23 Pinterest Tips for Bloggers and Online Business

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Are you looking for Pinterest tips to help grow your blog and business? Are you an entrepreneur, online business owner, or blogger that’s heard about the power of Pinterest for marketing your business? Well, you’ve come to the right place. I am always amazed and grateful for the tremendous amount of information and support available in the Facebook groups I belong to, including mine. However, the more popular a group is, the more easily useful information gets buried in a long list of comments or quickly gets pushed down the group page due to new posts in the group. Like a lot of other Facebook groups, I have daily threads in my Facebook group to encourage conversation, but also to allow group members to promote their blogs and websites, connect on social media, and to share their content. In addition to sharing a link, I always ask group members to share their best tip as it relates to the various social media platfrom, whether that be Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest. I’ve compiled a list of 23 Pinterest tips for bloggers and online businesses from members of my Facebook group and I’m excited to share them with you today. If you’re new to Pinterest for business or just always on the lookout for a tip you may not have heard before, there are plenty of Pinterest tips for you in this list. Looking for more ideas? Get started using the power of Pinterest marketing to grow your business today! Just click on the image below to get your own free copy of my SWIPE FILE of 125 Pinterest boards for popular blog niches. It’s an immediate download. 🙂 Pinterest Boards to Grow Your Followers

1. Follow and re-pin influencers in your niche.

Brian Manon of BrianManon.com recommends following influencers in your niche and re-pinning their pins. Additionally,  you can like and comment on their pins, follow them on social media and even comment on their blog posts. As with blogging and online business in general, networking and making genuine connections with those in your niche can get you noticed and make your brand stand out in a positive way. Follow Brian on Pinterest >> pinterest tips for bloggers

2. Recreate all of your board covers to look more cohesive and professional.

Brittany Ferrell of ‘A Mama Tale’ recently recreated all of her board covers to look more cohesive and professional and said “What a difference!” Specifically, creating branded board covers using your brand colors and fonts will give your boards a cohesive look. A board cover is simply a regular Pin that is chosen to be the board “cover”. You select the board cover by editing the board, scrolling through the pins and saving the one that you want to be the cover. Branded board covers can easily be created in Canva, PicMonkey or Photoshop. Once you create your board cover images, upload them to Pinterest, pin them to the relevant boards and then edit the boards to save the new Pins as the board covers. Follow Brittany on Pinterest >> pinterest tips for bloggers

3. Schedule your pins in advance.

Chelsy Cardin of ‘Jump into Monday’ recommends scheduling your pins in advance using Viraltag. Viraltag is a social media marketing tool for sharing visuals. Viraltag not only supports pinning on Pinterest, but also sharing on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr & LinkedIn. Scheduling pins in advance is a common approach taken by bloggers and other online businesses that use Pinterest to drive traffic to their blogs and websites. Having a presence on social media is extremely important for online businesses, but can also be very time consuming. However, unlike Facebook and Twitter, engagement on Pinterest is not actually very ‘social’ in nature. Pinterest is an ideal platform for advance scheduling and pinning is a task that can be ‘batched’ and done in advance. As long as other Pinterest users see your pins, you can effectively engage with your target audience without having to be on Pinterest in real-time. Follow Chelsy on Pinterest >> pinterest tips for bloggers

4. Pin a lot and not only your own pins.

Vibeke Johannessen’s of ‘The Viking Abroad’ best tip is to pin a lot. She recommends pinning 30-50 pins a day and not only your own pins. I’ve heard similar advice from others. In her Pindepth challenge, Kayla Butler of IvoryMix.com recommends pinning 30 to 100 pins per day. You might be thinking that all you’ll be doing is sitting around pinning all day, but more on that later. (Hint: you can use scheduling tools to automate some of some or perhaps even most of your pinning.) Bottom line, if you want your pins (and your profile) to be seen, you have to Pin enough that your Pins will be seen in the Pinterest feed throughout the day and so that your followers will see your pinning activity in their notifications. Follow Vibeke on Pinterest >> pinterest tips for bloggers

