynamic profile and implementing rich keyword descriptions for all your boards will increase your rankings in a Pinterest search.

How to Use Pinterest to Bring Traffic to Your Blog3. Pin other content.

Pinterest rewards you when you share other valuable content with your followers.

Try pinning 80% of your own content and 20% of other content each day. This content should complement your pins and board style while remaining non-competitive.

4. Use a scheduling service like Tailwind.

Using an automated pinning schedule allows you to plan out your weekly pinning in advance. Tailwind allows you to schedule your own content as well as other pins at the date and time you specify. Now you have the ability to pin throughout the day without actually having to be on Pinterest. This pinning method will save you a lot of time each week!

(Gina’s tip: Kristin has you covered with a nifty pin tracker that she offers as a bonus in Become a Pinterest VA TODAY!)

5. Find relevant group boards to join.

A great way to increase your traffic is to join relevant group boards that have pins from like-minded people. Group boards can have a larger range audience than your own, and are a great way for your pins to be viewed outside of your normal followers. It’s important to mention that not all group boards are equal. Seek out group boards that have a higher re-pin rate, low amount of spam and are in your target audience.

Fully Booked VA Case Study

Since I started working with Gina at the beginning of the year, we have really focused on using Pinterest as an additional source of traffic for Fully Booked VA. The monthly audience reach has exploded! In January 2016, Fully Booked VA reached an audience of 21,807 monthly Pinterest viewers. As of May 2016, the audience reach grew to 180,196 monthly Pinterest viewers. January Reach Pinterest Audience Reach Increase Why does this matter? A bigger audience translates into more people clicking through to your blog and more page views!

How to Make Pinterest Work For You

Pinterest provides its own analytics, which will provide you with an abundance of information to learn about your target market.

Some of these features include your pinning statistics, such as how many repins and clicks each pin gets, as well as what boards have the most engagement.

Using this information, you can create a pinning strategy as well as make changes to your blog.

For example, let’s say you have a pin that does really well on Pinterest and you receive a lot of click-throughs to your blog post.

You would then want to re-evaluate your blog post and make sure it is fully optimized. This could mean a few different things!

  • If you monetize your site, insert ads or affiliate links into the post.
  • Do you offer a free online course or have any freebies for your readers? Make sure you have a form where readers can sign up for your newsletter.
  • Finally, capture your reader’s attention by linking to other relative posts on your blog to keep them engaged.

Whether you are a new blogger or an experienced blogger who has yet to use Pinterest, I hope this post has encouraged you to give Pinterest a try.

Do you use Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog?

Kristin Larsen from Believe in a BudgetKristin Larsen is the creator behind Pinterest Presence, an online course designed to maximize your Pinterest presence and drive traffic to your blog. Kristin’s Pinterest management services include one-on-one consultations, Pinterest images and scheduling services. Her blog, Believe In A Budget, is a website that focuses on helping people build a better budget, blog and business. You can also say hello on Twitter @believeinabudget.

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Gina Horkey

Gina Horkey

FOUNDER & CO-OWNER

Gina Horkey is a married, millennial mama from Minnesota. Additionally, she’s the founder of Horkey HandBook and loves helping others find or become a kickass virtual assistant. Gina’s background includes making a living as a professional writer, an online business marketing consultant and a decade of experience in the financial services industry.

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