Drive Traffic to Your Blog Using Pinterest

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.