You already know that social media is one platform that can help you to spread blog content. The most commonly used social media are Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Indeed, third social media is the website most often suggested by SEO experts and marketers to share your blog content. But have you ever heard of Pinterest?

Pinterest is an online pinboard used to collect multimedia from various websites. You can make how many pins you want. This certainly helps to organize the images that interest you. For example, if you want to collect food recipes that you find online, you can create a board called ‘Recipes’. The way the Pinterest user interacts is to give likes, comments, and re-pin content with each other.

Maybe you are wondering how can this one social media website help you to promote blog content and increase your website traffic?

There are several things that can explain why Pinterest is one of the right platforms to promote your blog content:

• A pin on Pinterest can spread further than a tweet
• A pin can increase page visits and page views
• An e-commerce website that uses Pinterest gets 78 cents of American dollars for each pin.
• The possibility of a pin being seen by people reaches one week. This is certainly much longer than the time of a tweet for 24 minutes and 90 minutes for a Facebook post.

If you’re still not sure about using Pinterest, some big brands such as Wal-Mart, Apple, and Lowe’s use Pinterest as part of their online marketing strategy. If these big brands use Pinterest, there’s no harm in trying.

For those of you who are interested in this one social media marketing strategy, keep reading this article to get the complete guide.

Strategies to Use Pinterest to Increase Your Blog Traffic

Create a Pinterest Account

To start using, you certainly need to make a Pinterest account. Most people usually start by creating a personal account. Indeed, it’s a good idea to create a personal account to distinguish which pins are more personal and not relevant to your blog. However, to use Pinterest as a marketing strategy, it would be better if you register on Pinterest for Business. If you already have a Pinterest account, you can also change your account into a business account.

After you register, don’t forget to verify your blog and connect your Pinterest account with your blog. Connecting Pinterest account with a blog can make it easier for you to see repins, clicks that you get, and the available saves from blogs. To connect these two accounts, you need to verify your blog on Pinterest settings.

If both accounts are already connected, you can start setting up your Pinterest bio. Make sure that your Pinterest has a link to your blog. Your profile image should also be compatible with your Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. These are things that can help with blog branding. Don’t forget to include a short bio and a link to your blog. People who find your Pinterest account might also be interested in reading your blog. Make it easy for readers.

By using Pinterest for Business, you will get access to Pinterest analytics. This tool can help you to see how successful your Pinterest account activities are.

In addition, you can also register for Rich Pins. This tool makes your pins have more information and details of standard pins such as article titles, a map, and even ratings for movies. There are six types that you can use; movie, article, product, app, recipe, and place. Each of these rich pins has each upgrade, according to what is needed. Rich Pins also makes Pinterest more trust your content.

For bloggers, article pins will be very helpful in promoting your blog post by including logos, larger headlines, and links to visit the post. You can also combine it with WordPress plugins like Yoast SEO.

In addition to the two tools mentioned above, there are several features on Pinterest that can help you develop a pinning strategy on this website:

• Pinterest guides. This feature is intended to help beginners to use Pinterest; how to pinning, using analytics, and how to optimize their boards.
• Marketing blog. Pinterest is also their blog where you can learn various marketing tips, especially by using Pinterest and announce the latest updates from Pinterest.
• Video library. This website also has a small video library containing videos about how to make a pin that will get a lot of clicks, how you optimize the campaigns that you do for your business, and much more.
• Tools. Tools such as the promoted pins and the ‘pin it’ button are also available to help people reach more audiences. You can use these various tools to make it easier for people to find, visit and pin your articles.

Keep in mind that the more people pin your website content to Pinterest, the more credible your website is to Pinterest. If Pinterest feels that your website can be trusted, pins from your website will appear at the beginning of Pinterest’s search results.

Another way to ensure that your pin will be on the first page of search results is to maintain the quality of the link. Ensure that the links for a pin are relevant and connected to high-quality content.

Focus on Image Descriptions

Each pin has a description below the image. Most bloggers choose to only write the title of your writing and a short description of what is discussed in the article.

To maximize your pin and increase interaction, there are several ways you can make an interesting pin:

• Write a description that helps pinners understand the contents of the blog post they just pinned.
• Try to explain in detail even though your only description consists of two or three sentences to help tell pinners what the article contains. Provide enough information to attract the pinners’ attention so they click on the link that you have entered.
• Use sensory-related words and positive sentences to attract the attention of pinners.
• Use call-to-actions (CTA) words in the pin description. You can use words like “check out” or “click to get the full tips”. Using CTA can add engagement and interaction on Pinterest by 80 percent.

See Also: How to Make Money From Blogs For Beginners Without Capital

Pins that have a description of no more than 200 characters have the possibility to get a pin from a larger person. Don’t forget to include your keyword target in your profile, pin description, and board description. SEO must still be applied in writing info and descriptions on Pinterest. You can also use the relevant hashtag in your pin description.

Pay Attention to Image Quality

One of the factors that make Pinterest attractive to many people is the images used by bloggers for their pins. Use the best images you have to optimize your pins and get high involvement and interaction.

