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5 Ways Pinterest Can Help Your Blog

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Pinterest and blogging may seem like they are unrelated but bloggers can boost their website traffic and build their readership by using Pinterest. Think of Pinterest as the frosting and sprinkles on your cupcake of web traffic, it seems like pretty eye candy but also adds a lot of flavor and interest! With a few smart steps each time you publish a blog post, you can bring traffic to your website from Pinterest.

5 Ways Pinterest Can Help your Blog

Working with these easy-to-follow tips, you'll start getting traffic from Pinterest right away and posts have a very long life on Pinterest. Pinterest is the #1 traffic referral to this blog. These tips really work!

Taking a few minutes each day to pin a few things can help your blog tremendously.

And, it's just plain fun!

1. Create a separate, pinnable image for your blog post

The number one mistake that blogs are making today is not having a pinnable image on each blog post! Size matters! Even if you're not a graphic designer or have Photoshop, you can make fantastic images that will help your blog posts be seen on Pinterest. Canva has Pinterest templates that are really easy to use. Long, tall images command Pinterest taking up the most visual real estate in the Pinterest feed. Create images that are 1000 pixels x 1500 pixels for maximum appeal and repins.

A great tip from power pinner Melissa Taylor, update old posts without pinnable images. Create new images, add to the blog post then share them on Pinterest. You can even get fancy and add the embedded pin at the bottom of the post.

2. Create a pin on Pinterest for each post

Using your custom graphic, create a pin for your new article. Use relevant keywords in your description and add a link. Make sure that you edit the pin and add the link to your post in the source as well. From Rebekah Radice, “Make your content stand out in the search results by usingย effective keyword targeting. This will ensure that anyone searching for a specific topic is able to locate your content. The goal is to allow consumers within your niche to easily find and share your pins.ย Using keywords willย increase your standings within a specific searchย and just like other search engines, the higher up you appear, the more likely you are to be found.”

Add a call to action on your pins such as “read more here” or “click here for more info” with a link to the article. Including a solid call to action on your pin can help a lot! Try a few different phrases to see what works best for you and feels most natural.

3. Share the link to the pin with a #PinOfTheDay hashtag

Using the #PinOftheDay hashtag on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin ties your content to everyone else that has shared a pin with #PinOfTheDay. It's also a great way to find your Pinterest friends favorite pins for the day too!

Or alternatively, choose a hashtag that is relevant to you and your blog.

4. Cross-promote your pins!

Pinterest pins are easy to share on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Everywhere that you share a link to your blog, you can share the link to your pin as well.

Add a call to action with the Pinterest link. I like to use pin it for later with a link to the pin. I also like to share pins that are being repinned with a tweet saying Popular Pin or Hot Pin with a description and link to the pin.

You can also add a link to your Pinterest profile in your email signature so people can find and follow you there.

Read more: How to Promote your Pinterest Pins FTWย and pin it!

5. Register your blog on Pinterest for Business for analytics

Load your blog up with all the free goodies from Pinterest for maximum blog and Pinterest action.

  • Change your account from a personal to business Pinterest account. This will give you access to analytics on Pinterest. I use the analytics to show me what pins are popular so I can repin them to another board and tweet it. Once a pin gets momentum, keep it going!
  • Add rich pins to your website.
  • Add a pin it button to your blog.
  • Add a Pinterest board widget to your blog sidebar.

Here are a few of my favorite Pinterest resource boards about Pinterest and blogging that will keep you inspired and up-to-date on the latest happenings:

I hope these tips for using Pinterest with your blog are helpful. Taking the time to frost your blog post by pinning each post and adding the sprinkles of additional post promotion is sure to make your blog more popular!

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21 Comments

  1. Great article, Peg!ย 

    I really needed these tips; I have just started to incorporate Pinterest into my marketing strategy within the last three weeks. I am now going back through all my blog posts and making them pinnable using Canva. What fun!

    I continue to look forward to your articles on this. ๐Ÿ™‚

  2. Hi Peg, love following you. ย I only found out last week how awesome Pinterest is as a free tool! ย It creates links back to my blog for free. ย Everyone can use links. ย Obviously you love Pinterest too and I hear over 70% ? ย of Pinterest users are women so it’s easy to pin visually attractive photos for women. ย My question is (and I expect i will find the answer here as you say to make a separate photo to pin related to post) do you create the link and keywords for photo before you publish on post or is there a way to edit your link and description/tags etc. after it is published? The search engines would probably ignore the re-edited image on your blog? ย Love the photos you use for your posts. Photos with ย Chocolate is my favourite!

  3. There are so many things you can do with Pinterest. ย I love the many ways you can bridge this platform over to other social media sites. ย Great as usual Peg.

  4. You know how much I love your analogy about Pinterest being the cupcake and the sprinkles to web traffic. Pinterest has been an incredible resource for my blog. It’s amazing what it’s done for my traffic in the last year.

    Pin all the things Peg! ๐Ÿ™‚

  5. Three of my favorite things in one article – cupcakes, sprinkles and Pinterest! I’ve been doing #1 and #2 for ages and I must say, it makes a huge difference. Even though I don’t have a lot of time to spend on Pinterest, I get a huge amount of traffic from it. It works great for one of our clients, too.ย 

    The only one I don’t currently use is the #pinoftheday. I’m going to give that a try! It’s a great way to find good content to share, too. Always a pleasure to read your posts, Peg. ๐Ÿ™‚

  6. Rebekah Radice ย I love all the little tweaks we’ve made to our content sharing strategy to boost Pinterest and web traffic, it’s been a great and successful experiment!

  7. PegFitzpatrickย You know, I did try it, just to look for content and didn’t find anything remotely interesting to me. Well, OK, the one about pennies repelling slugs caught my attention, but business-wise, not so much. ๐Ÿ™‚ Maybe at certain times it’s better for promoting than mining for content?

  8. Thank you so much for sharing so many great tips!ย  I did add a business account but also have my personal account.ย  I find it very confusing to switch from one to the other, and it seems that when I post to the business site, it shows my personal information.ย  Do you have a post that might clarify?

  9. Hey Peg

    Thank you for another engaging and educational post. I have started creating Pinnable Images using Canva. So long as my writing is consistently offering value, I am hoping interconnecting Pins and Blogs will pay off! ๐Ÿ™‚ย 

    Thanks again….

    Kitto

    PS: I am #CrazyAboutCupcakes too, although it’s been a while since I have eaten one! lol Red Velvet is my favorite – and yours? ๐Ÿ˜‰

  10. kr_iyer ย Glad you liked the article! Hooray for pinnable images from Canva – my Pinterest traffic exploded when I started using it. I hope it does for you as well.

    I love vanilla vanilla cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery in NYC. (vanilla cupcake with vanilla frosting) I have the recipe and make them at home occasionally.

  11. I’m a huge believer with #4; add a call to action on the pin description because spammers have the ability to change source link but they are usually to lazy to change the pin descriptions. By adding your link on the pin description it also triggers pinners to click on it giving you more click throughs.

    Thank you so much for recommending my Pinterest Marketing Tips For Business boardย PegFitzpatrick

  12. re #1 – so important! I have looked and looked for blog themes that have vertical images built into them but there sure aren’t many.ย 
    Many thanks for the shout-out, Peg!!

  13. Pinterest as the frosting and sprinkles on a cupcake will be fun and delicious I must say. I like using Pinterest on my daily task, it didn’t just have me earn traffic for my post but as lot gives me a fun time exploring it.Thanks Peg

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