Three Ways to Up Your Pinterest Game

I’ve been blogging for a little over 4 years (where does the time go?) and I feel like I’ve learned A LOT about blogging in that time frame. I’ve been wanting to start a “Better Blogging” series for quite some time now and I guess better late than never! I’m not an expert by any means but I have attended a lot of blogging webinars, courses and discussion groups – not to mention a bunch of trial and error myself – and I feel like I have some wisdom to offer!

One of the biggest assets your blog can have is utilizing Pinterest to it’s full potential. We often think of Pinterest as a social media platform but it’s more than that. It’s actually a lot like a search engine (think Google). And just like Google, Pinterest is able to send a lot of traffic to your blog. I know I’m constantly going to Pinterest to search for outfit ideas! So it’s important to make sure your Pinterest account is on it’s A-game.

Here are three ways to up your Pinterest game:

1) RICH PINS: Pinterest is a visual search engine so you want to make sure your pins get noticed. One way to do that is to activate rich pins. Having rich pins means your pins will display your blog name, icon, and post title. This helps your pin stick out more and makes it clear where the pin is coming from (your blog!). When your pins look better you increase your chances of having people click on them which increases your blog traffic.

If you have WordPress, enabling rich pins is really easy. Just follow these steps to install rich pins on Pinterest!

If you have Blogger it’s a little more complicated. Here’s a tutorial for how to install rich pins on Blogger.

Below is an example of my Pinterest pins with and without rich pins.

Top of pins

Bottom of pins

 

P.S. In order for your blog to get traffic from Pinterest you need to be pinning your own content. I have one board focused on my blog and I pin/re-pin about 8 a day (more on how I do that below).

 

2) GET A BUSINESS ACCOUNT: Applying for a Pinterest Business account is very beneficial because it gives you access to analytics. You’ll be able to find out what pins are the popular based on impressions, clicks, saves and likes. You can use these insights to figure out what kinds of pins people like the best and also what pins generate the most traffic to your blog. That way you know what types of pins you should be pinning more of!

I use my Pinterest analytics to update older posts on my blog. I figure out what pins get the most clicks and I update those posts with new affiliate links. That way I’m also increasing my affiliate revenue.

Here’s a look at my top pins from the last 30 days: The “R” under Pin Type stands for rich pin. Notice that all of my top pins are rich pins!

Having a Business account also allows you to buy ads through Pinterest. I haven’t tried this yet but out of all the social media networks I think buying ads on Pinterest would be the most beneficial.

Apply for a Pinterest Business account here.

3) USE BOARD BOOSTER: In order to have a successful Pinterest account you need to be pinning consistently. I’ve heard that 75-100 pins per day is optimal. But who has time to pin that many pins a day?! That’s where Board Booster comes in. Board Booster is a Pinterest scheduling tool that allows you to schedule, loop and clean up your Pinterest boards easily. There are other Pinterest scheduling websites out there but Board Booster is my favorite because of the looping feature. You basically “set it and forget it”. The idea is Board Booster will automatically re-pin pins that are already on your boards so that your older content doesn’t get forgotten. This hopefully will lead to more re-pins and traffic! You can also have Board Booster delete the lower performing “duplicate” pin so that you don’t get penalized for having duplicate content.

Here’s an example of what the looping settings look like for my boards:

The other part of Board Booster is the scheduling. Board Booster will create a “secret board” which only you can see. You can then pin as many pins as you want onto the secret board and Board Booster will pin them for you based on the settings you put in place (similar to the looping). That way you can set it up to have pins being pinned everyday at optimal times automatically. Again – “set it and forget it”!

The last feature that I like is the Pin Doctor. Pinterest will penalize accounts that have a lot of pins with broken links or accounts with a lot of duplicate pins. You could manually go through your boards and click on each pin to see if the link is broken but that could take a LONG time. The Pin Doctor will find these pins in minutes and allow you to get rid of them! This feature costs a small fee – a penny a pin – if you want Board Booster to delete the problem pins. But I think it’s worth it!

Monthly plans for Board Booster start at $5 but they offer a trial with the first 100 pins for free. After that it’s a penny a pin. So looping/scheduling 1,000 pins a month will cost $10 and so on.Right now I’m only looping/scheduling a total of 30 pins per day (about 900 pins a month) and I’ve noticed an increase in my analytics.

If you are interested in trying Board Booster I’d appreciate if you sign up using my referral link!

CHECK OUT PART 2: HOW TO GET A STANDOUT PINTEREST PROFILE

And don’t forget to follow Jeans and a Teacup on Pinterest! 

Linking Up: Garay Treasures, A Good Hue, Style Elixir, Sandy a la Mode, Elegantly Dressed and Stylish, I Do deClaire, Two Peas in a Blog, Myriad Musings