A few years ago browsing Pinterest was just a little hobby, the year I got married it became an obsession and now, it’s a fun and effective way to generate blog traffic. You can visit my account here. If you’ve never used Pinterest before, it’s basically a website that allows you to upload, save and organise images. You have a profile that you can fill with ‘boards’, for example; Nails, Baking and Beauty are three of my most popular. You can then fill these boards with Pins (i.e. images) that contain links to websites you can then explore (perhaps even to your own blog? *wink wink*). Pinterest is a great way to create mood boards, wish lists and save ideas (i.e. recipes, makeup swatches, travel destinations, reviews, hairstyles – the possibilities are endless). I’m also just a huge weirdo that finds organising pretty pins into different categories and boxes oddly satisfying.
Let me be clear – I’m no expert when it comes to Pinterest, however, my following has definitely increased significantly over the past few months so I thought I’d share with you a few reasons why. A couple of months ago I was sitting comfortably with just a few thousand followers, now I have over 21.8K, and it’s growing every day. Here are just a few ways I improved my profile and increase my following…
1. Pin Regularly
This may seem like the most obvious, but I’d been pinning for years and never saw a significant improvement with my stats, so I decided to up the ante. Every time I found myself about to open a ‘time-wasting’ app on my phone (Pokemon Go, Candy Crush or Plants vs. Zombie for example) or social media (Twitter, Instagram or Facebook) I would save 50 pins to my profile first. Every time I felt bored on a bus, had a break from work or went to make a snack; I’d pin another 50. I did this for a week, pinning in blocks of 50 a minimum of five times a day and was astounded by how my following increased. This may sound time-consuming, but it really wasn’t at all and this is because of step 2…
2. Follow the Right People
If you don’t follow accounts that pin good quality images, that are not only relevant to your boards and that gain a lot of attention and saves themselves, you’re going to waste a lot of time searching for relevant pins. I simply went online and searched ‘Best Beauty/Craft/Decor/Travel Pinterest Accounts’ and chose my favourites. This is where I found beautiful profiles such as Glitter Guide, Lobster & Swan, With Love from Kat, Kastles, Gathering Beauty and LuLu Love Handmade. I also followed my favourite bloggers (i.e. Thumbelina Lillie, Tales of a Pale Face & Miss Makeup Magpie) and brands such as Sephora, Urban Decay and Cath Kidston. This way, as soon as I sign in, there are hundreds of beautiful pins waiting to be saved and organised into relevant boards, which will, in turn, attract other users with similar interests to follow them. Personally, I get a lot of traffic from my Nails board so this is the one I focus on most of the time. If you’re not sure which of your boards are most popular, I recommend turning your profile into a business account and keeping track using the Analytics page.
3. Organise Your Boards
Some believe creating a theme is not necessary, but I found that it definitely helped to boost my numbers. I went for a pastel theme as you can see here. I organised my boards so that the most popular are at the top and easy to find, and consolidated a few boards together i.e. Ribbon, Glitter, Clay and Decoupage became Crafty. It took me a few hours to get things how I wanted them to look but it was worth it.
It’s all good and well building a following, but how do you turn this into traffic? Once again, I am no expert in this, but what helped me was pinning my images regularly on a specific board dedicated to my blog and also integrating my images throughout my more popular boards. I have also worked very hard (with the very basic tools I have) to improve my photography. This has obviously helped a lot, because who wants to pin an ugly photo? This post 3 Ways to Create Better Pins helped me a lot, especially the ‘Tools That Help’ section. I also recommend adding the floating ‘Pin It’ badge to your images so that readers can save your images easily. More information about this can be found here. Apparently joining group boards can also help your traffic, but I don’t have much experience with them. I’ve heard that PinGroupie is a good tool to find them, although I haven’t used it myself.
I’ll stop there because I think I’m rambling now. I hope at least some of these tips help you to gain a few more followers. If you have any advice I’d love to hear it! Please feel free to share what works for you in the comments section below or any of your favourite Pinterest accounts. Happy pinning!
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