Become A Better Blogger - Our Pinterest Strategy

Published: Mon, 12/15/14

Just like everything in blogging and social media, every day Pinterest gets more competitive, tougher to grow your following and harder to turn those followers into traffic.

Oh how I wish I’d been one of the very early Pinterest adopters… those were the days! 

Now not only is it much tougher to get new followers, but Pinterest recently started using an algorithm to decide what pins to show to users. That means now it's like Facebook and Google where we're all at the mercy of the algorithm.

But even if you don't have a huge number of followers, Pinterest can be a huge source of traffic.

At the moment we only have 21,432 followers on our 5minutesformom Pinterest account which is less than our following on Twitter of 63,500 and less than our 26,466 Facebook likes. But we still get exponentially more referral traffic from Pinterest than Twitter or Facebook.

We don’t actually spend very much time on Pinterest, but we do spend a lot of time creating “Pinnable” content.

Here is our current Pinterest strategy...

Pinnable Images

The most important and time consuming part of earning Pinterest traffic is creating images that are pin-worthy.

The images don't have to be fancy... a good vertical image with a meaningful title will do the trick. 

For example, when I wrote this post for planning a spa day for my kids, I didn't have a great photo, so I simply pulled a fun illustration from a stock photo website and added the title in Picmonkey.
Pinnable Image Example
The Snowball Effect 

One of the good but also frustrating aspects of pins is that they tend to have a snowball effect. When they are new and small with only a couple of pins, it’s really hard to get them rolling. But when they pick up some weight, they keep growing.

So while it’s awesome to keep getting traffic and pins from an old post, it can be extremely frustrating when your newer posts can’t gain traction.

For example, this post for Texas Sushi - Chipotle Bacon Pinwheels, a recipe written two years ago by one of our contributors Rachel Lacy, is continually among our top performing posts because it still gets pinned and repinned. 
Texas Sushi

Tools 

As I mentioned in the previous email What Tools We Use, we use Picmonkey and Canva for creating “pinnable” images. Janice also uses Lightroom and Photoshop for editing her photos, but once the photos are ready, we use Picmonkey or Canva - or a combination of both tools - to add text and make the image ready to pin.

Use Stock Photos When You Don’t Have Your Own

We often use GraphicLeftovers.com and my new favorite DollarPhotoClub.com. The Dollar Photo Club is the least expensive with the best range of images I've found so far. 

Consistency

I’m not on Pinterest every day, but I do want to be pinning every day and ideally throughout the day. We use both Viral Tag and Ahalogy for scheduling pins. I then also pin often “in real time”  while I’m browsing online and on my phone using the Pinterest app.

Group Boards

I love group boards! They are such a fantastic way to share your content and also find pins to share on your other boards and also to tweet out or share on Google+ or Facebook.

This is favorite board and I’m so honored to be part of it. I visit that board more than any other and I continually repin and share pins from there on my other channels.

Revitalizing Old Content with New Pinnable Images

It’s a great idea to go back to old posts and bring them back to life with a new image.

Pinning Share Groups

As I mentioned in last week’s email, I love Facebook private groups for sharing content. It’s a great idea to be part of a group where you pin each other’s content.

Meaningful, Keyword Rich Board Names, Pin Titles and Descriptions

When you’re naming your boards and making up titles and descriptions for your pins, be sure to use meaningful words that people would search on. You don’t have to obsess about keywords, but try to lean towards common search words instead of clever phrases.

Get Inspiration and Learn From Others

Pinterest is all about inspiration. It’s by far my favorite social channel because I seem to learn something or get a new idea every time I’m there.

So as well as being inspired and learning by the content of the pins, pay attention to the layout of the image. What caught your attention? What do you like about the title and text layout?

Take one of your favorite bloggers, for example Zina from Lasso The Moon, and see what pins are performing well for her site. Simply go to http://www.pinterest.com/source/letslassothemoon.com/ and you'll see the recent pins from her site.

We Want To Follow You

We have a linky list at 5minutesformom.com/pinterest where you can add your handle so that we and others can follow you.

Also, feel free to reply to this email and ask us to follow you.

You'll find us on Pinterest at pinterest.com/5minutesformom/


Did You Miss Anything?

If you’re new here, you’ll definitely want to catch up…

What Do You Want To Know?

What would you like me to cover next week? Shoot me back a quick reply and let me know.

Talk soon,

Susan (and Janice)
5 Minutes For Mom

ps. To tell your friends about this "Become a Better Blogger" ezine, you can send them here.