Blogging Tips: How I Use Pinterest For Blogging

Pinterest is a secret gem of blogging, creating, and everything that comes along with living an online life. I've been preaching Pinterest since it's creation in 2011; not to pat myself on the back, I'm pretty sure that I was one of the first people to be on Pinterest back in 2011.

I remember like it was yesterday -- I was getting ready to study for my Fall 2011 finals and my sorority sister told me about this new platform called Pinterest which was a virtual pinboard. I became so obsessed I almost failed my finals. I spent that entire winter break (I miss having a winter break) on Pinterest, creating boards and being inspired.

Fast forward to 2018 Pinterest is now classified as a search engine similar to Google. People are going to Pinterest to search for things from design to beauty to fashion to weddings and it's blowing up.

Credit

Because of my obsession with Pinterest, it's always been a tool in my blogging kit. I have always shared my posts to Pinterest and for years, it's been at the top of my referral traffic.

YUP. You heard that right.

I get the most blog traffic from Pinterest. More from Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, or organic searches. Pinterest is KING and it works!

The key to getting traction on Pinterest are two main things: vertical images and using the captions correctly.

Vertical photos get shared more because as you scroll, you are obviously going vertically so those photos catch your eye.

For captions, it's important to use keywords to describe your pin and what you are pinning because people are going to type in keywords to find what they're looking for. Also, a common misconception about Pinterest is hashtags -- do you use them or do you not? I spoke to someone at Pinterest and they said NO to hashtags so you heard it here!

While Pinterest isn't a social media network, there is still a huge sense of community. I've joined countless group boards where I share my blog posts and then look through others and share theirs. Being part of a group board just helps get more eyes on your pins and in this case, my blog content.

For a long time, I was sharing Pins directly from my blog pages. I was using the Pin button and manually doing everything but then I discovered Tailwind.

Tailwind is a dashboard specifically made for Pinterest (recently they introduced tools for Instagram) and it allows you to schedule pins, gives you amazing analytics and is just so easy to use. Tailwind tells you the best times to pin and allows you to stock up your queue and just pushes out the pins at the given time.

The actual Pinterest website hasn't gotten on board with analytics yet so Tailwind is a great secondary tool to use to track your Pinterest analytics. It's amazing to see how many people are interacting with your pins and how it compares to previous time periods.

Tailwind actually just introduced their own 'group board' idea and I have fallen in love with it. Tailwind Tribes is a new feature that Tailwind released within the past few weeks (or at least that's when I realized it) and it's basically a huge group board that you don't have to 'join'.

It makes group pinning super easy and just like a regular group board that you might've joined from a blogging network, it gets your pin in front of more eyes.

Whenever I post a blog I make sure I share it on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Whenever I'm scheduling Twitter and Facebook, I head over to Tailwind and share that pin as well.

I also make sure that I'm sharing other Influencer's content and non blog related content to have some balance to my boards.

Pinterest is truly a hidden gem that all influencers should utilize. You have to know how to use it and not treat it as another social media platform. Do your research, join Tailwind, and get to pinning!

xoxo
B