Pinterest Tips for Bloggers 33

Pinterest Tips for Bloggers

As a blogger and frequent Pinterest user, I found the Pin It to Win It session at the Mom 2.0 summit incredibly helpful. In this post I am sharing the notes that I took based on the session. Pinterest has been undergoing a lot of changes lately, and it is a very beneficial platform for bloggers to use. This session was hosted by two Pinterest employees, the Product Manager of Creators, and one of the Software Engineers.

Pinterest is a visual discovery engine. People come to Pinterest looking for ideas to discover, save, and then recreate themselves. Pinners use Pinterest to plan, so pinners are looking for helpful, inspiring, and interesting ideas to save for later. Pinterest helps people plan ahead to find the perfect dress, what to make for dinner, or creative ideas for their next party.

What should a great Pin do?

• Turn inspiration into action: Make sure your content is actionable. 
• Help users discover new things. Pinners are looking for helpful and inspiring ideas.

What are some of the new updates to Pinterest?

• Tried it button. You can upload a photo or leave a comment once you try a pin so other users know how you liked it.

How fast is Pinterest growing?

Pinterest is growing fast! 200 million plus global active users in many countries every month. There are over 100 billion ideas on Pinterest, and this number continues to grow.

70% of Moms in the US have a Pinterest account

Pinterest Tips for Bloggers:

• You must have a Business Profile on Pinterest. Once you have a business profile you will enjoy the tilted pins (as seen above), see your monthly viewers statistic, and you will also have accessibility to the analytics that bloggers love to analyze. Your profile should be unique and interesting. Creating a complete profile will tell your brand’s story clearly. Make sure you have an updated profile photo as well as a link to your website and your current location. You can customize your tilted pins by clicking the pencil icon at the top right part of the tilted pin area. You can choose from the latest pins on one board or the most recent pins you have pinned.

• Update your app in IOS (Android update is coming very soon) With the new update there is a new Pin composer (+ in the top right) button where you can create new pins on the go or update the more recent pins for your blog
• Pin something from your website every single day. Do not save your pinning all for Sunday when you have some free time. It is much better to pin consistently as often as you can.
• Three things all bloggers should do today:

1. Get a business account then customize your profile.
2. Claim your website. (Click here to see the step by step directions.)
3. Publish at minimum weekly on your blog, daily is even better. Make new content as often as you can, with clear Pins for Pinterest.

• In the analytics area of your business account, check out the activity tab. You will be able to see, in real time, what people are pinning from your blog. This information will help you tailor what your audience responds to best. Once you have a business account, click on any pin to see the stats for that pin. You can find the impressions, clicks, and saves. 
• Pins that link back to your website will always have your name and icon attached to the pin, no matter who pins it, along with a follow button.
• Coming soon: tagging and videos Tall or square videos are good. Widescreen does not do as well on Pinterest.
• Your pins should still be 2:3 aspect. The ideal aspect ration is 600×900 pixels. Think mobile, and go vertical. Square images that are 600×600 are also doing quite well. 80% of users are accessing Pinterest on a mobile device.
• Super long (giraffe pins) are not doing as well recently
• Pin description is very important: Lead with the most important message.
• Staying consistent on Pinterest allows your audience to stay dedicated. If you publish pins consistently each month your audience will grow organically.
• Start saving pins well in advance of each season, holiday, or event. Start pinning Thanksgiving foods at the beginning of October. Then continue to add more ideas each day and keep up the steady pace.
• Make your boards organized, specific, and clear. The board title should include your keyword and is very important. This will help optimize your board for search. Always choose a relevant category for your board as well.
• You can create multiple pins that all link to one webpage. It is helpful to have a few pins for people to choose from. Each pin should include a unique description that is specific to that pin. This helps your SEO. Use the pin description area to add more context to the pin and answer the  who/what/where/when and why questions
• Pins need to be actionable. When someone clicks on your pin they want to learn more information about it. The pin’s image needs to be included on the landing page and the page’s content must match the pin description. Use full and complete sentences in your pin descriptions.
• Use at least 5 hashtags, but typically no more than 20 hashtags per pin. Hashtags will help your pin be discovered in the search results and in their homefeed.
• You only have 24-48 hours to add your hashtags. Do not waste time going back and adding lots of hashtags to old pins. Instead, create new pins for older posts.
• Optimize your website for Pinterest. Add a Save button so it pops up over all your pins. The save button makes it easier and faster for your blog visitors to save your pins to their Pinterest account.

A few more interesting things I learned from the Pinterest session:

1. Text overlays are fine.
2. Make your boards clear to understand so your audience will know which content to find and then it will also be more likely to surface in discovery.
3. Make your pin titles clear, specific, and relevant to your audience.
4. Think about the search terms.
5. Do NOT add spaces between your letters, these words cannot be understood or found in search
6. Boards need to be cohesive.
7. You can archive old boards.
8. Do not worry about using a scheduler, it does not matter if you live pin or schedule pins, they are all equal and can both be found in search.
9. Pin more. Regular pinning is best.
10. Do not worry about the ratio for pinning your stuff vs. other people’s stuff. Just pin your stuff consistently.
11. There is a new partnership with Pinterest and ShopStyle. It will have affiliate link support. You will be able to pin an outfit and have little dots on each clothing item in the photo and your audience can shop the look and purchase any part of the outfit that they like.
12. Soon you will be able to see in your analytics where a pin has been saved and to all the boards people saved it. You will also be able to reorder your pins soon!

What tips can you share that help you gain more traffic from Pinterest? Please share your tips in the comments. I would also love for you to follow me on Pinterest!