How to Create a Killer Pinterest Strategy for Your Blog

Developing a Pinterest strategy for your blog can be intimidating for bloggers. Pinterest and social media marketing are an important part of your business’s success. It is critical that you use Pinterest and other social media effectively to grow your website and business. This is why you must have a plan; a strategy.

In this post, I am going to discuss how you can develop an effective Pinterest strategy that will help your blog grow. I will also write about how you can verify whether your strategy is effective and what to do if it isn’t.

*This post contains affiliate links. That means that if you make a purchase after clicking on a link I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. For more information, click here.

Set Up Your Business Profile

To get the most out of Pinterest for your blog or any business, you will need a business profile. Don’t worry, this is easy to do and will give you access to tools to improve your Pinterest strategy. This is a necessity for successful Pinterest marketing.

Switch to a Pinterest Business Account

If you are still using your personal Pinterest account, you have two choices. You can either start a new Pinterest account or you can continue using your personal account.

If you continue using your personal account you must change all of the boards that are unrelated to your business from public to secret. Then you will need to switch the account to business in your profile settings.

I prefer to separate my business and personal accounts. Doing this prevents me from becoming distracted while I pin for my business account. I know I’m not the only one guilty of being distracted on Pinterest.

To use create or change to a business account, all you have to do is edit your profile and link your website. That’s it. It can take up to 24 hours for Pinterest to verify your website, but this is important for access to Pinterest’s awesome business tools.

Get Rich Pins

Once your Pinterest account is a business account, you need to enable rich pins. This is super simple using the Yoast SEO plugin. So, install and activate the plugin before you begin.

Melyssa Griffin has an easy tutorial for enabling rich pins on your blog that you can read here. Once Rich Pins are enabled, your pins will automatically pull information directly from your website.

This allows your audience to pin your images directly from your blog and you will be able to include a keyword rich description without creating the pin yourself.  To do this, all you need to do is specify your pin in the Alt Text section of your image settings. How cool is that?

Use Google Analytics and Tailwind

If you don’t already have Google analytics set up, you need to do so pronto. This is important to monitor the success of your pinning strategy. Pinterest analytics simply doesn’t provide enough information for you to have a clear picture of your profile’s performance.

Also, if you haven’t already done so, sign up for Tailwind or even for the free trial here. This will allow you access to additional statistics from your Pinterest account known as Insights.

Tailwind’s Insights are probably my favorite tools for tracking my board’s and pin’s performance. Your Pinterest strategy and pins are very easy to track, thanks to Tailwind.

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Keywords are Crucial

Google isn’t the only search engine that relies on keywords to help determine search results. The only way Pinterest can determine the content of your profile, boards, and pins is if you include keywords in your titles and descriptions.

How to Find Keywords on Pinterest

Pinterest makes it incredibly easy to find keywords to use in your Pinterest strategy. Whenever you enter a search query via the search box on Pinterest, you will see little tiles with words populate beneath the search query and above the pins. These are the most popular words that are searched for along with your search query.

Below are the search results for the word “pinterest.” As you can see, the little tiles are suggested search terms related to your search. They are listed by popularity from left-to-right. When you use keywords on Pinterest, use these keywords to improve your search results.

Where to Use Keywords

There are three major points to include keywords in your Pinterest account. These are your profile, board descriptions, and pin descriptions. Below is some information about each of these areas.

Your Profile

Use keywords within your profile description. You have 160 characters (including spaces and punctuation) to help your audience find you. Using keywords here will drastically improve your account views and follows.

If you can’t fit the necessary keywords into sentences, list them separated by a vertical bar. This will ensure that Pinterest will pick up on your keywords.

Boards

The next point to use keywords is in your board descriptions. I am in the process of updating my board descriptions, which needs to be done from time to time.  This is because your audience and content may shift over time.

The boards that I have updated are performing significantly better than they did prior to the update. This is leading to more follows and pins. I only mention this because using the appropriate keywords is a huge part of my Pinterest strategy and is the main factor in the improvement of my boards’ performance.

You have a total of 500 characters to use in your board descriptions. Make them count! For your convenience, I have created a printable Pinterest Keyword Description Worksheet. This worksheet will help you draft your keyword-rich description with ease.  You can download and print your free copy by using the form below.

 

 

Pins

Finally, your pins need keywords in the description too. You can manually enter these into the description as you add the pin or add it to the Alt Text box when you upload the image to the post. The second method is best as it will automatically be added when readers pin your pins. This ensures the pin is optimized for better search results.

