So I have been on Pinterest for a long time and I have shared some of my content there but never really seen much in terms of traffic until the last few months when I decided to put some real effort into it.
Just to give you an idea of how my Pinterest traffic has improved over the last year here are some screenshots of my analytics for my mommy blog, which is my main online concern.
Now I am going to take you step by step through all the things I have done to build up my Pinterest traffic in the last few months starting right at the beginning from setting up your Pinterest account.
If you have just one website then I suggest that you set up a personal Pinterest account and set up a business account for your website. If you have more than one website then I suggest you set up your personal Pinterest account and a Pinterest business account for each of your websites. It may sound like a lot to manage, but I will show you some nifty little tricks where you can mostly manage your Pinterest marketing from your one personal Pinterest account.
I love video marketing and it is so much easier to show you how to do something than it is to explain it. So I have created one video for each step of this process for you.
Each video will be one task that you can do and come back later to carry on. It is not always easy to take everything in in one go.
So here we go… your step by step Pinterest Content Marketing Guide:
Table of Contents
How To Create A Pinterest Business Account
Obviously the first thing you are going to need to do is set up your Pinterest account. I suggest that you set up a business account for your website and if you have more than one website you can set up a Pinterest business profile for each website. It may sound like a lot to manage, but I will show you how to set everything up in a way that you can manage it easily, mostly from one profile.
I also suggest that you set up a personal Pinterest profile too and this would then be the account that you will manage your Pinterest marketing from.
How To Verify Your Website On Pinterest
The next step is to verify your website on Pinterest. This will not only create more trust for you, but it will also offer your account more protection and it will enable you to see more indepth analytics on your Pinterest business account.
You can verify your website on your personal account as well as on your business account. I suggest that you verify your websites on your business accounts and just list your websites in your personal profile.
Verifying your website on Pinterest is really quick and easy and it comes with awesome benefits. Just add your website into your profile settings and click on “verify website” to get your code to add to your WordPress header file.
Here is a video showing you exactly how to verify your website on Pinterest.
How To Add The Pin It Button To Your Browser
The next step would be to add the Pin It button to your browser, this means that you can pin images from anywhere you are on the internet without having to go into Pinterest. Just bear in mind that when I say from anywhere online there are some websites that are blocked from being pinned, such as Facebook and some other websites, such as Wealthy Affiliate.
Download the Pin It Button Here and then it will show at the top of your browser. When you come across an image you would like to pin to Pinterest just click on the Pin It button on your browser and all the images on that web page will come up for you to choose from. Alternatively you can hover over the image you would like to pin and on the left hand corner of the image you will see the Pinterest logo come up, click on that and you will be able to pin the image.
How To Create Boards On Pinterest
Creating a board is very quick and easy, but so often people neglect to properly optimize their boards. You can create a board when you pin an image by choosing to create a new board at the bottom instead of pinning to an existing board but this only gives you the option to create a title for your board.
For this reason I recommend that you create your board from within Pinterest. You can click on Boards and then click on the plus sign on the left to create a new board.
Fill in the title and also add in a super keyword juicy description. You can also choose a category for your board which also help to optimize your board further. You can also click on add collaborators which is super helpful. I have already mentioned adding your other accounts as collaborators and this is really going to make your Pinterest content marketing efforts so much easier to manage.
Once you have pinned some content to your board you can also add a featured image to your board which will make it stand out more and be more appealing.
How To Create Pinnable Images
Now although you can pin your images straight from your website to Pinterest I actually don’t recommend that you do that. I personally create different images for my website, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram using Canva.
It may sound like a lot of extra work but when you look at the images on Pinterest you will see that they are all a certain size, the perfect Pinterest size.
If you go to Canva and start using it you will see that they have image sizes for Pinterest and for various other social networks too taking all the guess work out of it.
Since I started creating my Pinterest images in a certain way I have seen my traffic from Pinterest climbing in a huge way.
How To Pin Images To Pinterest
Pinning images to Pinterest can be done in 3 ways – using the Pin It button, pinning an image from your computer from within Pinterest and pinning an image from a url from within Pinterest.
I have already run through the basics of how to pin images to Pinterest using the Pin It button and you can see that in the video below. Like I have already said even though I have the Pin It button I very rarely use it to pin anything.
I prefer to pin my images from within Pinterest. My favorite and most used way to pin images is to pin from my computer. The reason for this is simple – I don’t usually upload my Pinterest image to my website. It is a large file and I don’t want to slow down my website with those images.
Also very often if you want to pin affiliate links you will need to first add the image and then add the link afterwards.
The third way to pin images to Pinterest is by entering the url. This is especially useful since this is how you can pin Youtube videos to Pinterest.
Watch this video below to see how to pin images to Pinterest in each of these ways.
How To Join Pinterest Group Boards
Joining big group boards on Pinterest was a big time game changer for me. When I first started on Pinterest about 4 years ago I couldn’t get my head around how Pinterest worked. I had heard many people saying that Pinterest is amazing for getting traffic.
That was not my experience until I starting really putting some effort in and researching how to use Pinterest properly.
Joining group Pinterest boards was a turning point for me. It does take some time and efforrt to find and join the groups but once you are a collaborator on a good number of group boards you will start to see the difference.
There are two methods that I use to find and join group Pinterest boards. The first is to search on Facebook for groups set up purely for this purpose – for people to invite others to join their Pinterest boards. So if you search on Facebook using keywords like “Pinterest Boards” or “Pinterest Group Boards” you will find some groups to join. Once you are accepted just scroll down the groups and find people inviting others to boards in your niche.
Then another way which has been very successful for me is to use a website called Pingroupie.com. You can search for big group boards using various options such as group size, number of collaborators and number of followers.
Then you can go to the board and find the information given to join.
My Pinterest Routine From Start To Finish
Now I can certainly understand that it may seem like a mammoth task to get all of the above done and grow your Pinterest account but once that is done the task all you need to really do is share your new content on Pinterest.
So if you want to see how I generate traffic from Pinterest watch this video below to see my Pinterest routine from start to finish.
I hope you have found this Pinterest Content Marketing Guide for Beginners helpful. It has helped me grow my Pinterest traffic from 0-6 Pinterest visitors a day to 50 – 150 Pinterest visitors a day in the space of just under 6 months.
If you have any questions about Pinterest content marketing let me know and I will do my best to answer.
