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.