Pinterest is an incredible way to put your content in front of thousands of people, even if you don’t have a following. However, it can be overwhelming if you’re not used to this kind of platform.
Firstly, it’s not social media. Not right now, anyway, but it is heading that direction. Recently, Pinterest has removed likes, added “tried it,” then added the ability to add notes and photos in response to a pin if you have tried it.
You can still say it’s “only a visual search engine,” but you’d have to ignore the recent trends and feature additions.
There’s just too much to cover to get a good handle on Pinterest. And it’s always changing, so you really just have to do your research. This week, I’ve focused on doing that for you! I’ve pulled together content from all of my favorite sites that have fantastic Pinterest resources.
Pinterest Basics
1. Make sure your target audience is actually on Pinterest! (Angie Gensler)
2. Stay up to date on demographics—Pinterest always has data on their site. (Pinterest for Business)
3. While most people won’t click through to your profile, you should still put your best foot forward with your profile. ALWAYS expect to have guests! (Tailwind)
4. Use your Pinterest business name to your advantage. (Summer Tannhauser)
5. Do some keyword research and optimize your profile accordingly. (Light Your Mind)
6. Verify your site and get started with rich pins. Rich pins stay up to date when you change meta tags on your blog. (Blogging Butterfly)
7. Pinterest rewards you for spending time on their platform. (Elna from TwinsMommy)
8. Use Tailwind Tribes. Even if you don’t have Tailwind, you can still use tribes to share your content with your target audience. (Socially Sorted)
9. Follow successful pinners and see what works for them. (WordStream)
10. Know when to pin your posts. (Tailwind)
Pinterest Site and Image Optimization
11. No Photoshop? No problem! Canva has some free templates for you. (Confetti Social)
12. Make sure you’re up to date on the best image sizes for Pinterest. (Louise Myers)
13. (Seriously, don’t use “giraffe pins.” Even Pinterest makes fun of them and they keep getting cut shorter and shorter in the feed.)
14. Design better Pinterest images. (Creative Market)
15. Grab a copy of Photoshop to create your Pinterest images—it’s only $10/month.
16. If you don’t want to create your own graphics, check out Creative Market. There are tons of templates you can get as .psd files (Photoshop) to customize. (Creative Market)
17. WordPress tip: Want specific pictures to be shared on Pinterest? Put a save button on your graphics. (Mint Swift)
18. If you don’t want to rely on a plugin or don’t use WordPress, check out Pinterest’s documentation on their save button. (They don’t recommend using third-party save buttons because they don’t always work the way they should.)
19. Don’t be afraid to test different pin designs. You can do A/B testing on your pins. (Simple Pin Media)
20. If you don’t have a lot of content and are new to Pinterest, create more than one Pinterest image for your blog post. You can test to see which ones do better and make adjustments as needed. (Victoria, Gorgeous Life)
Advanced Pinning
21. If most of your traffic comes from Pinterest (or you plan to market on Pinterest heavily), make sure your site is optimized for Pinterest. (Lyrical Host)
22. Pinterest is a hybrid search engine—SEO, SEO, SEO. (Persuasion Nation)
23. Use hashtags. Use hashtags. (Louise Myers) Did I mention “use hashtags?” (Tailwind)
24. Check out what people are pinning from your site. (Beautiful Dawn)
25. Use Pinterest AND Tailwind analytics to find your best-performing pins and boards. (Tailwind)
26. You’ve probably read that you should use alt tags to put descriptions on your pins. Stop that. (Tailwind)
27. If you’ve heard that you should only share 20% of your own content, toss that rule out the window stat. (Victoria, Gorgeous Life)
28. Don’t play the follow/unfollow game. By pinning quality content from other people and following boards and profiles you’re genuinely interested in, you’ll passively get followers.
29. Pinterest followers don’t matter as much as you think. (Mint Swift)
30: Check out Promoted Pins, Pinterest’s advertising platform. Here are some tips for success. (Social Media Examiner)
Pinterest Traffic Tips
31. Understand where your traffic is coming from. (Tailwind)
32. Utilize different analytics tools—Pinterest, Tailwind, and Google Analytics—to analyze your traffic and know when to use them. (Kissmetrics)
33. You don’t just want any traffic—make sure you’re getting only your target audience by optimizing for keywords. (Ivory Mix)
34. Learn how to use Tailwind Tribes to grow your traffic, as well as how to analyze their performance. (Lyndsey)
35. Don’t hide your Pinterest images. Display them plainly in your post and remind readers to share them, or use data-pin-media to tie a Pinterest-optimized picture to a landscape one. Displaying properly optimized images encourages readers to share your posts to Pinterest. (Lyrical Host)
36. People swear by Tailwind AND manual pinning—the answer lies in between. Having a healthy balance of repins and original website pins is key. If you’re already using Tailwind, Carly covers the other half of the story. (Carly, Mommy on Purpose)
37. The popularity of group boards results in pinners using them as a crutch rather than an enhancement. Focusing on group boards is essential, but don’t let that take away from your personal boards! (Lena, What Mommy Does)
38. Replicate your success and increase clickthroughs by analyzing your existing pins. (My Life’s Manual)
39. Dedicate a board to only your domain pins and continue repinning those to relevant personal and group boards. (Elley Mae)
40. Find, join, and pin to group boards—in the beginning, this will probably be your top traffic source! (Nialogique)
(Looking for group boards about blogging? Check these out.)
Retaining Readers from Pinterest
41. Pinterest traffic doesn’t help if you can’t keep people on your site. Learn how to lower your bounce rate. (Simple Pin Media)
42: If you make a promise in your pin’s title, failing to deliver will ensure people don’t come back to your site. Don’t just go for clicks—deliver on your promise. (Pinning Partners)
43. Write a killer blog post. The more you lead people through a post, the longer they’ll stick around. (The Sits Girls)
44. If you don’t have an email list, start one! This is one of the best ways to make sure you can always get content to your readers. (Ana, The She Approach)
45. When creating opt-in forms, “subscribe for updates” doesn’t cut it. If you want subscribers, use a different call-to-action. (Yael Keon)
46. If downloadables aren’t your thing, try encouraging your readers to take a quiz.
47. Check out some more ideas for email opt-ins and see what’s working for others. (Rosanna)
48. Make sure your site isn’t taking forever to load. People are quick to abandon pages that take more than several seconds to load. (Hubspot)
49. Images are the most common culprit when it comes to loading times. Check out this image optimization guide. (Lyrical Host)
50. Give your readers other content to read—add links to related posts in and below your posts. (Elle and Company)
Okay, that last bit isn’t really about Pinterest. But you do need to read up on retaining website visitors because Pinterest drives a lot of traffic. That traffic doesn’t mean a thing if you can’t keep it on the page!
This is a lot of information to take in if you’re just getting started with Pinterest, so take it a little bit at a time! If you’re already familiar with Pinterest, give some of the linked posts another read. Unfortunately, there’s no “cookie cutter” way to do Pinterest, which is why it’s important to try a variety of different methods.
That being said, what are your favorite tips for Pinterest success? All these resources are just a fraction of the information out there on Pinterest, but it’s a good starting point. Feel free to share your own posts and comments about your favorite Pinterest tips.
Interested in seeing your blog post in a resource roundup? Leave a comment below with a link to a blog post you’d like to see featured. Or, if you just want to see a roundup on a specific topic, let me know what you’d like to see!
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