Pinterest and niche blogs go together like chips and salsa. In fact, it can be more reliable than Facebook or Twitter for reaching your ideal audience. Relevant pins are 100 times more effective than tweets when it comes to spreading your content. This is why you should always choose the right boards for promoting your blog. Pins also last significantly longer than regular Facebook posts; enabling you to maximize the gains for your original content.
Despite these incredible numbers, not all marketers leverage this amazing platform. But if you want to promote your blog and boost traffic through Pinterest, here are the essential steps you should follow:
Optimise Your Pinterest for Traffic
First and foremost, remember that Pinterest is at its core a social media network. Users do not check Pinterest to find out about their brand’s new product or updated pricing plans. This is why you should make your Pinterest account as personal as possible by using your real name and real photo.
Remember that social networks are all about building relationships, and real connections are made between people. It’s not a place where potential customers look for brands, nor is it a site where agencies look for freelance writers or bloggers to work with. Whatever you do, avoid sounding salesy in your Pinterest profile and stick to relevant subject matters. Focus on the needs of your target audience and talk less about your blog.
Before you start promoting your Pinterest account, make sure your blog is discoverable through your profile. Start by including your blog’s URL in the “About” section and under “Settings”. Feel free to link your Pinterest account
Make Pin-worthy Images
Image sharing websites are perfect for visual content, which garner more engagement. This type of content is perfect for introducing your brand’s identity and quickly capturing traffic to your blog.
But you shouldn’t use just any stock photo that users have seen countless of times. It should be original and appreciable by your ideal audience.
Using your own photo resources is a great idea, but it’s recommended only for bloggers who have a keen eye for photography. As an alternative, you should learn to use online image editing websites like PicMonkey and Canva or a free tool like GIMP. Also try to make taller images for your Pinterest pins. This will maximize their size and visibility in the platform’s current interface. In turn, taller pins are more effective for engagement and capturing your audience’s attention.
Make Rich Pins
Creating “Rich pins” is an intermediate technique for boosting your pins’ shareability. It is also a great way to maximize the value of your visual content and improve the overall experience of your followers. Basically, rich pins contain additional information that is obtained from your blog.
Rich pins can be about an app, movie, product, place, recipe, or article. Bloggers who are in the cinema, cooking, and travel niches have a slight advantage here, but other industries can benefit from rich pins as well.
For WordPress blogs, the easiest way to create rich pins is through the Yoast SEO plugin. Rich pins use Open Graph and Schema when acquiring metadata for rich pins. With Yoast SEO, you can easily use Open Graph to edit the information for your rich pins.
Make Your Blog Images Pinnable
Getting your Pinterest audience to your blog is only the first step. If you truly want your blog to grow and create more followers, make sure your readers can share your onsite images directly to Pinterest. A great tool for this is Image Sharer by SumoMe.
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Let’s say a visitor in your blog liked your new infographic, and would like to share it through Pinterest. Instead of manually right-clicking and downloading the infographic for pinning later, visitors can just hover over with their mouse and click on the Pinterest icon to instantly repin your content. This way, you can leverage the reach of your very own followers to spread your blog like wildfire.
Of course, this means you should also make some of your onsite images fit for your Pinterest audience. Apart from the formatting and design, relevance is the key to maximizing the repins.
Target Your Pinterest Search Terms
Lastly, a little research is needed if you want to maximize the traffic coming from Pinterest. Instead of pinning as much blog posts as you can, you should look for topics that people are already looking for in Pinterest.
Before pinning a blog post, perform a quick search using related keywords and have a look at the results. These should be people, boards, and pins that contain the relevant search terms. Perform a quick comparison on repins and likes so you’ll know the content that your audience prefers.
Also try to spot the most common words or alternative words in these results to tweak your target search term. To maximize your chance of being listed, incorporate these search terms into the pin’s description, your profile, and the title/description of any board you want to promote.