When I started my blog two years ago, I had been freelance writing for years. I remember thinking – I write blog posts for other people, starting my own blog should be easy.
The fact is – blogging is hard work. And, you’re wearing all the hats for awhile: writer, photographer, marketer, social media manager, brand outreach, and more. You start to read and hear a lot of advice about how important it is to become an expert on Pinterest.
They’re not wrong – Pinterest is a goldmine… if you can get the attention of your target audience. Because, as soon as you start pinning, you realize that the digital world is already over-saturated. People are already overwhelmed by the amount of content available.
How do you get their attention? Well, I figured a few things out with a lot of trial and error. Things that took my Pinterest from under 800,000 views a month to over 6 million and growing fast in under 7 months. Update: My Pinterest is now reaching over 10 million monthly viewers!
So, I definitely feel I have learned some Pinterest hacks and I’m going to share 5 of my Pinterest secrets with you.
5 Secrets to Pinterest Hacking:
When I originally sat down to write this post, I thought it would just be a normal blog post. But, I just kept writing and writing and writing. All the things I’ve learned about Pinterest were just spilling out.
So, I decided to turn it into a Pinterest Ebook called – Pinterest Masters. I’ll tell you more about it after sharing the 5 secrets with you:
1. Make a Lot of Pins:
I think back to my early months as a blogger when I used to make 1 Pinterest pin per post, share it to one or two boards on Pinterest, and then stop. If I wanted to get really crazy, I’d loop it on Tailwind to go back to that board every so often.
#CRINGE
I can’t believe how many missed opportunities I created by doing that. Now, I make at least 3-5 pins for every blog post and share them out to at least 3-5 Pinterest boards just to start.
I schedule these pins out on Tailwind, so they trickle out slowly, keeping my account from getting spammed by Pinterest and increasing my opportunities to get found.
Here’s a page from the ebook that shares what this might look like using actual pins I created for an older blog post. Notice that I mix up the titles as well as the images and colors. The goal here is to attract different people to click.
2. Make More Pinterest Boards:
Yeah. I also used to make one Pinterest board on a subject.
#CringeAGAIN
I learned my lesson on that one and started making a lot more boards, fully optimized, on subjects I write about regularly. When I say optimized – I mean every single Pinterest board should be set up a certain way so that Pinterest knows what it’s about.
I actually have made quite a bit of money writing Pinterest board descriptions for successful bloggers who never knew they should do this – and now have hundreds of boards that aren’t optimized and need someone else to do it for them.
You can save this money, headache, and potential lost traffic, by setting your boards up correctly from the start. I tell you exactly what to do in my ebook.
3. Make Your Pins Stand Out:
I know you want your pins to match your pretty pastel branding and look really nice on your blog. Wouldn’t it be great if those pins did great on Pinterest, too?
Problem is: there’s a million people on Pinterest now competing for the same people as you are. Your pins have a more important goal now – TO STAND OUT. You need to make a pin that pops so that you can stop the person from scrolling and get them to CLICK ON YOUR PIN.
You can still make a pretty one and put that out, too, and put that one in your blog post. After all, you’re making 3-5 pins per post anyway.
So, how exactly do you make so many pins so fast? With templates. You grab ready-to-go Pinterest templates and mix the up. Mix up the colors, the fonts, the pictures. Mix up the titles.
I actually just released my own packet of Pinterest pins that are BOLD and ready to GET YOU NOTICED. You can grab all 15 of them, fully editable in Canva, right here. Or, you can get 20% with a coupon code I put in my ebook.
Want free pin templates? Check out this post with 5 free Pinterest pin templates.
4. Make Time to Go On Pinterest:
You need to use Pinterest as a user, not just a business owner. It’s important to go into Pinterest manually and do a few things:
- Notice what pins catch your eye. What stands out? How can you use that idea, too?
- Notice who is showing up at the top of your search results. Can you figure out why?
- Notice what pins you see showing up over and over. What can you learn from them?
- Notice if you see your own pins show up. Always repin these when you do.
- Always pin applicable pins to your boards. You don’t want to pin only your own stuff. That’s not what Pinterest is about. Offer your followers the best curation of pins available on each of your board subjects.
Also, it’s really important to stay on top of what’s new on Pinterest. For example, right now, animated pins and video pins are doing really well. Play around with these things.
However, notice how this effects traffic to your site. For example, a lot of people are reporting that video pins do very well on the platform – but nobody clicks through to their sites.
I actually saw a video pin that was so cool and had this click feature that had me scrolling to see more little videos. I loved it, but guess what, the pin told me everything I needed to know, so I didn’t click to their site.
Obviously, this is not what we want. So, if you want to use video – how can you do it in a way that doesn’t give away all the content?
Things to think about.
5. Make Nice With Your Followers:
There’s been a long-standing opinion that followers are a vanity metric on Pinterest – which means, the number of followers has no bearing on the success of your profile.
I completely disagree. Something shifted as soon as I hit 3,000 followers on Pinterest and it’s only gone up from there. Followers on Pinterest are people that are telling the algorithm that they want to see your content.
How is that not a good thing? You feel me?
So, while the follower relationship is different on Pinterest than other platforms, find the ways that you can interact and maximize them. Respond to all legitimate emails. Respond to all comments on your pins. Delete spammy comments. And if someone is rude, respond with professionalism and kindness, like you would in person when representing your business. If someone is inappropriate, just remove them. Treat your followers on Pinterest just like you would Instagram followers and watch them become loyal readers who share your pins.
I am seeing the number of clicks straight from my Pinterest profile going up every month. I think this has to do with my interactions on Pinterest with my followers.
Food for thought.
Earning Potential with Pinterest Masters:
This is the tip of the iceberg of what I have to share with you on Pinterest. I love Pinterest. I’m obsessed with Pinterest. Pinterest is a huge part of the traffic that goes to my site.
My traffic has allowed me to get accepted by three ad networks over the last 2 years of blogging (well, 2 years in September). First, Ezoic at 10k page views to my blog. Then, Mediavine at 25k page views. And, finally, the big dog, AdThrive when I hit 100k page views.
If what you learn in this book even helped you get to Ezoic ads – you would make more in one month of ads with Ezoic than 5x the price of this book. My average ad revenue with Ezoic was 300$.
By the way, read my full review of Ezoic here.
What Is In This Ebook:
I am going to share the outline for what is in this book. It’s straight to the point. I do not waste your time. I had a blogger friend tell me I say more in these 20 something pages than she says in a 65 page ebook of her own creation. That’s how I roll.
UPDATE: Pinterest Masters has been updated for 2021 to share how I have now grown my account to over 10 million monthly viewers! The cover and inside has been redesigned and updated!
Just a heads up, I do NOT go into detail on how to setup your Pinterest profile from scratch. I assume you have one.
I know Pinterest can work for you, too. I’d love for you to read more about what I have to share on Pinterest. And, if you decide to grab my Pinterest Masters ebook, you’ll also get 20% off my Pinterest pins pack, too. Score.
Oh, and if you’re also trying to get a blog going, you might also like these posts, too:
- The Ultimate Blog Building Framework
- 10 Lessons I Learned After Writing 100 Blog Posts
- 3 Mistakes I Made as a New Blogger that Cost Me Bigtime!
Have a fabulous day,
E
