5 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog Using Pinterest
Are you using Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog?
Pinterest has the ability to drive
massive amounts of traffic to websites – this includes blogs. In fact
Pinterest has become the highest traffic generator for some blogs. An
example is Ana White’s carpentry blog where Pinterest is the top referring site, sending 6000 visitors a day.
By implementing the right techniques to
optimize your website for Pinterest and promoting yourself directly on
the social network, you can also divert a lot of traffic to your blog. I
have shared 5 effective techniques below that can help increase the traffic your blog receives through Pinterest…
1. Add Images to Your posts:
The only way to make a post shareable on Pinterest is by adding an
image or images to it. If there is no image on the post, it will not be
pinnable. So add images to each and every post on your blog.
Here are a few tips on using images to optimize your blog:-
a) Image size should be a minimum of 80 X 80 Pixels:
The minimum size of a pinnable image is 80 X 80 Pixels. An image can
only be pinned if it is of this size or bigger. So make sure one or more
images on your blog posts are of the minimum size (at least) to
encourage people to share them. Of course there is a
post on Kissmetrics
that contradicts the minimum Pinterest image size, but just to be on
the safe side make sure your images are at least 80 X 80 pixels.
b) Create Unique Images:
One way to get more people to share your images is by creating unique
ones. There are tons of images being shared on Pinterest everyday and if
you want your images to be pinned and repined you need to make the
extra effort to get them to standout. So create images that are
different. This could be taking a good photo, great screenshots or
designing quality images from scratch.
c) Install the Pinterest Pin it button for Images: Pinterest Pin It button For Images
is a Plugin for WordPress blogs. When you add, activate and set up the
button on your blog a pin it button will appear on each and every image
when you scroll over it. A similar effect can be found when you scroll
over the images on a post
on Brit+co. You will notice that a Pin It button will appear on the
right corner of the image. This can encourage people to share the image.
If you have a WordPress blog you should try out this button.
For more tips on creating Pinterest friendly images check out how to create highly shareable Pinterest pictures for your business and creating Pinterest Images people love to share.
An example of a blog using images
effectively is the one I mentioned earlier – Ana White’s blog. On each
and every post on the blog there are several images that liven up the
post. First, there are a few images of the finished product. This is
followed by step by step illustrations on how to build the product.
On one of her posts – Wall Kitchen Cabinet Basic Carcass Plan
– you will notice that the post starts off with a few pictures of the
cabinet and this is followed by step by step instructions and
illustrations on how to build it from scratch. The post has more than
ten pinnable images which makes it highly shareable on Pinterest.
In a similar way make sure your posts are filled with several unique and high quality pictures and images.
2. Add the Pin It Button: According to this study by BrightEdge Technologies, web pages with share buttons are seven times more likely to be shared, than ones without. Therefore if you add the Pin It button
to your blog posts, the chances of your post being pinned increases.
And the more pins you get will lead to more traffic. This button can be
manually added to each and every post or you can use the Digg Digg plugin (if your blog runs on WordPress). This plugin can help you automatically add the button to each and every post you publish.
3. Invite Board Contributors:
Another way to drive traffic to your blog is by adding board
contributors. When you add several board contributors to your board and
all of them together add a lot of content to it, it will attract a lot
of board followers and fans. So when you pin an image from your blog
onto the same board the board’s followers will help promote it by
repining. This can help increase your blog traffic. For best results
share blog posts from your blog and other sites on the same board
instead of having separate boards.
So spend some time identifying your most active fans and invite them over to join your boards.
A great tool that can help you easily find your most active fans is Curalate.
Using Curalate you can find out who your most active users are and see
what they are sharing, both from your website and your brand page. You
can also check what your most popular boards are. This information can
then be used to invite Pinners who are enthusiastic about promoting your
blog.
4. Verify Your Website:
When you verify your website your entire URL appears on the brand page
and a tick mark appears beside. These two factors will make your website
address more prominent than the usual tiny globe sign it is represented
by. This can help increase the click through rate of the website
address on your brand page and if you add and verify your blog’s URL it
will automatically result in more blog traffic. To learn how to verify
your website, check out this post.
An example of a verified blog URL on a brand page is of The Next Web’s.
As you can see the full URL of the blog, along with the red tick mark,
gets it to standout on the brand page. This will get more people to
notice it and will lead to more clicks which will increase their blog
traffic. If you stick to your brand and pin images relevant to it, the
traffic you receive should be quite interested in reading your blog’s
content.
5. Add your blog post URL to your description:
Usually when someone wants to visit the source of the pin (website
where it was pinned from) they have to click on the pin first, wait for
it to enlarge and then visit the source which is usually located at the
top of the pin or on the pin itself. This seems a little time consuming,
doesn’t it.
This process of finding the source can
be simplified by adding the link to the description. This way they won’t
even need to enlarge the pin, all they need to do is read the
description and click on the link. As this is easier and faster, it
should lead to more clicks on your pins.
For this to work, always make sure you
add the full URL and not a shortened one, as shortened ones in the
description are quite often rejected as spam. To have an even stronger
effect have a call to action that urges the reader to click on the link
and check out the blog post.
Someone who does this really well is Jo Barnes. If you visit her board, Social Media Updates,
you will notice that there are several pins which have live links that
lead to the source. This makes it easy to visit the blog post and can be
very effective in increasing blog traffic.
Implement all the above techniques and you should see a rise in the blog traffic you receive from Pinterest.