The Ultimate Guide To Get Started On Pinterest

Get ready for the ultimate guide to get started on Pinterest. Starting a blog is great. So is using gorgeous photos. But having visitors coming to that blog every day and returning is even better. Even when you blog for yourself, you still want people to read your work. What is the point of sharing your story if no one can learn from it? Although I am a bit defender of “blog about what you like regardless of the audience size”, it still feels good when people visit your blog, read your posts, interact with you and share their opinion. So you get it, you need daily traffic to your blog. One of the best ways to achieve that is to use Pinterest. If the platform intimidates you, worry not! Here is the ultimate guide to get started on Pinterest!

The Ultimate Guide To Get Started On Pinterest

Just like Instagram, Pinterest is a highly visual marketing tool. Instagram has a lot of unwritten rules that are hard to grasp. So does Pinterest. But this is a topic for another day. Let’s focus on how to get started on Pinterest for now. As opposed to Instagram, Pinterest is not a social media. Pinterest is indeed a search engine and SEO plays a huge part in the success of your Pinterest marketing strategy. Again, this is something we will cover later.

Now, remember when I said that Pinterest is a highly visual marketing tool? It is something you need to keep in mind as you craft your Pinterest marketing strategy to drive traffic to your blog. What makes you follow someone on Instagram is the overall look of the grid, the biography, the quality of the content. Let’s say that it is rather similar with Pinterest. Thus, in the ultimate guide to get started on Pinterest, we will mostly cover what you can do on your profile page to attract visitors, increase your daily impressions and ultimately, increase your blog traffic.

1. Write a compelling biography

Writing a good biography is very important because it is basically the first thing people see when the land on your Pinterest profile. To get started on Pinterest, you need to think of ways to make your biography compelling and interesting. It must be informative, straight to the point and clearly indicating what your profile is about. Optimizing your Pinterest biography makes your account look more professional, is SEO-friendly and tells viewers of who you are.

That is why you need to add keywords to your biography. The ultimate guide to get started on Pinterest will not get too far in this for now though. Your main keywords are basically what your blog and Pinterest are about. For example, I  used keywords relating to my main niches in my display name.

What Corinne Did | Fashion, Baking & Blogging Tips

Thus, I am hoping that if people search Pinterest for any of those topics, my profile pops up in the search results. Of course, the content that I create for Pinterest must also match those keywords, otherwise Pinterest would not find my profile relevant. In the description of your profile, you can write a few sentences detailing a bit more what you profile is about. This will also help viewers find your profile and also tell them exactly what they can find on your profile.

Finally, upload a profile photo. You always have a profile photo on Instagram, Facebook and other social media. Even though Pinterest is a search engine, it makes no exception to the rule. If you are a brand or a service provider, you may want to use your logo as your profile photo. If you are a blogger, a headshot is fine. Seeing the picture of a person can help build a human connection.

2. Create niche specific Pinterest boards

Saving content on Pinterest works a bit like storing content on a desktop. You have multiple folders dividing content in categories, i.e. documents, images, music, etc. Well, it is the same on Pinterest. A great way to get started on Pinterest is to think beforehand of what boards you want on your profile. Basically, what content will you put out there and save as well. Even though how you organize your boards is completely up to you, remember that Pinterest is a visual marketing tool. The first impression counts.

First of all, create different boards with different themes. I have a board for outfit ideas, baking, travel guides for instance. When you create a new board, make sure that the name clearly displays what the board is about. Then, in the description, include relevant keywords and synonyms to help the Pinterest algorithm understand what the board is about and show it in search results. Be diligent when creating new boards and optimizing them for SEO. If your board is called “outfit ideas” make sure to use keywords in the description such as “street style”, “fashion looks”, “outfit of the day”, “outfit inspiration”, etc. You may also type in “outfit ideas” in the search bar to see what Pinterest suggests is relevant and searched for and use those suggestions in your board description.

