Pinterest Tips For Bloggers

Up until early 2016 I had no idea how to use Pinterest or how to make it work for me. By the end of the year I surpassed 15,500 followers, and I'm going to show you how you can too. Creating Images If you're creating images for your blog that you want to share to Pinterest, choose wisely how you create your image. I create my Pinterest photos using Canva to create infographics or quotes by either using their free images or designing my own and adding text. I also use Photoshop CS3 to add text to my own images if I'm writing a blog post and want it to reflect my own work, which can be shared to my blog board. Vertical photos work the best as the website and the app are designed to favour long images and they're also more eye-catching. For image sizes, this website shows the best sizes depending on your image. I know it will be tempting to upload all of your photos onto Pinterest, but you should choose your best images that represent your ability as an influencer or personal style. When I have my own photos to pin, I pick images out of the bunch that I feel will do the best. If you want to showcase a few images, create a long photo and add them in as a collage, so a few landscape photos like this, or more of a 'how to' pin like this. Pinned Images Add descriptions to your pins to make them relevant, as it helps the pin show up in searches. Don't add hashtags as they're unnecessary I have found, and don't really add to the photo. Pin high-quality images, as not only will they do better but they're more aesthetically pleasing and will make your boards more appealing. Brighter photos catch the eye almost immediately, so having a range of colours in images you're pinning has helped me improve my profile. Pin images as often as you can. I try to set out a few times a day to spend pinning, mostly in the morning during commuting hours, around lunch time and around tea time as these are the most active times I've found, based on following mainly UK boards. If your following seems to be based around the world, try and pin over more hours when possible or use a scheduling website to cover more hours in the day. Be consistent to help build your audience and keep them engaged with your content. 
Growing Your Following Join group boards as they often do really well since a range of different people will be pinning into it. If people follow the group board they often click to see which members are pinning to it, and are more likely to follow you as a result. Group boards also bring new pins to your attention so you can pin them to your own boards, which is another great way to discover pins without going onto your feed or using the search feature.
Follow suggested boards that come up on your feed. Not only are the boards related to images you've been pinning but you'll see that people may follow you back too. Follow other people too as this will help to grow your own following but will also open up other boards to follow to gain more inspiration. If you're a blogger like me, ask on Twitter or Instagram for blogger's Pinterest usernames and you'll soon find if people are interested in your other content, they'll want to follow you here too. If you follow bloggers whose content you enjoy, this will most likely be the same for them too.
Profile When it comes to creating your profile, you need to do a few things to make it clear who you are and what you're interested in. Try to make your username the same as that on other social media platforms to make it easier for people to find you. Mine for example, is laurahadleyx which is consistent throughout Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest, but also the beginning of my email address. In the same way, if you have the same profile image across platforms it will help people recognise you.
If you're a blogger or own a website, add your url to your profile. You'll notice on your referral traffic that people will click through and you'll see Pinterest under 'sources' in whatever you use to view your analytics. Adding your url helps your profile look more professional. Another feature that I love about the profile page is there is a recently released feature where you can put your favourite boards to your profile page which you can see on my profile. If has a slideshow function to show off your chosen boards and since installing it my followers have been increasing at a faster rate.
Boards & Titles When creating a board, keep the title relevant i.e. Makeup Organisation. A user searching for boards under this name will find this easier that if you named it under something broader, like just 'makeup'. This relates to my second point; split boards up into more niche categories. For example, split up food and drink into savoury food, baking and drinks. If someone is interested in, say for example 'drinks' but your board is 'food and drinks' they may not follow it as it's too broad. 
Make seasonal boards for events or holidays. These will be searched a lot and will cycle round every year so can won't get old and can be updated when needed. If you're starting off a board for the summer months but you're currently in Autumn or Winter, keep the board a secret until you've built it up enough, then make it public at the end of Spring. 
Make your boards have bright, interesting covers to allow pinners to be interested in what you pin. Switch your covers up every few weeks to mix things up and to show you're active on the platform. Move your best boards to the top of your profile page on the desktop version as potential new followers will want to see relatable content first, and boards with the most pins on when they first view your profile to see that you're active. 
Widgets For Your Blog Until a few months ago I didn't have a Pinterest widget on my blog, and I was really missing out. My widget shows a selection of my most recent pins, which may intrigue blog readers and encourage them to click through to follow or explore your boards. The widgets will often display the last few pins so make sure the last few images you pin are high-quality and intriguing.  Pin from your blog and social media. Adding a 'share to Pinterest' button helps promote your blog posts which will in turn help create more traffic from Pinterest to your website. On chrome add the extension so people can hover over your images to pin them themselves. Analytics View the analytics function on Pinterest to see statistics and use them to your advantage. You can see your profile visit numbers and impressions, activity from your blog, pins that have performed the best, and the people that you reach. You can see where in the world people are viewing your content from, what your audience demographics are like in terms of gender and language, your most favourable boards based upon viewer activity and views from pins from your own website. There is a wide range of information you can analyse from this function and I'm using it almost daily to help tailor my profile and boards to suit my audience to help it to grow to its best. I hope this post has helped you! Make sure to check out my other tips posts for more advice on blogging and social media.

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