I recommend using the Pinterest Keyword Description Worksheet for your blog posts as well. This is very helpful for getting the most out of your pin descriptions.

Hashtags

A pretty new addition to Pinterest is the hashtag. Pinterest resisted adding hashtags to their search engine for a long time. However, the popularity of hashtags has won out and Pinterest has recently allowed new pins to be searched by hashtags.

You my want to include a few keywords as hashtags in your descriptions to see how this works for your Pinterest strategy.

Who Is Your Audience?

Knowing your audience will help you plan your pins and content effectively. That is why you need to know who you are writing for? Sometimes you can be writing for one audience and this audience is not who you thought your audience would be.

This happened to me with my old blog. I was writing content for women and more than half of my audience was male. Knowing this helped me plan content for my audience better and create a more effective Pinterest Strategy.

Here’s how to get to know who your audience really is and what you need to look for.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the best tools any online marketer can use. It’s free, simple to use, and offers amazing statistics and insights into who your audience really is.

If you are unfamiliar with Google Analytics, I wrote a post on the topic of getting to know your audience that you can read here.

Use the information you glean from Google Analytics to develop your Pinterest strategy. Using demographics and the statistics, try to understand who your audience is and the content they would prefer. Also consider colors, fonts, and visual elements that will appeal to your audience.

For example, my audience is primarily females between 25 and 34 years. They most often view my blog on their iPhones and are located in metropolitan areas in the US. I try to create pins to attract more sophisticated millennial women and cater my content to their tastes.

Pinterest Analytics

Pinterest Analytics is a great way to learn more about your audience and how they behave on Pinterest specifically. My favorite section for planning my content and pins in my Pinterest Strategy is the third section in the overview, “Activity from (Your Website).”

This is information that applies directly to pins from my blog. This section will tell you what is the most popular with your audience. It will give your Pinterest strategy direction and purpose.

Top Pin Impressions

First, change the settings to 30 days (from 7 days) to get a better sampling of your content. Now, scroll down to the Top Pin Impressions. Here, you will be able to view your most popular pins for the past 30 days, as seen below for my site.

Now, ask yourself what these pins have in common contextually and visually? The context for the above pins are managing a blog and marketing it. From this information, I can determine that I should focus on creating and promoting this type of content.

Visually, these images feature warmer colors with the exception of “Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy.” The bottom two are posts from this month, so they are fairly new. This may impact their popularity, but not always.

The first three pins here aren’t as new but are from earlier this year. The font on all three is black on a white background. This means that I need to make sure that my text is clear and easy to read.

Try to understand your reader from the information in this section. The better you understand their preference, the better your Pinterest strategy will be.

Boards with Top Pin Impressions

Next, take a look at your boards. These are the boards from which most of your pins originate. This will give you an idea of the subject of the content your audience finds most enjoyable and useful.

As you can see in the image below, “Blog Design” is the board with the highest pin impressions. This is followed by my brand board, “Jackie Ison,” then three boards that are about the subject of blog marketing.

This information echoes the information from the Top Pin Impressions. My audience is looking for ways to make their blog more appealing and wants to know how to market it effectively. This means that I should plan content about these topics more often. I should also plan new pins for old posts falling into these categories as well.

This is all part of developing your Pinterest strategy. Knowing your audience and their interests will help you zero in on their needs and plan content for your Pinterest strategy. This all adds up to a much more effective Pinterest presence for your brand.

Tailwind

I can’t tell you how useful Tailwind has been for analyzing my Pinterest data. Unlike Pinterest Analytics which only provides data for 30 days, I can go back months to look at my pins and boards much farther back. This is great for gaining a better understanding of my pin performance over time.

If you don’t have a Tailwind account, you can signup for a free trial here. You don’t have to enter any payment information, so this is a great, risk-free way to gain access to see if Tailwind’s tools will be valuable for your blog.

Once you have an account and login to your dashboard, pay attention to the items in your left sidebar. Click the fourth item that has a bar chart icon. This is your Tailwind Insights. This is where you can find information about your Pinterest and profile performance.

Pin Inspector

First, go to “Pin Inspector.”Select a time period of at least 90 days and filter your results by only the pins from your website. Below is a screenshot similar what you will see. Note: I had to zoom out so you could see more of the page. This will be easier to read on your account.

It will show your pins in order from the most popular to least popular. To the right of your pin images you will have the number of pins, the number of comments, and the date it was originally pinned.

Pay extra attention to the date and time of the pin. These dates and time represent the day of the week and time of day that your pins are performing the best.

