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21 Ways To Use Pinterest To Make Money With Your Blog

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If you are already using Pinterest and you’re not really sure if it’s working to generate traffic and profit your business.

Are you looking for some strategies that will increase traffic to your site, and help you sell more products or services?

While some of the tips below will directly result in traffic and sales, others will help you indirectly by getting your pins seen, by increasing your Pinterest followers, or by helping you build your email list – all of which will ultimately have an impact on your bottom line.

Read Also: 10 Passive Income Ideas Guaranteed To Help You Quit Your Job

#1 Make Sure All of Your Website Images Are The Optimal Size For Pinterest

Many business owners have found that longer images work better for getting clicks on Pinterest. This is a super-simple way to get more traffic to your website or blog!

It’s also so important to make sure your blog and product images are a minimum of 600-735 pixels wide.

Since pins will expand to 735 px when clicked, you’ll want your image to take up as much space as possible.

#2 Promote Your Product on Your Popular Pinned Pages

Want to take advantage of your popularity on Pinterest to sell a product or service?

Log into your Pinterest Analytics and navigate to the Activity tab.

Now scroll down to see which pins are generating the most clicks (traffic). These are the pages you’ll want to focus on – adding your products or services in obvious places where this traffic won’t be able to miss them!

#3 Pin Regularly

As with any social media, it’s important to pins images regularly. More frequent pins = more exposure = more traffic and sales!

Having trouble keeping to a regular pinning schedule? There are some great tools out there that let you schedule your pins. Tailwind, Buffer and Viralwoot are all good options.

#4 Create Topical Boards With Descriptive Names

I still see some business owners creating boards directly related to their business. With boards like “Our top-selling products” or “Blog Posts”, your boards are not only going to be rather unappealing, but are unlikely to get found!

Instead, create boards based on popular topics or themes within your niche. For instance, I have boards like “Social Media Marketing”, “Social Selling Tips and Tricks” and “Instagram Tips for Small Business”.

These are descriptive names that tell people exactly what to expect – and they attract tons of traffic from people who are searching for those terms!

#5 Make Sure You Have a Business Account

One of the keys to getting more traffic from Pinterest is to keep a close eye on what’s working for you and what’s not. And as already mentioned, the best way to do this is by monitoring your Pinterest Analytics.

Unfortunately, Analytics are only available for business accounts. Whether you want to create a new business profile or convert your personal profile to a business on.

#6 Create a Special Offer

This is another great strategy for boosting sales. It’s also a great way to find out how well your offer is working with your audience on Pinterest!

Come up with a special offer just for your Pinterest audience – it could be free shipping, a special 2-for-1 deal, or a free gift with purchase. Then create graphic listing all the details and pin it to one of your boards.

#7 Add Descriptions Like You’re Writing An Ad!

When people see your pins in Pinterest Search, it’s your image that will draw their attention first. But it’s your description that will convince them to click through to your site.

Take a look at the pin above from Simplemost. They describe in detail what this project is all about, including how you customize the coasters and what they be can be used for.

They also use a number of keywords within their description (which is great for getting found in Pinterest Search). And link directly to their blog post at the end of the description (which is great for getting traffic).

#8 Use Rich Pins

Are you already using Rich Pins? These are a necessity for any business that has as app, product, blog, or that regularly posts recipes.

Rich Pins let you structure your pins in a way that makes them more appealing and useful. For instance, recipe pins let you add ingredients, cooking instructions and serving sizes, and product pins let you add real-time pricing and availability… all within your pin!

#9 Promote an Affiliate Product on Your Popular Pinned Pages

Don’t offer a product or service related to the content of your pin? Find an affiliate product that these visitors would love and promote it on your page.

Rather than simply slapping a banner ad in your sidebar, try incorporating the product right into the content of your post. Link to the product, explaining how it will help readers solve the problem they’re trying to fix by reading your blog post.

#10 Hold a Contest

A Pinterest contest can be a great way to increase your exposure and get traffic to your site. Of course, make sure you’re following Pinterest brand guidelines so you don’t inadvertently break the rules!

Some best practices for contest: create a board just for content pins, create a contest hashtag, and ask for quality pins rather than quantity (Pinterest prefers people pin one great items rather than a bunch of spammy items).

#11 Promote Your Free Lead Magnets

Want to use Pinterest to build your email list, and ultimately, to drive sales?

Check your Analytics to see which pages or posts on your site are getting the most traffic from Pinterest. Now create a free guide, ebook or other downloadable product directly related to the content of that page – and then promote it on that page as an incentive to join your email list.

#12 Feature Multiple Products on One Pin

According to Pinterest, pins with multiple products actually get 30% higher click through rates than pins with just one product – and 20% higher checkout rates.

This one simple trick is all you need to do increase your traffic and sales exponentially!

#13 Create Ads Out Of Your Best Pins

Have a pin that’s already driving tons of traffic and sales? Why not take things up a notch and pay to promote that pin to more people?

Not sure where to start? Pinterest has a great interactive checklist that will walk you through the entire process of promoting your pin.

#14 Create a Group Board

In case you’re not familiar with group boards (sometimes referred to as contributor boards), they’re just like regular boards – expect other people can pin to it.

This is great for getting increased exposure and engagement… and while it may not have a direct effect on how much traffic you get to your site, the increased engagement and follower count will undoubtedly lead to more traffic in the long run.

#15 Pin Each and Every Blog Post

Pinning your products is important, but don’t forget about your blog posts. Create multiple boards focusing on different topics, and then pin your blog posts to the appropriate board.

