How we Doubled our Traffic from Pinterest in 90 Days!

 

Here’s how You Can Double Your Traffic from Pinterest by 185% in 90 Days

Is it even worth bothering to try and double let alone increase traffic from Pinterest to our blog at all?

Heck with the changes coming thick and fast its sounds like a lost cause…Or is it?

 

Well here is our tale of love. An experiment I carried out and am super excited to share the results so far…

In 2014 we created a Pinterest account and forgot about it. We neither verified nor created a business account, yet still got over 250 followers without pinning anything useful other than other people’s great content on 1 board!

In 2015 we verified & linked Pinterest to our blog/website. We started getting approx. 50 – 80 visitors per day from Pinterest. While that is peanuts to most, remember we still weren’t doing anything special at all! Yet that traffic was consistent, we know lots of sites that barely get 1 visitor a day!

 

The number started increasing every time we pinned a post. Mostly we were pinning our own Blog content using blog images, not optimized for Pinterest.  And guess what happened soon afterwards, we started getting more notable traffic around 200-400 visitors per day.

HERE IS HOW YOU CAN FOLLOW US ON PINTEREST

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So I started taking note of what I was doing and tracking so I could share the results either way. We also decided to find more info on a working strategy to double our traffic from Pinterest and this has been increasing monthly until Feb 2016 when there was a Pinterest algorithm change!

In October 2015 I decided to give more time to Pinterest marketing because it seemed to be a great source of constant and targeted traffic. In December is when the serious experiment started! By then we were averaging 300+ Pinterest visitors every time we pinned and this continued thru the week. December was especially busy, and I put it down to Christmas frenzy. The season didn’t slow down the traffic.

Please note that although I was more focused on Pinterest I wasn’t doing anything on the blog different, other than creating Pinterest optimized images and adding a proper description, with the keyword as a #hashtag!

 

 

Also I focused on promoting our old content so below is my … 

 

Step by Step Guide – What I did to increase traffic from Pinterest  to our blog:

These are easily implantable steps that any serious blogger or internet marketer esp. Network Marketers (There is a dire lack of quality content form this space on Pinterest,) can apply and duplicate to get more traffic from Pinterest daily!

Caution: if you don’t like to focus your time and efforts then this isn’t for you!

Okay most of the work was done at the start! i.e. some 3+ hours per week then it automated the whole system & dropped down to 10-15 mins per day. And don’t mind if you have already done the first steps, simply jump to the relevant next step, and do it right!

 

Step #1: To get and increase traffic from Pinterest to your site, Create and Verify a Pinterest Business account! Determine your goal. Ours was to Increase Traffic from Pinterest and maybe increase follower numbers to 1k+. This helps you benchmark and once hit, will allow you to focus on bigger goals! 

 

Step #2: Identify the successful Pinners & Boards that are in your niche, study what they are doing what they are pinning, how often ratio of their content to other people’s content. Modelling their actions, will ensure you are more likely to hit your goals! 

 

Step #3: Identify the pages/posts on your blog/website that are already getting traffic from Pinterest this you will find in your Pinterest analytics once you have verified your site!

 

I noticed that most of our Pinterest visitors visited 3-4 different posts/page. It was a no brainer to refresh, improve the content and thus increase the traffic that was coming to these posts and also get more posts to the same quality to receive similar traffic from Pinterest. And for this I needed to check our Google Analytics to see which posts were getting the most Pinterest visitors.

I already knew our top traffic posts/pages, but I wanted to confirm which were not performing as well! If I could create great HD images for these posts, optimize the description and see what happens! May be I could get the traffic to these posts/pages to increase to at least 50 visitors/day from Pinterest!

For this I created the next step!

Step #4: Create a Spreadsheet or Google doc for tracking.

This Sheet was similar to our Email Marketing Spreadsheet!

 

 

 

• Column 2 had my Top 10 Page/Post URLs getting decent Pinterest traffic. This should take you 2-5 mins tops as Google analytics lays it all out for you simply copy & paste!

 

• Identify more blog posts in your archives that might be ideal for Pinterest audience! Remember Step 2 Above, niche Pinterest users who are successful & what they post, if your content is similar, bingo! That’s how you will know which of your posts would do well.

So visit your blog and sieve your posts that will suit this process. Don’t mind current performance on traffic.

Add those URLs to your spreadsheet/google doc. This step may take a little bit more esp. if you have over 200 blog posts like we do and you are going through every category. Don’t be mean to you, this is your online real estate and you are gonna dress it up for your potential Pinterest buyers.  

So by this point I had exactly 33 posts that I wanted to use for this experiment I rounded it up to 35 URLs/posts!

 

Step #5: Create a Graphic for Each Post to Increase Traffic from Pinterest!

And well its quite simple here, Pin the images to the relevant board and cross promote to your other socials, if you are part of a Tailwind Tribe go for it too!