From this information, I know that pins pinned 2-4 PM and 7-9 PM perform well. The dates of the pins fall on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. From this information, I can determine that pinning from Tuesday to Friday between 2 and 4 or 7 and 9 is a good idea for my audience.

Use this information to create your pinning strategy. Timing is important on Pinterest. With the newest update, you need to focus on the timing of your pins. Be sure to pin your pins at times that your audience is most likely to save or click on them.

Board Insights

Now that you understand how the Pin Inspector can help your Pinterest Strategy, click on “Board Insights” under “Insights” in the sidebar menu. Here you will find your best performing boards. As you can see below, the sections across the top include Pins, Followers, Repins, Virality, and the board’s Engagement Score.

Virality represents the number of Repins per Pin and the Engagement Score is the number of pins and repins per follower. You can click the arrow to the right of the words under each section to sort your data by the numbers in that column, from highest to lowest.

Virality and Engagement are your most important numbers as they indicate the ratio of pins and repins you are receiving by board. In this screenshot, I selected Virality as the value to sort my boards. As you can see, my brand board is the highest, followed by my “WordPress” and “Blog Design” boards.

Tailwind’s Insights add significantly to your Pinterest Analytics data. This additional information will improve my Pinterest strategy and ensure that I am getting the most out of my Pinterest marketing efforts.

The Best Times to Post

As mentioned above, you can use the Tailwind “Pin Inspector” to help determine the best time to pin your posts. Another tool that is excellent for this information is Google Analytics. Google Analytics tracks every blog visit, where the visitor goes, what they click on, and how long they stay active on your blog.

The part we are going to take a look at is the time that visitors are the most active on your blog. Knowing when visitors are active will help you create a pinning schedule for your Pinterest strategy. I can’t stress how important timing is.

To view this information, log in to Google Analytics and go to your Overview. This section should load first by default. Once you are there, scroll down until you see a chart titled “When do your users visit?” This is the chart that you will need to use to know exactly when your users are the most active on your blog from all sources, including Pinterest.

As you can see, the bar at the bottom of the chart indicates the greatest volume of viewership. The lighter the box, the fewer viewers are active.

As you can tell from this example Wednesdays are very slow except for lunchtime and dinner. Saturday through Monday has steady traffic and the weekdays have viewers in spurts, peaking around meal times. On the weekend, however, the viewers are more likely to be active late at night.

Use this information to your advantage when creating your pinning schedule. Be sure to schedule your pins for the most active times for each day of the week. This is easiest when you use schedulers like BoardBooster and Tailwind, but can be done manually as well.

Every month when I review my statistics, this is the main chart I view to determine when I need to schedule pins for the upcoming month. I adjust my pinning schedule to ensure that the posts I want to promote the most are being pinned during these blocks of time.

Use Group Boards

If you are not using group boards to promote your blog posts, you need to start now. They are an amazing source for Pinterest views and referrals and should be an important part of your Pinterest strategy.

To use Pinterest group boards, you must learn how to find them, how to apply to join the board, and how to use group boards effectively. I will discuss each of those steps below in more detail.

How to Find Group Boards

Pinterest boards are not difficult to find. The best way to find high-quality niche boards is to check out other bloggers in your niche. Group boards will be lumped in with their other boards, so you can find them under the “Boards” tab in their profile.

Group boards will have a circle in the bottom left corner that is divided into three sections with other users’ profile images in the sections, like a pie.

Another way to find boards is to simply search for your niche in the Pinterest search bar, followed by the words, “group board.” When your results populate, select the drop-down menu to the right of the search box and select “Boards.”

You will have to click on the board to see if there are multiple contributors. If there are, they will show to the right of the board description.

How to Apply

Applying to group boards varies by each board. First, click on the board and read the description. If the board says it is accepting new members, great! If not, move on. Don’t waste your time! Read the entire description and the rules to ensure the board is a good fit for you and your blog.

The instructions to apply are typically listed in the board’s description. Typically, you will need to follow the board and the board’s owner (the person in the first that appears to the right of the board description) on Pinterest, then email or direct message the owner for an invite. Some bloggers prefer a form on their website.

All you have to do is send them the requested information and wait. Keep the request short and sweet and be sure to address the owner by his or her name and mention the name of the board you wish to join. Include “Request to Join Pinterest Group Board” in the email subject. This may result in a faster response.

Now, you will need to wait until you receive the invite to join. These can be sent by email, Pinterest direct message or may show up in your Pinterest notifications. Make it a habit to check all three daily.