5. Pin as many different posts from others as possible.

Melynda Egger Brown of Our Sunday Cafe says… “There is a mix of information on the Pinterest account. We focus on family, local explorations and food, whole grain and organic. I pin as many different posts from others as possible because there is more to Pinterest than my personal info and I think sharing not only improves my interests but helps others also.” Almost certainly without exception, successful pinners pin a mix of their own content and others. Recommendations vary from one source to another, but I’ve seen suggestions ranging from 50% to 80% as the ideal percentage of Pins that should be content other than your own. Pinning great content other than your own has multiple benefits, including curating great boards. And isn’t that kind of the point of Pinterest? 🙂 Follow Melynda on Pinterest >> pinterest tips for bloggers

6. Quality over quantity and pin consistently.

Heather LeGuilloux of HeatherLeGuilloux.ca recommends “quality over quantity and to pin consistently”. Heather’s tip may just sound like common sense, but in this article, Peg Fitzpatrick explains more about the Pinterest smart feed and confirms that Pinterest does in fact take quality into consideration when deciding which pins to show in the smart feed. In fact, the the smart feed considers not only the quality of the pin, but also the quality of the source (the linked website or blog). How to Optimize Your Pins for the Pinterest Smart Feed Follow Heather on Pinterest >> pinterest tips for bloggers

7. Have a personal touch.

Raquel Serrano of ‘Clear + Content Co’ says “Your boards are a representation of who you are! If you love SEO and tiny puppies, let’s see it! It’s nice to have a personal touch :)” While this tip might be considered controversial by some, I think a good way to think about this is to let your personality show in your choice of pins. While it’s important to keep your target audience in mind and curate boards that will appeal to your ideal customer, Pinterest is still more of a social platform than, let’s say, Google. Not only that, your Pinterest profile and your boards are a reflection of your brand and your online personality. So, in that sense, don’t be afraid to give your boards a personal touch or at least some personality. Follow Raquel on Pinterest >> pinterest tips for bloggers

8. Pin at different times of the day.

Holly Johnson of Siobahn Johnson says… “My best Pinterest tip is to pin at different times of the day. I pin a little bit around breakfast, lunchtime, dinner and supper.” Pinning throughout the day kills two birds with one stone. First of all, it exposes you to different Pinterst users that may be on Pinterest at different times of the day. Secondly, it keeps from overwhelming your followers by pinning a large number of pins all at once. Because, let’s face, it you posted 30, 50 or 100 pins all at once, what are the chances that anyone would take the time to look at all of them. This post from the Buffer blog is a good resource for more information on Pinterest scheduling. The Science of Pinterest Scheduling: Finding Your Best Consistency, Frequency and Timing To give you a little preview, the Buffer post goes into great detail about Pinterest scheduling, presents a lot of data on the subject, includes a infographic that compiles the best data available on the topic and even shares some of Buffer’s own Pinterest scheduling strategies. If you are interested and want to learn more on this topic, it’s an interesting and informative read. Follow Holly on Pinterest >> pinterest tips for bloggers

9. Pin more of others’ content than your own.

Vaishnavi Krishnamachari of dentmaker.net recommends that you “pin more of others’ content than yours to get into the good books of Pinterest. Just so Pinterest recognizes you as a good pinizen :)” I didn’t go searching for more data to back this up or other blog posts to support this tip. Why should I when there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence? Just check out Martha Stewart’s Pinterest profile. I clicked on her “Christmas” board and guess what I noticed? All of the older pins were from marthastewart.com. But in the top two or three rows, there were pins from several other web sites. Granted, some of those were companies that sell her products, but still, they were not all her own content. Beth Anne of Brilliant Business Moms is another great example of this philosophy. Beth Anne sells a physical planner, but if you look at her “Planners…” board, you’ll see that she has pinned other peoples’ planners! And I know for a fact that she is having phenomenal success with Pinterest and her business is growing by leaps and bounds. I’m still working working my way through her course, but if you’re in the market for a Pinterest marketing course, I highly recommend checking out Beth Anne’s Brilliant Pin Promotion course *** That’s my affiliate link, by the way. 🙂 *** So, do yourself (and others) a favor. Pin great content from other pinners that you want to support – not only will they appreciate it, it’s good Pinterest etiquette and your followers will love you for it. pinterest tips for bloggers