The pins that get the most re­pins and most clicks will typically be the ones with the most effective images, description or simply topic of discussion or season!

On Pinterest vertical images 734 x 1100 pixels with warm colours stand out the most. So I highly recommend you use tall graphics. And you don’t have to have Photoshop or be an artist to create awesome Images.

Using text on the images did help lots too, those images also performed way better! I used titles of the post as Image overlay text to attract even more attention and traffic from Pinterest!

Last week I shared a full tutorial with an awesome tool to create funky fun already optimized images for social media incl. Pinterest! Or use Canva  which has great tutorials for newbies. Or other free royalty free images online!

Word of Caution: Always give attribution or credit for the photo if you just found it online or you could fall foul of copyright laws! OR simply use resources that offer royalty free stock photos that you can download for free for public use. For instance Unsplash, Pixabay & make sure to double check. BEST option is create your own images with your trusty android or camera and your PC.  

No need for fancy images, just make sure they are eye grabbing. Simply scroll to the top of your own Smart feed and you will see what is eye catching! Below are some examples of images that are doing great!

 

The beauty with Pinterest is users are very specific, when they pin your stuff they are actually planning on either using it, sharing it or buying, whatever their aim, it’s all good!

Whatever their aim I always advise to use text overlay on your images. In our case when shared all over the net more people can find the original source! I also add the URL in the description esp. now that Pinterest has allowed Affiliate links back on Pins, you can learn more about that here!

So for this to work, ensure you either already have an image that’s Pinterest friendly on the blog post or create one! Remember I had 35 posts you may have more or less. Set aside 2+hrs at the very least to create your images! And from now on save yourself time, always create a Pinterest optimized image for EVERY BLOG POST. If you intend to attract some Pinterest Traffic to your content and offers!

 

Step #6: Find Pinterest Tribes & Group Boards

Create a Column in your Google doc or Spreadsheet for this step!

Pinterest allows you to have group boards and while they were hit hard on the last Algorithm update, they are not completely dead in the water. Find smaller group boards with 500 or less active users.  Reach out to the owner and ask to be a contributor. Usually they will allow if they find that you are an active pinner who also shares others content to your boards!

OR Create your own Group Board and invite contributors.  These other pinners that you invite to pin items to your board just like they do to their own boards. Just like you may be invited by other users to pin to their boards.

Check your Pinterest Messages board or email for invites. This means that even if you do not have an established following of your own you can still get exposure for your pins if you are invited to some group boards that have a decent active following.

The resources I employed for this step are Tailwind for Tribes of like-minded Pinterest users to share each other’s content & and PinGroupie. This is a free resource that allows you to research and find group boards on any Subject with active users. It gives you the owner or creator, number of pins, Users and how active it is! And it’s all laid out in table like form. So easy to use. The rest is up to you!

Here is how I used PinGroupie to Increase Traffic from Pinterest to our offers!  I selected a niche subject/topic; sorted the results by number of followers, pins and contributors in that order. I then checked the boards to ensure they were an ideal fit for our brand and the experiment too! Then I reach out to the board owner requesting an invite. For every 10 emails I sent I got back at least 6 responses! That’s 30% response rate and yes I got a few Nos. We aren’t accepting any more contributors and that was okay!  I also wanted just 10 Group Boards Tops! And I wanted Quality traffic at eh rime I wasn’t bothered about followers! (a mistake by the way that I amended after Feb.)

 

And again this is labour/time intensive going thru boards, sending requests to the Creators to be a contributor and checking for their responses. Then once accepted actually visited the boards and Re-pinned lots of the already well performing pins to my own boards and pinned some of my own pins too.

The ratio being 60/40 mine/other people’s pins! And I visited the boards for the week daily doing this and by the way I was pinning only 20 pins max including our own Pins! 

Just know that there is a huge number of boards the choice is mind boggling so you have a choice of boards if on says no or doesn’t respond…there is always another!

And there no easy way to send a request to join a group board it’s all manual.

The beauty with PinGroupie is I could filter my search according to each topic and thus…

My Criteria for Which Boards I chose to Increase Traffic from Pinterest:

1. Boards with at least 2k+ Pins
2. Active Boards, I wanted boards with very recent pins. At least 24 hrs old max!
3. Collaborators No Less than 5 – The more contributors the higher chances of me being accepted on the board. Some boards have over 100 contributors…These are getting less and less exposure though!
4. Followers, I wanted Lots of followers as they would offer us more exposure, right!
5. Targeted – I always want to prioritize my work. So the board content had to resonate with our brand or interests Our Pins had to fit in and be of interest to the other board followers. 
6. Board Description – And my final criteria is the Board description. It has to be well optimized for search engines too. So I of course check out the description of every board I wish to join. Some Owners set the joining criteria others don’t, and some are closed! Some even add an email to use for requests, Others asked to comment on their pins requesting for an invite, this worked great too esp. coz I would comment on their most recent Pin requesting for an invite to their board and re-pin it too!

