Easy Strategies to Quickly Explode Your Pinterest Traffic

When I first started blogging I kept hearing the same thing: Pinterest is the key to your success – learn how to use it. So I did just that. Now I’ll be sharing the exact steps I took to grow my Pinterest traffic from 0 to 65.5k monthly viewers in less than a month.

Pinterest is awesome. I like reading the articles, I like finding inspiration for my future luxury home, and most of all I like to promote myself. At first, using Pinterest was really intimidating for me. I read loads of blog posts that all said the same thing and all just recommended Tailwind. Now, Tailwind is fantastic and has helped me a lot but I wanted more than just ‘use Tailwind’. Now, I will be recommending Tailwind in this post but I’ll also be laying out actionable steps for you to take to increase your Pinterest traffic as well as how I use Tailwind for the best results!

Pinterest Profile

First thing’s first if you want to get more Pinterest traffic make sure you have a Pinterest business account. It’s free, quick, and easy.

Second thing’s second: make sure you have rich pins enabled. Rich pins add a little more info to your pin, make it stand out more in the feed, and help boost you in the search.

Your profile picture should be a picture of you rather than a logo. This makes you seem like a person rather than just a business. This will encourage more people to follow you.

Your bio and name are a great place for keywords. You should have your name plus keywords that explain what you do. For example, my Pinterest name shows up as Sachi’s Letters // Etsy Shop Owner + Hand Lettering + Online Business

All those keywords will boost my searchability!

In your description, you don’t want to just say who you are. You want to explain what you can do for people and why they should follow you (using longtail keywords). So instead of saying “I’m a hand lettering artist”, you could say “I share my hand lettering tips to inspire you to begin creating beautiful letters”. Before, people might just have followed you if they wanted to see the stuff you create. Now, people will follow you to learn from you and that is much more valuable.

You also wanna make sure you make about 10 boards that fit in your niche. For example, I have boards about hand lettering tips, Pinterest marketing, and Etsy tips. If you want a board for something like — nail art inspo — go right ahead! But just make sure you make it private so only you can see it. This way your followers only get content they want to see when your pins pop up in their feed. Finally, make sure you have a board that is specifically for your own content and set it as your featured board. This ensures that the first thing anyone sees when they visit your profile is your content.

Graphics

Every time I publish a new post I make 3 different graphics. I change the layout, image, and text for each one. This way I can appeal to a wider range of people and see what sorts of titles and layouts do better on Pinterest. I embed my favorite one into the post and then hide the other two within the post. This way people have more options of what to pin from your post and you don’t have to spam your post with Pinterest graphics. I then pin each one from my blog to my board “Sachi’s Letters”.

• Here’s a post explaining how to do this

Branding

I also like to make sure that my URL is on every graphic (although sometimes I forget) and that my graphics are cohesive. Now I’m lazy and busy and making beautiful graphics from scratch every time just isn’t my thing. So there are two template packs I use:

• Kona Blog and Social Pack
• Social Media Bundle

These make life so much easier and save me so much time. There are so many social media kits on Etsy and Creative Market that it would be totally easy to find something that matches your brand.

Group Boards

Group boards are community boards where multiple people can post pins to that board’s audience. These boards are usually for a specific niche and are a great way to expand your reach and increase your Pinterest traffic when you’re just starting out!

Find group boards in your niche! The best way to do this is to look at the Pinterest profiles of other people in your niche and see what group boards they’re in. Then you can read the descriptions and figure out how to join. Make sure you always read the rules and only post content that is relevant to the board’s theme.

Never stop applying to group boards! I find that I only hear back from maybe about 50% of the boards I apply to. Probably even less. Don’t get discouraged and don’t stop applying. The more boards you can get into the more people your pins will get in front of!

I also like to go through all my group boards every time I pin a new blog post and manually pin a few posts from each group board. This way I can get some manual pinning in, abide by the rules of the group board, and get some fresh content to my Pinterest profile. I noticed that once I started doing this manually I would get loads more traffic to my profile.

Tailwind Pin Scheduler

To be quite honest, I need to get better at regularly pinning content that’s not mine. But as of now, this is how I use the pin scheduler. Sign up for Tailwind here!

SEO

As I mentioned earlier I make three Pinterest graphics for each of my blog posts. Make sure each one links to the relevant post and to pin each one to all relevant group boards. For the pin descriptions, I try to use as many keywords as possible. I try to change each one slightly. To do this I pick a keyword and put it into the Pinterest search. I then look at the other keywords that pop up at the top to also include in my description.

For example, if I wrote a post about hand lettering I could try to use the words “for beginners”, “practice”, or “ideas” in my pin description. For each graphic, I try to slightly change the keyword and the other words I include. This way I can get my pin in front of as many people as possible.

Scheduling

Tailwind is great because it uses smart pinning. This means it pins when during times it knows you’re getting the most Pinterest traffic. I would start out with about 15-20 time slots per day. As your blog and Pinterest grows I would bump this up to 40-50.

I pin my favorite one to all the relevant tribes and then make sure to shuffle my queue so my followers aren’t spammed with the same pin a gagillion times. I then go to all the tribes I pinned to and pick a couple of the pins in there to schedule. This way I can support other people, follow the rules of the tribe, and not exclusively have my own posts in my queue.

Another way I try to bring in a variety of posts is that often times Tailwind will recommend pins it thinks I will like. If I see any that fit in my niche I usually add these to my queue. If you want to learn more about Tailwind you can check out the post I did about all its features!

Now it’s time for you to try Tailwind for $10 a month!! 

Tailwind Tribes

Tailwind Tribes are kind of like group boards except they’re through Tailwind. I also think that I tend to get more engagement from the pins I post. Using Tailwind Tribes are free. You can join up to 5 tribes and post up to 30 times a month without paying a cent. Of course, you can always upgrade for more! You can use the search function to find tribes in your niche or find invite links on other blog posts. Here are the tribes I’m a part of:

• Best of Etsy Products
• Blogging Friends Pins
• Etsy Makers
• Etsy Mini Mall Tribe
• HerPaperRoute Hive – All Niches!
• Pinterest Friends

Sign up for Tailwind here!

Courses to Boost Your Pinterest Traffic

Pinterest Ninja

A few weeks ago I invested in Pinterest Ninja which is a very affordable ebook on strategies to get more Pinterest traffic. This course was a big game changer for me. It really helped me shape my own Pinterest strategy to something that really worked for me. A You get a huge list of Pinterest group boards, SEO help, videos and more — all designed to help you increase your Pinterest traffic! The best part is it’s only $45. After implementing these strategies I saw my pin statistics jump from a couple hundred to a few thousand! Get Pinterest Ninja here! You also get free updates as they come!

Ready, Set, Blog for Traffic

This is one of the first courses I ever purchased. It focuses on getting traffic to your blog in general but has loads of really great information on using Pinterest. In addition to Pinterest tips, you also get SEO tips, writing tips, email templates and more. I highly recommend this course if you’re starting out and are trying to start driving traffic to your blog. Get it here for $45!

Boost Blog Traffic Ebook 

This is a really affordable option at only $25! It goes through all the different ways you can start driving traffic to your blog. There are tips on SEO, networking, social media, and yes, Pinterest. I really enjoyed reading this and I’m looking forward to implementing some of the tips Ana suggests! Get it here!