Pinterest is my favourite social media platform, and if I had to, I’d ditch all of the other social media platforms entirely, and just stick with Pinterest. I’ve been a heavy Pinterest user for seven years now, and I’ve amassed over 1.4 million followers on the platform alone, and it’s incredible how much potential there is when it comes to bloggers.
I’ve had single pins go viral, giving me 30,000 views in one day and even old pins can gain traction and go viral months, or years later. My biggest traffic earner right now is a pin I made in 2019, and it just took off out of nowhere, and I hadn’t even repinned it. That’s what I love the most about Pinterest. It’s not like Instagram where it’s all about your most recent post, and posts you published days or weeks ago are forgotten.
Pinterest works like a visual search engine, and pins you upload might not do well initially, but out of nowhere you can find they take off. That’s particularly the case with seasonal based content, where you’ll get ebbs and flows, but evergreen content is the way to go. Obviously, it’s always a good idea to create content which will be popular in different seasons, but if you want to generate the most traffic, opt for subjects and topics which people would be searching for all year round.
The Pinterest algorithm is forever changing, but I try not to think about or worry about the algorithm in all honesty. Trends come and go, and as long as you’re creating high quality content, and pins, you’ll have success. One of my favourite parts of blogging, is the pin creation itself. It’s not enough to just pin images straight from your posts onto Pinterest. You want images which will catch the interest of people whilst scrolling on Pinterest, and there are different things you can do to ensure you do exactly that;
Fonts
I absolutely love using fonts. It’s such a great way to make your blog, and pins stand out. Installing and using fonts isn’t complicated either, and there are websites like Font Bundles, which allow you to purchase fonts that you can then use on your blog. You can use custom fonts in your blog design like your header, and social media branding. You can also use them for creating blog post promotional pins too.
If you follow me on Pinterest, you’ll see that I love using handwriting fonts the most. They always do well for me, especially when creating quote phone wallpapers like the one shown above. This one quote pin has generated me 50,000 hits on my other blog Gemma Etc since I pinned it on the 5th of May 2019, and it took me around one minute to make thanks to the amazing choice of handwriting fonts from Font Bundles.
Pinterest is all about the visuals, so you want your pins to look pretty and eye catching. I find handwriting pins on quote pins, and also blog post promotional pins like the one shown above, do the best for me. Especially if you combine a handwriting style font with a plainer font, with an emotive word in the handwriting font.
It really helps to grab attention, and you want your pins to inspire people to a) repin the pin to one of their own Pinterest boards and b) click through to your blog to read your full blog post. Using custom fonts will make your blog promotional pins really stand out, and help with your blog’s branding, especially if you utilise the font across your blog, social media channels, blog posts and pins.
Images
One of the best ‘investments’ I ever made, was subscribing to paid stock image services. I don’t have the hours in the day to create content for four blogs, never mind take photos for all of them. So that’s where stock image sites are invaluable. There are sites like Deposit Photos where you can purchase credits, which you can then redeem each time you download one of their images.
Or there are sites like PixiStock where you pay a monthly or annual fee, for access to their extensive stock image library. I love that you can find images for whatever you’re writing about, and they’re high quality. Meaning you don’t have to worry about taking relevant photos, and you can concentrate your time on writing quality content, and making amazing Pinterest pins instead.
Story Pins
Story Pins is a brand new Pinterest feature, and I’ve had some major success with it so far. Story Pins are Pinterest’s version of Instagram’s Instagram Stories. They don’t have a swipe-up feature unfortunately, and you can’t link them to any external links. It is in beta testing right now, with only a small percentage of Pinterest creators being able to use it, but once it is available for you, make sure you use it.
Whilst you can’t link out to your blog directly, Story Pins will explode your Pinterest profile’s reach. I have seen a big increase in followers since I started using Instagram Stories, and have grown by over 5,000 followers in a week with very little effort.
By using Story Pins, Pinterest will put the pin in front of a new audience, which could then click your blog link in your bio, make them engage with your other content which might be linked to your blog, but also increase the reach on your existing content. The above screenshot, shows how my traffic exploded practically overnight from starting to use Story Pins (we’re talking multiple thousands of click throughs per day), so I’m a massive fan already, and cannot recommend them enough if you want to boost your blog’s traffic and potential.
These are just a few ways in which Pinterest can boost your blog, and I really hope you found them helpful.
Blogging
