I have never used Pinterest before March 2020. I heard about this app, but I had no clue what this is all about. After using it for few months, I realized it is one of the best apps, I wonder why I never used this before.
I was bit confused while trying to understand what the hell is PIN or BOARD. I watched few Youtube videos on Pinterest to have better understanding about this.
Click here to check out my Pinterest Profile
I am surprised how simple it is to use this app and to grow your audience compare to apps like Instagram. I started using it 2-3 months ago and I already got around 700k impression and 500k Audience at this point.
WHAT REALLY IS PINTEREST?
In simple words, it’s a SEARCH ENGINE. You can search what ever you want like you do on GOOGLE or YOUTUBE, the only difference is that you will get to see a Picture first, Which is called PIN in Pinterest terminology. Each PIN is linked to a URL, you can click on the picture to access the article linked to the PIN. You can save PIN on your personalized BOARD to plan events or to buy stuff or for health tips. Main Point to note here is that it is a SEARCH, PLANNING AND LEARNING TOOL. People go to Pinterest to learn something and you need to keep it in mind to grow impressions.
SO, WHY I STARTED USING PINTEREST ALL OF SUDDEN?
I started my blog in March 2020 and I wanted to have some viewership to start with. So, I was just doing some research to increase blog traffic and that’s when I came across Pinterest to be considered as one of the best ways to grow traffic. There is link behind each PIN, it’s an amazing tool for Bloggers to write a blog and use Pinterst PINs to get to their audience.
DID PINTEREST LIVE UP TO THE EXPECTATION?
ABSOLUTELY YES, there is no doubt about it. These snapshots shown below are taken around mid-May 2020. It’s just little over 2 months when I started my blog, and we have got little over 10 K visits, which is not so bad for a new blog. It’s all thanks to traffic coming from PINTEREST.
There is little over 1,500 users which came from Pinterest, next best is 157 which came from Facebook. Numbers don’t lie, practically half of the traffic came from Pinterest. All we must do is create a PIN and post on Pinterest with LINK and BOOM!
I guess enough with background information, let’s get into real business about getting IMPRESSIONS on PINTEREST.
GROW YOUR PINTEREST ACCOUNT IMPRESSIONS
FIRST LOOK AT FEW VERY BASIC THINGS
We must do few small things right to get good results.
BUSINESS ACCOUNT
Sometimes, I wonder why people won’t use the Pinterest business account option, it’s completely free and it gives you nice reports about how you are progressing. Just few links and BOOM!; You have your free business account and all the fancy reports about Impression, Saves, Clicks etc.
PROFILE PICTURE
Add your profile picture, accounts without Profile picture don’t look real and serious. Personally, I don’t like to add logo’s as Profile picture which gives the impression that it’s all about business. It’s nice to have something more personal to connect with people.
PROFILE DESCRIPTION
Complete your Profile with complete description, Use Keywords which defines your profile and something which people may use to Search to find you.
WEBSITE URL
We are talking about improving Impression on your account and what’s the point if it doesn’t lead to anything. That’s why website URL is the most important thing. It’s your identity.
CLAIM YOUR INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT ON PINTEREST
Pinterest can collect data better to improve your impressions and provide deeper insights when you claim your Instagram account. It also allows you to easily shares your Instagram Posts on Pinterest which increase traffic on Instagram and impressions on Pinterest.
BOARDS
You must create at least 10 – 15 Boards which should be around TIPS to help people. I suggest you should stick around your own background and your interest. Don’t try to create something for IMPRESSIONS to which you won’t be able to add any value in future.
Name and Board Description are very important for people to find your Board and PINs. Board Name and Description should include important keyword which people normally search.
For your Board Description, You should add the full sentence like “HOW TO STAY HEALTHY”, “HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT”, “YOGA TIPS”, “TIPS FOR HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP” to make it easier for people to find you.
FILL YOUR BOARD
You don’t want people to come to your BOARD and just find 10-15 PINS. People need to see that you are influencer when they find your BOARD. What do you need to do for that? It’s easy!
Just search about your BOARD Topic and fill your Board with at least 100 PINs. I am using PINTEREST for just over 2 months and I have BOARD with around 1.7k PINs and many other BOARDs have around 500 PINs. You need to add content to your Boards to create impressions.
THINK ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE
What your audience want? Think about creating Boards for your audience based on their likes and needs, think about adding PINs which will help them to learn something. It can be Yoga Tips, Photography Tips, Recipes, Health Tips, Money Saving Tips, Quotes etc.
PLANNING AND LEARNING TIPS
Pinterest is a learning platform; People use Pinterest to plan and Learn. Plan your content around Learning experience, for example I have used Boards for Tips to stay healthy, Tips to learn Photography, Personal Development Quotes, Tips for Finance and money management etc.