The following are some of the things you should pay attention to in making and choosing the images that you will use for Pinterest.

First, consider the size of the image you are using. The images on Pinterest are usually in vertical format or extending downward. 80% of ordinary users open Pinterest through their smartphone. This makes using an image that extends downward makes more sense than using an image that extends to the side.

Second, use interesting images. Visuals that don’t have images of people usually receive 23% more repins.

• Use bright colors
• Select the background that matches the context image. Avoid using a white background. Choose a background that can make your photos more attractive.
• Use red tones in your photos. Images that have colors like red, orange, or pink get far more repins than the images that have blue tones.
• Brighter images also have 20 times better performance than darker visuals.

Pinterest also gives some suggestions for making better pins. They suggest doing the following:

• Use minimum branding and logos. Everything that is excessive is certainly not good. Likewise with branding on Pinterest. Make sure that you don’t over-branding you. You can add credibility to your pin, but don’t turn it away from the main focus of your pin. The thing you can do to keep branding without making people less focused on what you share is by using a logo. Insert the logo into your pin image, but also not too big. Make sure that the logo remains visible if people access Pinterest via a smartphone.
• Use high-quality images. A good pin uses images with high photo resolution and professional-looking graphics.
• Make sure that your image is simple and focus on the theme of your post. Don’t use random photos that are not relevant to the content of your blog content.

The last is to include the text in your pin image. If you want your pin to attract the attention of many people and collect traffic to your blog, one idea that you can do is to enter text in your image.

Not only can this help your pin to look more professional, but it also tells the pinners what the pin is fast.

As you can see above, using the text in your image can explain quickly to pinners about the content of your blog that you pin on your Pinterest.

Now, compare it with the pins below:

The pins above do not have text in their image. Most likely you will immediately scroll through these images because this pin does not tell you what content contains the image.

At present, it’s easy to enter text into your image. There are several image editing tools that you can use, such as PicMonkey and Canva.

If you want more complete software, you can buy Adobe Photoshop. This software certainly has more options and tools to make your image stand out. They have a monthly plan and video tutorials that can also help you.

Fonts also have a big influence on your design image. If you are confused, try using Google Fonts.

Find Your Audience

The audience is certainly an important element in every marketing strategy. If you can attract people’s attention and they like what they see, chances are they will interact with your pin and visit your blog regularly.

Maybe you are confused why is interaction important? This is because involvement and interaction can help increase exposure. As mentioned earlier, the more repins you get, the more likely your pins will appear in the top rankings of search results.

There are several ways to find your audience. The first is to find Pinterest users and brands that are successful in your niche and then follow their followers. The second way is to find a board that has many followers that are related to your niche. Just like the first way, follow the followers of this board. Following followers from ideal accounts and boards in your niche is one of the best ways to build a target audience on Pinterest.

Join the Group Board on Pinterest

Group board on Pinterest is one of the best ways to interact with other users. The group board referred to here is a board where many people can insert pins into the board. This is one of the famous ways to give you more exposure.

By joining a board community, you will be able to build your followers and audience quickly. If you are active in the community, other users will recognize you and are interested in seeing your pins and seeing the boards on your Pinterest. If you like what they see, they will follow your account.

Then how do you join a group board? The easiest way is to use PinGroupie. Enter a keyword into the column provided and they will show what group board is associated with that keyword.

To join the group board, there are several ways you can do:

• Get to know the makers of the group board.  You can start by interacting with them by starting pinning their content and opening up conversations with them. Pinterest is not just for sharing content, but you can also build your network. In addition, you can also visit the blog of the group board maker and contact him through the blog. This is a more personal step and will help this group board maker know you closer and trust you when you later offer to join their Pinterest board
• Check if there are invitation instructions that you can follow. Some group boards have instructions to join them in the description. Sometimes you only need to send an email to the creator of the group or leave a message on one of their pins. Approach them politely and explain why you want to join.
• Received an invitation from the member group. If you know someone who is already a member of the group, try asking if they can invite you into it. A group member on Pinterest can invite other people to join as long as they are allowed by other people in the group.

If there is no group that matches what you want, you can start a group yourself. Create a new board as usual and add other people who want to join by entering their name and email.

Find the right time to pinning your blog content

Time can indeed influence whether people see the content we just pinned on Pinterest. Indeed there is a lot of data that tells us when we should be active on Pinterest so people can see our pins. But the most important thing is to know how your audience uses Pinterest.

By using Pinterest analytics, you can see where your audience lives and how they spend their time on Pinterest. If you know these things about the target audience, you can get an idea when it’s the right time to share your content on Pinterest so that your audience sees and reads your content.

Conclusion

Pinterest is the fastest growing social network last year. So it’s safe to say that Pinterest will continue to be used by many people.

For bloggers, this can be a good playground to test your drawing skills and marketing skills. To really see results from Pinterest (in the form of click-through-rates that you can) try using the tips shared above.

Now it’s your turn to tell the story. Have you ever used Pinterest before? How does Pinterest help your blog traffic?

The post Tricks to Increase Your Blog Traffic Using Pinterest appeared first on TechMint.