Once your boards are ready, you upload a cover photo for each. It must be 600*600 px. Most of the time, the cover simply displays the name of the board and is consistent across all boards, i.e. same color. Use Canva to do it. To upload the cover, click on the little pen at the bottom right corner of a board on your profile. Or on the pen at the top of the page when you are in the board. Then scroll down to “cover” and click “change”. If you have  uploaded the cover to the board, it will show and you can select it. Then save. The cover will display once you have saved a few pins in the board.

Finally, you can feature up to five boards at the top of your Pinterest profile so that people get to see content you want to promote first. To do that, simple. Click on the three dots in the top right corner of the page and go into “edit settings”. In “edit profile” scroll down to “Featured boards” at the bottom on the page and click “edit”. You can select up to five boards you want to feature at the top of your profile. Click save and you are done. That’s it for the second step in the ultimate guide to get started on Pinterest.

3. Pin and repin manually regularly

Pinterest may not be a social media, but if there is something it loves, it is engagement and activity. If you think about it, so does Instagram. You can’t expect people to find your profile, interact with you and start following you if  you never ever take the initiative of engaging yourself after all. However, as opposed to Instagram, Pinterest is not a platform that relies on your number of followers. Not at all. On Instagram, your followers or people finding you through hashtags you use, will see your content. On Pinterest, anyone can see your content, regardless of whether they follow you or not.

Pinterest is a search engine. Thus, technically, if your pin names and descriptions are optimized for SEO, anyone performing a search for which your content is relevant, can find your content. Pinterest loves when you are active and pinning a lot. That’s why it is important to dedicate maybe five to ten minutes each day to pin other people’s content into your boards. This will stimulate your activity but will also put you out there. The more you save, the more what you save shows on others’ news feed and the more chances they land on your profile. There was a rule where three pins a day to a board helps suggest that board to other people. I am not sure whether this is still the case.

Pinning content regularly can help you gain more followers, which means that you, at some point, guarantee that a certain amount of people will always see your content. Unfortunately, pinning other people’s content will not increase your website traffic, since the pin does not link to your blog. Thus, it is also important that you pin your very own content, which is the next step in the ultimate guide to get started on Pinterest.

4. Pin your own content regularly

The best way to indeed increase traffic to your blog via Pinterest is to pin your own content. I see a lot of people complaining that they do not get traffic from Pinterest despite being very active there. This is because they do not share they own content on Pinterest enough. It also takes time for your Pinterest marketing strategy to pick up and pins to go viral. Nothing ever happens in a day. But first, you need to pin your own content!

To get started on Pinterest and put together a Pinterest marketing strategy that works, you must dedicate some time to create your own pins for your blog posts. Again, this is something you can very easily do in Canva, which has a lot of Pinterest pin templates you can use. One thing you can do is create two different pins for a blog post and add them at the end of said post to encourage people to save it on their own Pinterest. You’ll see an example at the bottom of this post! Otherwise, you can add those pins manually to a board of yours. Remember to craft a good title and description that are SEO friendly and rich in keywords.

The only way to get people on your blog from Pinterest is to actually promote your posts like you would do on Twitter or Facebook. If you tweet five times a day promoting a blog post, it makes sense to do just the same on Pinterest. The difference is, while a tweet has a lifespan of not even a few minutes, a Pinterest pin is evergreen and will go around Pinterest forever. If the pin picks up and goes viral, you may see a surge in traffic and then a decline. However, chances are the pin will always bring some traffic to your blog.

You can also create pins for your Instagram and Youtube content should you be active on either of those two platforms. Pinterest can help get people onto either and maybe help you get more followers. I try to promote my Youtube videos on Pinterest and sometimes add outfit photos from my Instagram which I save in different boards: “What Corinne Did on Instagram, “Best of What Corinne Did”, “Outfit ideas”, etc.

5. Create a board dedicated to your blog

This is something Ell Duclos suggests as part of her Pinterest marketing strategy and I think it is brilliant. A pin dedicated to your blog is a great way to put together all the pins that are promoting your blog posts. It makes it easier for people to find your blog content as well. I called my blog content board “Best Of What Corinne Did” but I could have called it “Trending On What Corinne Did”.