10. Make sure all of your blog posts have at least one pinnable image.

11. Fill out descriptions of pins, boards and profile.

Kara Rajchel of Wildwood & Sage says… “Make sure all of your blog posts have a least one pinnable image, a large, preferably vertical images that are taller than they are wide. Also, make sure you fill out descriptions of pins, your profile, and boards using keywords (keywords should also be in your board names…so avoid obscure board names).” It’s fairly common knowledge that Pinterest favors vertical images. They are visually appealing in the smart feed and consistently get more repins. Also, pay special attention to Kara’s second tip and think about how you normally use Pinterest. Like a search engine, right? If you want your profile, boards and pins to be found, give them straight forward names that people are likely to type in the search box and also use keywords in your pin descriptions. Personally, I think it’s okay to use a list of keywords in your board description if it helps people understand the kinds of things that they will find pinned to that particular board, but in most cases, a more conversational description is better for individual pins.

12. Pin from inside affiliate platforms to create affiliate links and monetize your pins.

Carly Wood offer this Pinterest tip for monetizing your pins… “Pinterest lifted the ban on affiliate links a few months ago, re-enabling ShopSense and RewardStyle (and perhaps others – but these I know about for certain). If you use either service, pin from inside the tool to create affiliate links and monetize your pins. Yay!” I love this tip so much because it’s about monetizing your pins! And who wouldn’t want that? This year I’ve been focused on starting a blog and engaging and networking on social media. I’m planning to dig into affiliate marketing soon and I’ll be sure to share my experience with  you when I do. But, getting back to Carly’s tip, I’m inclined to take anything that Carly suggests to heart after reading her epic blog post “The blogger’s guide to affiliate marketing & Black Friday” a couple of weeks ago. If she says that you can monetize your pins using affiliate links, you can bet I’m going to give this tip a try! Follow Carly on Pinterest >> pinterest tips for bloggers

13. Mix up your Pinterest content.

Kayla Butler of IvoryMix.com says her tip is to mix up your content. “The rule for all social media is to mix up your content. You will lose the interest of your followers and lose your chances of gaining any new ones if your content is static and not diverse enough.” Kayla is another blogger whom I admire and trust. Kayla is  active on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and is one of my blogging role models, so I always listen carefully to what she has to say. She has been blogging since 2010 and has over 100 posts on her site, which is just a year old!  Kayla also has a 5-day Pindepth challenge. If that sounds like something you would be interested in, you can sign up by clicking the link below. Pindepth Challenge Follow Kayla on Pinterest >>
 

 

From personal experience, I can share that I pin a wide variety of content myself and have had really good results. In fact, I’ve grown my Pinterest followers from 497 to 1,475 this year. If you’re on Pinterest and interested in blogging, entrepreneurship and online business related topics, please do follow me on Pinterest. 🙂 www.pinterest.com/chantel_arnett

14. Join group boards to help grow your Pinterest followers and get more re-pins.

Chrissy Stein of ‘Hard Hitting Fitness’ says… “Join group boards to help you grow.” Group boards help you get your pins in front of new audiences and help new people discover your content. They can be particularly helpful when you are relatively new to Pinterest or do not have a large following of your own. However, even Pinterest users that already have with large numbers of followers use group boards to get their content repinned and to help Pinterest users who are not currently following them discover their profiles. If you’re looking for group boards to join, I have a list of group boards on my “Free Resources” page to help you get started. The list can be sorted by number of followers or number of pins and even has links directly to each board.Follow Chrissy on Pinterest >> pinterest tips for bloggers

15. Use a scheduling tool like Boardbooster or Tailwind.

Rose Clearfield of RoseClearfield.com says… “I just started using Boardbooster a few weeks ago, and it’s been a game changer. I highly recommend checking it out if you want to step up your Pinterest game.” Tailwind offers the convenience of scheduling and automating some of the work associated with using Pinterest for business. When you have goals that include pinning a lot, pinning throughout the day, and not spamming your target audience by pinning the same content to multiple group boards all at once, a Pinterest scheduling tool can be a lifesaver. You can get a free month when you sign up this link! Follow Rose on Pinterest >> pinterest tips for bloggers