Also make sure you’re giving your visitors an easy way to pin your blog posts. If you have a WordPress site, using a plugin like Pinterest Pin in Button can help boost pins and increase exposure and traffic!

#16 Sign Up For TailWind

Signing up for Tailwind was by far the best thing I ever did for my Pinterest account. After one week of using Tailwind I grew my followers by over 500!

I couldn’t believe it, but it really works.

Tailwind is a Pinterest partner and their main goal is to help you grow your Pinterest account. They have a ton of statistical information that you can use to see what works in your Pinterest account and what does not and they help you publish pins at peak pinning times.

The biggest draw of Tailwind, though, is their scheduling tool. All of these aspects are so important when getting started with Tailwind. While it may seem like just one more thing to manage, it will make your life easier in the long run!

Start your FREE trial of Tailwind right here.

#17 Hire Someone Else To Do Your Graphics

Pinterest is all about visuals. Yes, it may seem a bit counter-intuitive to provide great images when you want people to read. Great visuals, though, are the way to entice Pinners to click through to your blog post.

Think of Pinterest as a lusciously enjoyable glossy magazine. It is filled with appealing eye candy. To capture the attention of a reader from the site, your Pins need the visual appeal to stand out, and invoke them to click through to your blog post.

#18 Engage, Engage, Engage

Like any good social marketer, you need to engage with your Followers. This is true when you want to turn your Pinners into your blog readers, too. The more you engage with people on Pinterest, the more likely they’ll also want to connect with you on your blog, and other sites.

So how do you engage on Pinterest? There’s lots of ways to get to know your market better on Pinterest, and for your market to get to know you better too.

Here are a few tips to engage on Pinterest:

  • Pin good, original and relevant content
  • Pin often and consistently so your Pins get seen in your Followers’ feeds
  • Return the favour and follow your Followers
  • Check out your Followers’ Boards and Pins for good content ideas they like
  • Ask questions that are answered in your blog
  • RePin, like and comment on your Followers’ Pins, when you really think they’re great
  • RePin industry leaders, and other great content your Followers will like

#19 Download The Right WordPress Social Plugin

If you’re running WordPress you likely know of – and use – many helpful plugins to make your blogging life easier.

Easy is good of course, but when it comes down to it, aren’t we really after one main thing: more traffic?

By using the Social Warfare Pro plugin and a few of its unique Pinterest-specific features, you can grow your presence on Pinterest and in turn, increase your reach and traffic considerably.

Social Warfare at its core is a social sharing plugin, so if you’re running another social sharing plugin like Sumo or Shareaholic, you’ll first want to deactivate it from inside your WordPress backend.

Once you download, install and activate the Social Warfare Pro plugin, head over to the Display tab and be sure to include the Pinterest button in your active set. I like to include Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter, but if you’re in a B2B niche, you might want to include LinkedIn as well. Keep it lean, though, as the last thing you want to do is overwhelm visitors with too many choices.

Next, when it comes to positioning, many people find placing the social share buttons at the bottom of each post, along with a floating bar along the side, works well to promote social sharing without being too intrusive.

Have you ever been to a blog, clicked the Pinterest Save button that appears when you hover over an image and been presented with a popup listing every image on the page?

Remember what we said about giving the visitor too many choices?

To really start gaining some traction on Pinterest, be sure to turn on Social Warfare’s Pinit Button feature. When a visitor hovers over an image in your blog post, a red Save button will appear and when clicked, takes the visitor to straight to Pinterest to share only that image.

Now to the part where Social Warfare really shines. When you’re creating a post or page in the WordPress post editor backend – or editing an existing one – you can set post-specific options under the Social Warfare Custom Options section.

This is where you upload your carefully crafted Pinterest image and create your optimized Pinterest description. Whenever someone clicks on the social sharing button, they are taken directly to Pinterest with the image and description already in place – ready to pin.

Lastly, under the Social Warfare > Advanced tab, you can set a number of global Pinterest options such as telling Social Warfare to use your feature image as a fallback when you don’t add a Pinterest-specific image to a particular post. You can select the option to have your Pinterest-specific post image automatically inserted into your post, or remain hidden and come up when a visitor is using the Pinterest browser extension.

By putting in the extra effort to create a Pin image and description for each post, you can influence what gets shared on Pinterest by your visitors – allowing you to target only the most optimized imagery and keywords.

Social Warfare does come in a free version, but most of the important Pinterest features are only available in the Pro version. Pro pricing ranges from $29/year for a single site, to $250/year for use on up to 10 websites.

#20 Make Sure Your Website Is Mobile Responsive

Over 80% of Pinterest traffic comes from mobile devices. If your site is not mobile responsive once the reader gets there, they probably won’t stick around for long. Mobile responsiveness is when a site automatically adjusts its sizing, layout, and proportions to display better on a mobile device. Try viewing your site on a phone to see how user-friendly it is. There are many WordPress themes that are mobile responsive and SquareSpace templates are automatically mobile responsive.

#21 Sell Your Own Digital Programs

Digital products are a game-changer for Pinterest users. When you create your own digital programs you become a REAL business owner. A blogger who understands multiple streams of revenue will generate more income and, more important stays in control of their revenue.

Say Google decides to deactivate your Adsense account, then what? If you’re selling your own digital products you won’t care!

The easiest way to sell your own digital programs is to write blog posts that pre-sale your product. Send people from Pinterest to your blog, then to your sales page.

It’s never been easier to make $10,000 or more per month selling your own digital products.

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