Whether you’re an established travel blogger or just starting a blog, if don’t have a Pinterest account then you’re missing a trick. Out of all the social media platforms that you should be putting your time and effort into, Pinterest needs to be top of that list. Why? Because it has the potential to bring huge amounts of traffic to your website. And more traffic means earning more income as a blogger, which is what we’re all striving for right
But let’s be on clear on one very important detail before we get into the nitty of gritty of things, Pinterest not really a social media platform. Not in the sense that Facebook or Instagram and the likes are. You see it behaves much more like a search engine, and that my friend is why it’s so freaking awesome. Because once you’ve placed great content on there it just keeps giving and giving and giving.
Here’s what we’re going to cover in this post on how to rock your Pinterest Traffic.
- Optimise Your Pinterest Profile
- Join Awesome Group Boards
- Create Kickass Pins
- Use A Scheduler
- Join Pinterest Share Threads
- Dig Into Your Analytics
Optimise Your Pinterest Profile
First up, your name. After your blog title, you are going to want to add some additional search terms on what your blog is about. Do you write about adventure travel? Travelling with kids? Or are you focused on a specific destination? Whatever it is, hop into the account settings in the top right corner and go ahead and edit your ‘business name’ in the profile section. For example Blog Name | Adventure Travel With Kids.
Next, take a few minutes to either fill out or revisit your ‘about you’ section. This needs to tell people what you do and why they should follow your account. You only have a limited amount of characters so it needs to be concise. Also, it’s a good idea to include your personal name(s). People like to know who’s behind the Pinterest account, it makes it more credible.
Which leads directly to your profile picture. Typically here you should have a picture of you, the travel blogger(s). However, if you have a strong brand with a wicked logo you could use this too. It’s also a good idea to have the same photo/logo as the profile across all of your social media sites. It instantly makes you more recognizable to your audience.
If your Pinterest account isn’t already set up as a business account you’re going to want to go ahead and convert that. Also be sure to confirm your website and enable rich pins. This allows Pinterest to pull through important information from the articles on your website which in turn makes them more discoverable in searches on Pinterest.
Now, for your Pinterest boards. The title of very first one should simply be the name of your blog. This is where all the master pins for your articles are going to live. Don’t worry if you already have boards set up, you can move them around by dragging and dropping. Then you need to set up boards for all the different topics you cover on your blog.
Most people have these set up by country or world region, but you might also want to include specific topics like ‘couple travel tips’ or ‘best travel gear’. However you decide to do this, remember that you are organizing your Pinterest account this way for your blog audience. If you want a board with ‘cute cat pics’ or ‘tattoo wants’, save those for a personal account, they have no place here.
Finally, you are going need to optimise those group boards with additional searchable terms. If you are already familiar with SEO then you’ll have a good idea what to include, but also make use of the search bar at the top of the page. When you input your main term this will bring up a list of related words that Pinterest users use when searching for that topic. Jazzy right? Then simply use some of those terms to help create a description of what your board is about.
Join Awesome Group Boards
Next up, in order to get your content out there and shared widely, you need to join some group boards. Here’s a list of awesome Pinterest group boards for travel bloggers and you should also use Pingroupie, which allows you to search for Pinterest group boards by category and lots of other filters.
There’s no limit on how many you can join, just make sure you read the rules of each board and don’t request to join ones that aren’t relevant to your blog or audience. You can also search for group boards to join directly through the Pinterest search bar, just type in what you are looking for and set it to search for boards rather than pins.
Create KickAss Pins
Okay, listen up because this next bit on how to rock your Pinterest traffic is probably the single most important part. Pinterest is a visual platform, which means anything less than stunning visuals aren’t going to cut it. But luckily even if you are not the most design gifted blogger there are some fab tools out there with brilliant templates to help you.