16. Keep at it. It takes time to see results with your Pinterest strategy.

Laura Williams of ‘The Badass BusinessMum’ says… “My tip: keep at it. Pinterest isn’t an immediate fix, it takes a while to see results, but on the flip side, the results last!” I think this is such a good tip. We’re hearing so much about using Pinterest to grow your business and like so many things in life, we want it now! But, good things come to those that persevere. Start by implementing some of the strategies and tips suggested here, continually improve your profile, your boards and the quaity of your pins, test to see what works for you and you will see results. I was a casual Pinterest user for MANY years and I’ve tripled the number of people who follow me this year just implementing small changes incrementally. Follow Laura on Pinterest >> pinterest tips for bloggers

17. Love Pinterest for what it is rather than just an advertisting tool.

Hannah Noble of ‘Nipenda – Life + Love’ says… “Fave tip would be love Pinterest for what it is rather just than an advertising tool.” This is a great reminder, particularly for those of us who the solopreneurs among us and for those who are blogging, running a business, or just getting their side hustle on. A great tip about social media in general is to choose one (or maybe two max) social media platform that you love and really focus there. If Pinterest isn’t your cup of tea, perhaps work on automating and scheduling it. If you love Pinterest, embrace it and enjoy the process. Follow Hannah on Pinterest >> pinterest tips for bloggers And finally, a few tips of my own. 🙂

18. Delete or hide boards that do not appeal to your target audience.

This tips is especially important if you convert your personal account to a business account instead of starting fresh with a new account. If your existing personal boards would not appeal to your target audience, it’s best to just make them ‘secret’ or delete them all together.

19. Remember that Pinterest is a visual platform, but include compelling title or headlines on your images to encourage people to click through.

This is so important. In order to get noticed in the Pinterest feed, you need to have an Pinterest worthy image, so make sure the photography is top-notch and the image is engaging. But… if what you really want is for the pinner to click through, you will need a compelling title or headline. A pretty picture that is pinned but not clicked on doesn’t drive traffic to your blog or website or get you a sale.

20. Link back to your boards or pins from other social media platforms to provide value to your target audience.

This tip is rather unique, but I have found it to be effective. If you are adding value in a Facebook group or someone else by linking to someone else’s content, do this instead. Pin the content on Pinterest and then provide a link to your board or pin instead of a direct link to someone else’s content. In this way, you are still sharing helpful content, but you are sending people to your Pinterest boards and pins. I have gotten a lot of repins and new followers by doing this.

21. Don’t create too many boards.

In an attempt to be able to find anything without having to look too hard, I had way too many boards. The reality is that most people will go to Google or another search engine if they are looking for something very specific. So, combine similar boards and those with a low number of pins. Your boards will be more helpful to more people and easier to maintain. Follow me on Pinterest >> pinterest tips for bloggers For more Pinterest tips for bloggers and online business, be sure to follow my “Pinterest” board on Pinterest.
Did you learn a new Pinterest strategy or find someone new to follow on Pinterest? Do you have a tip that you would add to this list? If so, leave a comment! I’d love to hear it. 🙂 Grow your traffic with Pinterest Groups!

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22 Responses

  1. Really great post. It was nice to see tips from other bloggers. I took a course which included many of these tips and it really does work, my stats came up 95%. I think also starting a group board is something everyone should do. I agree with all the tips given and didn’t know the one about Affiliate Links and monetizing.

    1. You’re welcome, Jen. ? My tip for board covers is keep them simple and consistent, so they make your boards feel cohesive without distracting from the other images.

  2. I’ve really been trying to wrap my head around Pinterest these days, and it’s slow, but I have high hopes that it’ll be worth the effort. These are some great tips, and a handful I haven’t seen before. Thanks for sharing such great advice!

  3. Wonderful tips for growing pinterest. This is such an indepth post on proven pinterest strategies to grow the followers and organic traffic. Chantel, can you please explain the 12th point about affiliate links a bit further? I didn’t get it.

    1. Arfa, I haven’t implemented this strategy yet, but my understanding is you can create a custom image that highlights a product or proposes a solution to a problem and add your affiliate link to lead the pinner to a sales page. ?

  4. Chantal,

    What a great list. I love how you incorporated other blogger’s tips as a roundup! I love including other blogger’s in my posts too! I like the idea of using affiliate links on Pinterest. I haven’t had a chance to do this but am looking forward to trying it out soon.

    Thanks!

  5. All of these board examples are so well put together. It goes on to show that cohesiveness and paying attention to how it all flows together visually, along with strategy, helps bunches. 🙂 great post.

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