Don’t wait on a group board invite, keep applying to group boards while you wait. I have had some board owners take months to send an invite while others will do so in minutes.

How to Use Boards

Once you have group boards, I highly recommend pinning to them and from them 2 to 3 times per day (unless this is prohibited in the board rules). I set alarms on my smartphone to go off at the best times of day to pin based on my Pinterest strategy and pinning schedule. During these time periods, I pin to my group boards.

I always pin one of my pins to the group board and repin one pin from another blogger to my personal boards.I used to utilize the 80/20 rule, but this became too much and didn’t yield results I wanted, so I started pinning 50/50. This improved my profile’s performance.

If your pins make up the majority of the images on a board, don’t pin another pin to that board for the day. If there are still no other pins added to the board after a day, I would leave the board. When a board’s users aren’t engaged, the audience won’t be either. Don’t waste your time and effort.

Use Manual Pinning

Manual pinning is free and easy. However, it is time-consuming. With that being said, it is a valuable asset to your Pinterest strategy.

Why Use Manual Pinning?

Pinterest rewards users who are physically on Pinterest and pinning. This will increase your profile performance, impressions, and daily views as a result. Manual pinning is also free, so even beginners or hobbyist can use this technique to grow their blog.

Timing

As with scheduled pinning, timing is an important part of your Pinterest strategy. Pinterest shows the newest pins first in a user’s smart feed. This means that the closer you are to the top of the feed when the pinner is online, the more likely it is for the reader to engage.

This means you will receive more repins and clicks if you are manually pinning at the times your audience is most active.

Share Other Blogger’s Pins

This is a group board requirement but is also great for your business. I have met other bloggers via sharing pins on Pinterest and have also gained viewers and followers as a result. When you repin a pin, your profile is listed under the pin’s description along with a link to the board you pinned the pin to.

So, if you are repinning one of your favorite blogger’s posts, there is a chance that the person who sees the repin will see your profile and board and want to check out your other pins.

This may also result in networking, repinning, and recognition from the recipient blogger. This is great for both businesses.

Utilize Schedulers and Pinning Tools

As I mentioned above, I use both Tailwind and BoardBooster to schedule my pins. I have a membership for both sites because they both bring something different to my Pinterest strategy.

Tailwind

Tailwind is known for its Tribes. Tribes are similar to group boards but are better. The pinners and pins both tend to be of higher quality than Pinterest Boards. That means that your pins are more likely to be seen by a wider and more targeted audience.

Tailwind also has amazing tools, as mentioned above, to help you get the most out of your Pinterest strategy. I mentioned a couple of my favorite tools above, but those are far from being the only tools they offer. If you are curious about Tailwind, sign up for your free trial here.

BoardBooster

BoardBooster also offers Tribes. However, if you read “11 Pinterest Blog Posts That Will Make You an Expert in No Time” last week, you know that I am not a fan of these. However, BoardBooster has its own merits.

First of all, it’s cheap. I have a small plan and only pay $5 per month. This is one-third the cost of Tailwind. Secondly, they have a looper which can loop old pins from your website to the top of the feed on larger boards. This brings the pin to the top of the board so that it is more likely to be seen again.

Finally, they have campaigns. I use “Random” campaigns to schedule pins at random times. This makes sure that my pins are getting out in front of my audience at the best time possible. This feature alone resulted in my first 1,000 Pinterest followers and 80,000 monthly views on Pinterest!

Analyze and Monitor Your Progress

I have already written about how to use the data from Google Analytics, Pinterest Analytics, and Tailwind to plan your Pinterest strategy. However, these tools are also a very good way to monitor the progress of your Pinterest strategy.

Once a month, write down the statistics from these sources and compare them to prior months. If your numbers are going down, you need to alter your strategy. However, if your numbers are continuing to improve, you are in good shape.

Don’t be afraid to make small modifications to encourage growth. Monitoring your progress will allow you to keep your blog on track and improve your Pinterest strategy over time.

Create Your Pinterest Strategy Now!

Now that you know how to form a Pinterest Strategy, it is time to set your plan in action. Write down your plans and create pins to help drive your impressions and views. Create a schedule for manual and scheduled pinning and pin content that will help you get there.

A successful Pinterest strategy is all about combining quality content with pin design and timing your pins! You have to have all three as part of your plan for your Pinterest strategy to succeed.

Be sure to enter your email address using the form below to download your free copy of my Pinterest Keyword Description Worksheet so that you can get your boards and pins in front of the right audience fast.

Until next time, good luck and happy pinning!

 

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