Canva which has a free version and Pic Monkey are favorites. Also spend some time looking at successful pinners’ pins, like really looking. What size pins are they using? What kind of graphic is easy to read and stand out? Which colors work well together? Really examine them. And if you are using photographs, you should always be using top-notch ones.
So if photography is not where your skills lie you will have far more success on rocking your Pinterest traffic by using stock images rather than your own shots. Pinterest is competitive, there are millions of pins vying for pinners attention so they are just not going to click on unattractive looking pins, no matter how great the article behind it is.
Just as we discussed above about optimising your boards with keywords to assist with searchable content in Pinterest, you’re going to want to apply this same technique to your individual pin descriptions. Pinterest has also recently just started taking notice of hashtags, so although they are not widely being used yet, add a few of those onto your pin description too.
For every new pin that you publish in Pinterest you want to pin a master copy to your blog board and share it out across all other group boards from that. The link of that pin is also the one that you need to use for Pinterest share threads – more on that below. This is so that this pin starts to receive repin upon repin and builds up its authority with the Pinterest algorithms.
Use A Scheduler
Like all social media platforms, in order to grow, you need to be active on them. A lot. And also not just be sharing your own content. The Pinterest algorithm gods don’t like that and it’s best not to upset them. Bulk pinning is also frowned upon, your activity on the platforms needs to be nicely spaced out. But how to do that without being on Pinterest all day every day?
Simple. Use a scheduler. There are a couple of good ones out there that are popular in the Pinterest world and they are Tailwind and Boardbooster. They both do a similar-ish job, however, Tailwind is officially approved by Pinterest as a management tool so it has the edge in many people’s opinion. Some bloggers even use both.
What tailwind allows you to do is set up a schedule so that you can send out new pins for automation. It also has a great function whereby you can categorize all your boards into lists and then schedule pins to all of the relevant lists at the touch of a button.
Another cool thing about Tailwind is that it has a feature called Tribes. Which are basically niche groups where you share your pins for other Tribe members to schedule and also schedule out related content from them which you know your audience will be interested in.
Some Pinterest users swear by a 20/80 share ratio between their own and others’ content, while others lean more towards 40/60. Either way, you should be sharing more of other people’s content than your own and Tailwind tribes is an excellent way to do it.
Join Pinterest Share Threads
As a blogger, you’ll know the importance of social proofing to your content i.e building credibility through ensuring it’s shared far and wide. So with this in mind, it’s great to get new pins and new blog content shared as broadly as possible. There are some really great Facebook groups that facilitate this. The method is simple, you add a pin link to a thread, repin everyone else’s’ pin in the thread and they will repin yours.
Naturally now and again there are a few bloggers who don’t play fair, but overall the admins do a sterling job of keeping the groups in check. You can do direct repins in real time or pop them into your schedule if you are using Tailwind. It can be pretty tedious but it’s a good way of meeting the quota of sharing more of others’ content than your own and gaining some initial social proofing for your fabulous looking pins.
Here are the best Pinterest sharing threads for travel bloggers:
- Mappin Monday
- Ultimate Pinterest Group for Travel Bloggers
- Pinterest for Travel Bloggers
- Travel Bloggers Guide to Pinterest
Dig Into Your Analytics
Finally, the last thing that will help you to rock your Pinterest traffic is keeping an eye on your analytics. Pinterest has its own analytics that can be accessed through the top search bar when you are logged into your account, but the best tool to use is Google Analytics because there’s just so much more information.
There’s a handy guide here from Tailwind on how to understand your traffic from Pinterest. Knowing which your top performing posts and pins allow you to drive more traffic through them to your website by creating additional new pins for popular articles and also resharing popular pins through your group boards.
You may find that your pins that live on others people’s boards are doing well too. In which case it never hurts to give them a boost too. It’s also handy to know which posts and pins aren’t performing well on Pinterest so that you can either try to optimise them with better keywords or create better-looking pins.
What are you waiting for? Get to work and rock your Pinterest traffic!
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