I’ve been looking forward to writing this blog post for a while now. Here’s why: I think Pinterest is a bit of a mystery to a lot of people, especially woman-owned businesses. They might use it personally (nearly every woman I know has a Pinterest account), but they might not be using it for their business. And if they are, they might not be using it effectively.
This blog post isn’t just for bloggers looking to increase traffic, by the way. This blog post is for:
Business owners
Anyone selling a product to women between the ages of 18-45
Bloggers
Here’s the rundown of what I’m about to tell you: I increased my engagement on Pinterest by 400% without…
paying for Tailwind (too expensive)
spending hours on Pinterest
more effort than checking in once a day
I noticed this increase most starkly this month, but it’s been steadily building for the past 6 months, ever since I put in renewed efforts to build a strategy. I am cheap, however, and didn’t want to pay for something like Tailwind. This is all just me, Pinterest.com, and the Pinterest app.
Let’s jump in.
(Pst, if you’d like to check out my Pinterest, you can do so here.)
Analytics
Here are my analytics on Pinterest for the month of July:
And here are my analytics on Pinterest for the month of August:
Between May and June, my impressions varied between 19,000 and 21,000 per month. (For whatever reason, I don’t have full analytics for those months on Pinterest. It may be a switch in their built-in analytics programs.)
That’s a pretty significant jump over 4 months, right? And like I said, I didn’t spend money on it and I didn’t dedicate hours of my day to it.l
So what did I do?! Let me tell you.
Methods
When it comes to me and basic methods for social media, there are no secrets. I realize a lot of people would put this information behind a paywall and it’s one of my biggest annoyances. I’ve signed up for tons of free Pinterest (or Facebook or whatever) webinars and sat through them, only for it to be 10 minutes of basic information (like “make a Pinterest account” DUH!) and 20 minutes of selling me a bigger webinar or e-course.
Sorry, not interested.
Here’s what I did over the last 4 months:
For each blog post I posted (which admittedly wasn’t a ton), I created 3-4 additional Pinterest graphics. This was because I was testing what worked best on Pinterest. I don’t have a concrete answer on that, by the way.
I then pinned each blog post at least the week it was posted. Usually, I did this all as one on Saturday morning. Then I would schedule the different Pinterest graphics over the next few days. All of these pins initially went to my specific board for my blog posts.
From there, I pinned each blog post pin to my group boards.
Throughout the week, I would check each day and pin each varied Pin as it posted to my group boards.
That’s literally it! That’s all I did! I just kept up this weekly and daily task list every single week for four months.
It does seem time consuming. But let’s break it down.
On average for the past few months, I’ve been posting maybe 2 blog posts a week. In total, each blog post might take me 2 hours.
It might take me an additional hour to great 8 different Pinterest graphics.
On Saturday, it took me on average about 2 hours to write unique Pins for each blog post and Pin/schedule.
Every day, sharing pins to my group boards took maybe 30 minutes.
In total, that’s 7 hours for writing blog posts, creating graphics, and posting on Pinterest. However, 4 of those hours I’m already doing anyway in the form of writing and scheduling blog posts. Then, in total per week, I spent 3 1/2 hours on Pinterest throughout the week. That’s definitely less time than I spend on Twitter and Instagram. (Is that embarrassing?!)
Here’s a few additional things I did throughout these 4 months as well:
Checking daily Pinterest trends (if you press the search box to type, you can see trends for you specifically as well as trends throughout Pinterest). If I saw any trends that correlated to blog posts I had, I immediately repinned those blog posts to my group boards.
If I had seasonal posts that I thought might be relevant, I would also repin those. In mid-August, I started to notice a steady increase in engagement on my Blogtober pins from 2018 and 2017, so I began sharing those Pins to my group boards as well.
I created Pinterest-specific graphics for my affiliate codes, announcements, and sponsored posts. These included information that people needed without having to jump to my blog; it helped increase uses of my affiliate codes as well as my traffic. I was slightly worried that giving away the free bit wouldn’t help my traffic, but I was wrong. It helped a lot!
A Note on Group Boards
As you can see, I rely on group boards a lot on Pinterest. I am hesitant to make suggestions for group boards, as these aren’t ones I own. I don’t necessarily want to be held responsible for the rules or content should anyone disagree! However, if you would like suggestions, please don’t hesitate to send me a note and I’ll send a few links over.
As well, if you would be interested in a group board with me, let me know.
Do I expect to see results forever?
“Forever”—what a funny way to phrase that!
To I expect to see these massive increases in engagement (and subsequently, my blog traffic) forever using these methods? No. I think this was a good way for me to get started and get the ball rolling, so to speak. As I continue to tweak my methods, I expect to have to change things and, eventually, I know It will be beneficial to me to start using different methods, including paying for tools and streamlining my methods.
However, I wanted to share this method I’ve used because I see so much advice about Pinterest that literally boils down to “pay for this tool!” I don’t know about you, but I am so hesitant about paying for things that I feel I can do for free, at least for right now. In the future, that may not be the case, but it is for me right now at this moment (given being recently laid off!)
Now, it’s time for you: do you have questions about Pinterest?