Note that in order for someone to invite you to join their Group board you had to follow at least one of their boards or follow them!  I always did both! It shows good will too! Make sure you do the same, or follow another board from the owner, or they will not be able to send you an invite.

If there are no instructions as to request an invite I click on the Board owner’s profile owner- their avatar is the first one shown on the group board. Find the link to their website, there is usually a Contact page or an email to contact them! I could tweet them or use their Facebook Page. Get creative here people! You are building a brand online! So some work is involved!

Step #7: Create a Pinning Schedule for your Refreshed content & Add to Spreadsheet.   

Avoid pinning the same image repeatedly on the same board. Which I have done before. And ensure that you spread the content to your different boards!  

My Spreadsheet guides me as to where I have shared the image and that its already been shared!

Pin other people’s content between sharing your own pins simply type a keyword in the search bar and go head and pin what resonates with your brand esp. if it already has a high number of repins…Its popular and will attract more viewers to your boards!

Don’t forget to pin your new images to Group Boards that you applied to and were accepted as a contributor.

Throughout the 3 months of my experiment I pinned our images to mostly active group boards incl. our own. I always ticked off the pinned image and where I pinned it on my spreadsheet.  This helped me to keep track of what’s been pinned where and what’s left!  At least 3 times a week I went through my Spreadsheet/google doc and re-pin the items. No more than twice a day to specific boards

A few times per week I would go through my spreadsheet and pin the items. I didn’t want to pin more than 1 or 2 items per day to any specific group board. And no repetitions. I didn’t want to be called a spammer. And I wanted to see how many repins from other people too. I also didn’t want to pin the same item multiple times a day even if it was to different boards.  So you too should pin different items to different boards, spread it out. 

This is what I did: I would normally pin 8 of our own pins, different content for each pin, then 10 other people’s pins on different boards. We have 45 boards!  

I of course didn’t do this all manually, no my friend, I used an online tool called Tailwind to schedule pins in advance. The beauty with tailwind is they suggest pins in your niche for you to repin too, sweet.

So you don’t have to go thru the Pinterest feed. You could use BoadBooster or Viralwoot for your automation process. 

Tailwind allows you space your pins so you don’t repin the same item to a board several times! You could pin items to your own boards more than once if you’d like, but I don’t recommend repeatedly pinning the same item to group boards because it could easily be considered spammy. 

Now here is a Super Tip. I created a couple more images per post, so I could post the same URL/post with a different image to group boards too. This is great when pinning the same post on the same day as well!

Tailwind is also great for automating your Instagram posts, thus saving you time on two platforms. 

Another awesome resource through Tailwind are the new Pinterest Tribes. These are taking the Pinterest game to a whole new level. If you share any Lifestyle content, you are welcome to our Pinterest Tribe.

And the good news is Pinterest has let up on the Group Boards esp. if they are small ones with an active group of contributors. 500 or a little less is okay. So we now look for such groups via PinGroupie! And have readjusted our Strategy on the thousands of contributors to group boards.

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Let’s Wrap this up:

I followed the last 2 steps over and over in the 90 days until 2^nd week of Feb!

So this is the strategy I used to increase Traffic from Pinterest to our blog.  The only thing I would do different is Focus more on Growing our audience, which is our next experiment. And here you have it, how we grew our audience from 256 to 2118 a percentage increase in growth of  over 185%.

We increased traffic from a slow 50 views per day to over 750 site visitor per day from Pinterest a whopping 800% increase. Despite the Pinterest changes that are making it impossible for new pins to hit the top of the newsfeed!  

Now our aim is to grow a targeted and active audience and we will share with you our results.

As I mentioned in the intro to this article, the above steps helped me to double and increase traffic from Pinterest to our blog in 90 days! You must agree that the results are great. And you must also agree that it’s doable by anyone who wishes to grow their traffic from Pinterest or any other social media for that matter. Since this experiment has been so successful, My plan is to now go through more of our posts and do the same with intent to also grow our audience.

A two pronged strategy since I have identified some more niche group boards to share our content. I will be using this same strategy for our luxury travel blog. Until we have a steady 40k plus views minimum from Pinterest alone! 

 And there you have it. The strategy I used to increase Pinterest traffic to our site by 800% and grew our follower base in the process by 185%.

If you too are interested in getting more Pinterest traffic for your site (yes we all do,) I highly recommend you Download this PDF NOW and get started leveraging Pinterest for your blog! I know you’ll get the results you desire, it’s so worth it I truly believe this.

 

Resources For You:

Tailwind Pinterest Automation – Check it out

PinGroupie for those Niche Boards – Lean more about it

Pinterest Algorithm Change Post – Lean more

Download The PDF – HERE

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