ADD RELEVANT PINs TO YOUR BOARDS ONLY
Some of my Motivational Quote PIN are saved in Fashion board which makes no sense. It’s very important to add Relevant PINs to your Boards. Photography Board should have content related to Photography only and Quotes Board should have content related to Quotes only. It improves your chances to show up in Search and improve impressions. PIN with incorrect BOARD has no value.
CONSISTENTLY ADD PINs TO YOUR BOARDS
Morning and Evenings are Prime times for PINTEREST Users. You should add New PINs or Re-PIN to your Board every single day. No exception.
I have been adding 10-15 PINs each day around 7 AM and few during day and around 7-8 PM. This is very important if you want to grow your account.
CREATE YOUR OWN PINS
I have been using free version of befunky to create PINs for PINTEREST and Posts for Instagram. Feel free to check out my Posts on Instagram @atwalspace.
It’s very simple tool to use and it provides few free templates to start and you will have PIN ready in few mins.
Important point about befunky: Mobile app doesn’t allow many options to create PIN, you must use it in any browser by simply going to url (https://www.befunky.com/) on your computer.
I have been creating around 3-6 new PINs daily; it takes no time to create them.
These are some of the PINs we have created and I would have never imagine to get 156,000 impression just in 2 months. Your account will grow much faster once you add your own PINs.
And You should always provide relevant link to your website with your PIN.
IMPORTANT NOTE
We missed to add new PIN for few days and we saw over 20% drop in impressions and audience even though we were still Re-Pinning our old PIN’s and PIN’s from other people. So, it’s very important to add NEW PIN to keep getting impressions.
In a way, this is amazing for content creators.
MOTIVATIONAL AND INSPIRING QUOTES
Use Motivational and Inspiring Quotes to deliver your message, I recently saw a Quote PIN by Amazon, but it was linking back to Amazon.com to sell Piano. Imagine, if Amazon using Quotes then it means something.
I am getting lots of impression from PINs with Quotes. I have seen similar results on Instagram,
CREATE BOARDS RELATED TO BIG EVENTS DURING YEAR
PEOPLE use PINTEREST to plan for BIG events like Christmas, Mother’s Day, Thanksgiving Dinner or some other holiday. People want to search about new ideas for GIFTS, food, surprises etc.
Pinterest searches increase drastically for ideas during these HOT events. People normally started searching for ideas 3-4 weeks before the actual event, so you need to have your calendar up and ready to work on the PINs specially for these events.
Click to get full details of Pinterest Seasonal Insight
RICH PIN
RICH PIN is free feature provided by Pinterest and it’s very easy to get upgraded to use it. Rich Pin collects extra information from the metadata added to website link attached to the PIN and attach this extra information to your PIN. It also automatically updates this information if it changes.
Biggest difference between Rich and regular is that RICH PIN tile shows up BIG and BOLD. In below Picture, you can see “41 IMPORTANT PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS YOU NEED TO KNOW” shows up Big and BOLD for RICH PIN which attracts attention.
Here is the link for Pinterest Rich PIN Validator, you just need to provide your website link to certain content after making sure you have added metadata to that content. You may need to use Yoast SEO Plugin to add metadata.
LINK FOR PINTEREST RICH PIN VALIDATOR
TAILWIND
Personally, I find subscription of tailwind bit expensive, the main use of this app is scheduling and Tribes to connect. I think it may be too much money for this job. I haven’t tried this app yet but it has been recommend by a lot of people. I do want to grow my impressions to over 1 million and I probably want to give a shot to Trial version to see if it’s really worth to spend money on monthly subscription.
I will provide update in future based on my experience with this app.
PINTEREST GROUPS
Pinterest groups are nice thing to try if you are good with following too many rules by Group owner and have time to keep on sending requests to JOIN the Groups.
I have tried Facebook groups in the past to increase blog traffic and I didn’t find them very good. It’s like for like idea, so what’s the point. It needs extra time which didn’t work for me, so I haven’t tried the Pinterest Groups. I have read about this from other blogs and lots of people suggest this.
PINTEREST ADS\PROMOTION
I use Pinterest Promotions for each new blog post, it sends decent amount of traffic to blog posts. Looking at the numbers, It’s giving me around 10 visits to blog for each $1 spent, it’s very easy to setup. You won’t need any external help to setup promotion as long as you can create your own PIN.
I am getting around 15-20k impressions just from the promotions. I see a lot more activity on my blog posts and also noticed lots of SPAMS\ROBOT traffic\comments to blogs when I have a promotion running on Pinterest. I had to activate “Akismet Anti-Spam” Plugin to filter these spam comments.
CHECK OUT QUICK TIPS BY PINTEREST TO HELP AND GROW YOUR BUSINESS ON PINTEREST
DON’T FORGET TO PIN THIS CHECKLIST
Good Luck!
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