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Did you recently start a blog? Is Google giving you a hard time when it comes to getting organic traffic? Don’t worry, Pinterest is here to save the day. Today, we’ll talk about Pinterest for bloggers, and how to use it to your advantage as a new blogger.
What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is no ordinary platform. Pinterest, like Google, is a search engine. It allows users to search for ideas and inspiration about basically anything.
Unlike Google where the search results are primarily text-based ie. blog post title, meta description, and URL, Pinterest is visual, allowing users to explore new discoveries by means of images, and videos.
So if your blog niche is home decor, food and drinks, DIY projects, fashion, lifestyle, and personal development, Pinterest is the perfect platform for you.
Think of Pinterest as a digital vision board. Users search for inspiration and “pin” these images in their own vision boards.
But, if you feel that you want to focus your time and energy in creating content, rather than learning the ins and outs of a new platform, hiring a Pinterest Manager is always an option.
However, if you are excited to get your hands on Pinterest, create pins, and come up with Pinterest strategies to give your website traffic a boost, stick around because this blog post is filled with helpful Pinterest tips for new bloggers.
How to use Pinterest for blogging?
A lot of bloggers swear by Pinterest as:
- Primary source of website traffic –
- Reach a wider audience (U.S. based)
- Earn through affiliate marketing
- Earn by selling your own products/services
Related Post: 30 High-Paying Affiliate Programs Perfect for New Bloggers
How do I add Pinterest to my blog?
If you’re using WordPress, you need to install social sharing plugins like Social Warfare or Sassy Social Share so it will be easy for your website visitors to “Pin” your blog post.
I have used both plugins. Both do the job, but I prefer Sassy Social Share.
How to set up Pinterest for blogging
1. Convert your Pinterest from Personal to Business
Is a Pinterest Business account free?
Absolutely.
What is the difference between a personal and a business account?
A Pinterest business account allows you to:
- Access your analytics
- See stats of individual pins
- Promote pins (run ads)
- Create rich pins
So, how do you convert your Pinterest account from Personal to Business?
After you log in, click the 3 dots on the right side of your screen and choose Edit Settings. Today, I’m using the Pinterest account of my Self-care blog.
Next, click Account Settings.
Scroll down until you reach the bottom of the page that says Account changes.
Then click the button that says Convert Account.
You will be redirected to a page that confirms the activity. Click continue and you’re done.
2. Claim your website
Another important step in converting to a Pinterest business account is to claim your website.
Please note that in order for you to do this step, you need to have a self-hosted WordPress website.
Here are the steps on how to claim your website.
1. Go back to Edit settings, then Claim. Type your blog URL and click the red button that says Claim.
2. You will see a pop-up that says Pick Claim Option and tick Add HTML tag.
3. Log in to your WordPress website and install and activate the Insert Headers and Footers plugin. Once the plugin is activated, go to Settings, and click Insert Headers and Footers.
4. Go back to Pinterest, copy the HTML tag, and paste it in WordPress inside the box that says Scripts in Header.
5. Go back to Pinterest and click Submit for review.
6. You will see in the account settings that they will review your request and give the results in the next 24 hours. Mine didn’t take that long. I think it only took an hour.
3. Enable rich pins
What are rich pins?
According to Pinterest,
Rich Pins show metadata right on the Pin itself, giving Pinners a richer experience and increasing engagement. Information in a Rich Pin is independent of the Pin description, ensuring that important information is always tied to the Pin. There are 4 types of Rich Pins: app, article, product and recipe Pins.
Rich Pins work by displaying metadata from marked up pages on your website. Once you’ve applied for Rich Pins, any content on your site with metadata will turn into a Rich Pin when a user saves it.
In a nutshell, Pinterest wants to know what kind of content you’re sharing in their platform to provide the best user experience. Moreover, this validation process determines your intention as to how you will use the platform and agree to their terms and conditions.
You may hear some bloggers complain about their account being suspended. This can be caused by a number of reasons. But primarily it’s because Pinterest thinks that their account does not adhere to their community guidelines, and it appears that they are violating spam policies.
Claiming your website and enabling rich pins, are crucial steps to adhere to Pinterest’s guidelines. So make sure that you don’t skip this step.
To start, open the Rich Pin Validator here.
If you have the Yoast SEO plugin installed, you can follow these instructions to enable rich pins on your blog.
4. Optimize your Pinterest business account profile
Let’s start with your display name.
If you follow me on Pinterest, you will see that I have keywords How to Start a Blog and Make Money Blogging beside my name.
These are the Pinterest Keywords I’m targeting. Meaning, I want my Pinterest profile to be found with these keywords.
For example, your blog niche is giving career advice.
When you type career advice in the Pinterest search bar and hit enter, it will show additional keyword suggestions people are searching on Pinterest.
Moreover, the search bar also shows the results of trending topics related to your target keywords.
These are the Pinterest keywords you can use which can be displayed beside your real name or blog name.
5. Optimize your profile description
Now that you have a list of keywords to target, the next step is to use them in your profile description.
If you go back to my profile, my other target keywords are SEO for bloggers, best blogging tips, and work from home.
Going back to our example earlier, you can use career advice for women, work tips, and job ideas for women in the profile description.
6. Upload your Pinterest profile photo
There isn’t really one rule as to what image to use as your Pinterest profile photo.
A logo would be nice. But having your gorgeous face in the profile image makes a lot of difference. Besides, a lot of our target audience aim for authenticity, and having your face put out there means a lot.
To edit your display name, photo, and profile description, just click the 3 dots on the right side of your screen and choose Edit settings.