Do not be shy when pinning new content in this board. Although Pinterest does not like to see the same pins over and over again, if you create fresh pins it is fine. Thus, you can save multiple times pins linking the the same blog post. Changing the image or the text will do the trick. Pinterest likes to see visuals that have not been on the search engine before. 

What I do is always saving my blog related pins in my “Best of What Corinne Did” board. Then, from that board, I will save the pin to other relevant boards so that it looks like the pin has been saved a few times already. For example,  I have a blog post for a Harry Potter Butterbeer cupcakes recipe. I will first add it to my blog board. Then, I will save it to my “Baking Board” but also my “Harry Potter board”.

Let’s take my “SEO for beginner’s guide“. I will first save it to my blog board. Then, I will save it my “blogging tips”, but also “content marketing” and “SEO tips for bloggers” boards. This help increase the reach of the pin. Again, the more a pin is saved, the more likely it goes viral since a Pinterest pin viral potential mostly relies on snowball effect. That is why you first need to have a board for your blog content plus have other relevant boards to pin the content to.

6. Join group boards

Moving onto stage six of the ultimate guide to get started on Pinterest. Group boards. Group boards are a bit controversial. Pinterest started them as a way to collaborate with other creatives. Ideally, Pinterest group boards would be a way to pool ideas and create something together. As Ell Duclos so nicely put it, a wedding planner would have a group board with her client to share ideas. However, group boards quickly became a way for many people to dump their content and spam without ever engaging. Thus, of course, Pinterest decided to put a stop to it.

Group boards are still around but they are not as effective as they once were. The Pinterest algorithm does not give group boards as much weight as before. This is to force people to engage and interact. You may still join group boards because they can be super useful and increase your reach. Being part of an active group board can indeed help get your content seen  by more people. 

However, before you join any Pinterest group boards, there are a few things you need to keep in mind. First, there is no point in joining a group that is not relevant to what you do. Members will not be interested in your content nor will they pin it. You need to find a group board that belongs to your niche, whose members will have an interest in your content. Then, you need to make sure you have the capacity to always respect the rules and reciprocate. A lot of group boards have rules. You need to pin others’ content before you can share yours. You are not ready to dedicate the time, maybe you should not join.

7. Use a scheduling tool

Last but not least in the ultimate guide to get started on Pinterest, using a scheduling  tool. There are not that many tools that Pinterest allows as part of their API. However, tailwind is one of them and it is a very famous one. it might even be the only one. Not sure. Although I quite enjoy pinning manually other people’s content, I have to admit I don’t have time every day to do so with mine. That is where Tailwind, or a scheduling tool comes in handy.

Tailwind is a Pinterest scheduling tool that allows you to schedule how many pins a day you want for how many days you wish. Even though you get a seven day free trial with the possibility to schedule up to 100 pins, I would recommend to go for the paid membership, which is $119 a year. Pinterest is a search engine which requires dedication and time. Thus, using Tailwind for a short period of time may not produce results you are happy with.

I use Tailwind to schedule my own content. Thus, once a week, I create Pinterest pins in batch for my blog post. As I schedule those pins – do not forget to add a title and description – I also share them into Tailwind Tribes, relevant to my content. Tribes are similar to group boards and help you get your content in front of more people. They also have rules to abide to. Basically, you share one pin in a Tribe, you need to save one.  Easy.

As Tailwind is not free, I get that not everyone wants to give it a go. You can get $15 off your membership if you use this link (affiliate). But, it is super helpful, especially if say, you go on holiday and don’t have time to create fresh pins nor pin every day!

This is the end of the ultimate guide to get started with Pinterest. I hope all those tips will be helpful for you as you get started with Pinterest and rock that Pinterest marketing strategy. Bare in mind it takes time and dedication but it can help you explode your blog traffic!

What do you think of the ultimate guide to get started on Pinterest? Did you know these tips already? Do you have any that you would want to share with us? We’ve been using Pinterest for a while now but probably forgot some advice.

I hope you liked this post. Thanks for reading.

See you soon,
Love,
Corinne

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