Under Edit profile, edit your Display Name, Photo, and About your profile.
There isn’t really one rule as to what image to use as your Pinterest profile photo.
In using Pinterest for blogging, using your brand logo would be nice. But having your gorgeous face in the profile image makes a lot of difference. Besides, a lot of our target audience aims for authenticity, and having your face put out there increases your chances of building your personal branding.
To edit your display name, photo, and profile description, just click the 3 dots on the right side of your screen and choose Edit settings.
Under Edit profile, edit your Display Name, Photo, and About your profile.
7. Create niche-related boards with description
Remember the keywords you’ve collected earlier to optimize your display name and description?
Hold on to them because you will use those keywords to name your Pinterest boards and Description.
What is a Pinterest board?
A Pinterest board is a way to group your pins according to your interest or theme. On Facebook, you can create albums for your photos, ie. wedding photos, summer outing, birthdays, and other special or random occasions.
A Pinterest board ALMOST works the same. The only difference is, you will be using these boards to share your content, have your pins saved, and finally get website clicks.
Pinterest tips for new bloggers on how to create a Pinterest board
Simply click the red plus icon on the right side of the screen and click Create a Board.
Edit the board by adding a name, description, category, and click Save.
To add a board cover, just click Change and you can upload an image from your computer. I suggest you use Canva for this and use the template for Instagram posts.
How many boards do I need to use Pinterest for blogging?
If you don’t have a lot of blog posts to pin yet, start with 10 Pinterest boards. You may be overwhelmed with creating content already, let alone spending hours every day to engage and keep your Pinterest boards up to date.
I have been experimenting on my Pinterest boards for the past 5 months, added and deleted boards (which is a big no-no when you’re starting out by the way), and figure out which strategies work for my niche. This process alone takes a lot of time and effort. So, start with what you can easily manage. Then, you can add more boards as you go.
Also, you can arrange your Pinterest boards by clicking the drop down arrow. I choose Drag and drop so I can put my most relevant boards at the top.
At present, I have 25 boards in my Pinterest account, 3 of which are group boards.
A group board is the same as a regular Pinterest board. The only difference is that you can create, join, or get invited as among the collaborators to publish pins.
8. Create Pinterest pins
How do we create pins? Canva has got your covered. Canva has free templates you can customize to your branding.
If you’re not really on the artsy side, don’t worry. Your first few pins aren’t gonna be super fabulous. Right now, what’s important is to get it done.
Create at least 3 pins per blog post. Pinterest loves fresh pins. Switch it up by playing with different colors, font styles, and background images.
Here are the recommended Pinterest image sizes for 2020:
- Pinterest Standard Pin size: Vertical images 1000 x 1500
- Pinterest Video specs: square (1:1) or vertical (2:3, 9:16) Length: Minimum 4 seconds, maximum 15 minutes
9. Schedule Pins
As a new blogger, it’s hard to compete with those who have established their brands already, especially if your niche is competitive, like mine.
Some bloggers find success with Pinterest by scheduling 50 pins a day. However, it’s impossible to do that with a new blog with 10 blog posts or less.
The solution? Use the 80/20 rule.
For example, you will schedule 10 pins today. 2 are yours, while 8 are from other Pinterest profiles.
Do not expect that you will get a lot of website traffic from the get-go. The goal here is to increase your monthly viewers by sharing other user’s pins. The more viewers you have, the bigger the chance that your pins will reach a wider audience.
There are 2 ways to schedule Pinterest pins.
1. Directly from Pinterest
When you manually publish a pin, there are options below to Publish immediately or Publish at a later date. Choose the later, and select the date and time you want this pin to be published.
Pinterest allows you to schedule up to 30 pins. However, once a pin is scheduled, there’s no option to edit. Instead, you can only select whether you want to publish it now or delete it.
2. Use a pin scheduler
Tailwind – A lot of bloggers swear by Tailwind. Tailwind allows you to schedule your first 100 pins for free. No credit card required. If you like the experience and decide to move to a paid plan, it allows you to schedule an unlimited number of pins per month. And what I love about Tailwind is they suggest what time is best to pin. Moreover, they have a smart loop feature that allows them to circulate your pins for you. Lastly, they have Tailwind tribes. This is somehow similar to group boards. It allows you to share your pins, meet other bloggers, collaborate, and learn from each other.
Planoly – Planoly is an oldie but a goodie. If you think you’re not ready to commit to Tailwind, try Planoly. Their free plan allows you to schedule 30 pins per month and it’s free to use as long as you want. Plus, you can use Planoly to schedule your Instagram posts, too.
10. Pin description and hashtags
Remember the keywords you used to optimize your Pinterest profile? Hold on to them because here’s one last chance to make use of them. For every Pin your schedule or manually publish, you are allowed to write a description with up to 500 characters, with the first 50 showing up in most feeds.
Maximize these 500 characters by using your target keywords.
And of course, hashtags. Unlike Instagram where you’re allowed to use up to 25 hashtags per post, Pinterest likes to use hashtags in moderation. For every pin, it is ideal to use 3 hashtags.
Conclusion
What if you’ve tried everything, and yet. Pinterest isn’t giving you the love you deserve?
Well, there are other ways to get your pins noticed.
And that is by joining Facebook groups dedicated to repins and pin click-throughs.
Using Pinterest for blogging is indeed very helpful in driving traffic to your website. But just like building your social media platforms and SEO, getting the results you want takes time.
When things aren’t doing well, don’t be too hard on yourself.
Be patient.
Do not be afraid to try different strategies.
Be consistent.
You’ll get there.
