Hey blogger, have you heard that using Pinterest you can possibly double, triple, or even quadruple your blog traffic? Well today I am going to be sharing 8 Pinterest Mistakes That Will Slow Your Blog’s Growth.
By the end of this post you will be on your way to growing your blog traffic and building your online brand.
BTW-If you are reading this post and have not setup your Pinterest account checkout my ultimate guide to Pinterest for Beginners here.
Why the big fuss about Pinterest? Isn’t it just another social media platform like Twitter or Instagram?
At first glance you may think of Pinterest as nothing more than a social media channel.
There is in fact a social element to Pinterest ie: following people and people following you. However Pinterest is more than your typical social media sharing site.
This social platform is actually a visual search engine. When we have a question about something or we want information now a days we go to Google.
Type in our search phrase and Google sends us results that should answer our query.
Pinterest works the same way. You can go on Pinterest and type in a search term. You will get results that answer your question.
Now the only difference in Pinterest and Google would be that Google uses text based format to show results and Pinterest uses images to show results.
8 Pinterest Mistakes That Will Slow Your Blog’s Growth
As a blogger you will be able to create pins (images) that link to your blog posts. Optimize your pins with keywords to be discovered in search.
If a Pinterest user searches a keyword from your niche your post can potentially be seen by that user.
This is how to drive traffic to your blog or website.
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Properly Optimized Pinterest Profile
This is one you have to get right! In your profile you need to tell Pinterest who you are and what your specialty is.
We do this by using keywords. This will take a bit of time as you will need to research your niche and find keywords that you can use in your profile BIO.
Now let me take this time to also mention the best way to set up your Pinterest account is create a free business account.
If you currently use a personal account you can easily convert it to a business account. Let me address this issue-converting a personal account to a business account.
If your personal account is completely opposite of what your blog niche will be then just create a brand new business account.
If your personal account is similar to your blog niche then you can do the conversion and use these tips to optimize.
A quick recap so far:
- Create a free business account
- Use keywords that describe your services in your bio
Your profile will need an image. If you are representing yourself use a selfie or good head-shot.
If you represent your brand you can use your logo.
Setting up your profile you will need to add boards to your account. I recommend 7-10 relevant to your niche boards.
One of those boards can be a best of board which will display all your pins from your blog.
You want to have a board for your pins to make it easier for your pins to be found when someone lands on your profile.
This is where the social media element kicks in for Pinterest. A user can type a search term in and your pin shows up, so they click on your profile.
Now while in your profile if they browse around and find your content useful and meaningful they can follow you.
This is great because your building an audience of people who will share your content for other users to discover.
Establish Credibility With Pinterest
Pinterest is interested in finding the best quality content for it’s users. Establishing credibility with Pinterest can help your content be seen.
How do we establish credibility?
You need to claim your website URL with Pinterest.
Doing this will display your full website URL at the top of your Pinterest profile and will let other pinners learn more about your brand.
You will also want to add rich pins to your profile.
This will automatically pull the data from your blog post and add it to your pin.
This gives more information on that pin for your users to view.
Related Reading: How To Get Rich Pins
Not Using Relevant Keywords is One of The 8 Pinterest Mistakes
In the Pinterest world you will here keywords, keywords, keywords.
You need to be very specific with your descriptions using keywords in a non robotic way to tell Pinterest what they will find on your profile.
The easiest way to find keywords is to use the Pinterest search bar and add your search term.
You will then be presented with an auto suggest of other terms people searched related to your original search phrase.
This is how to discover relevant keywords.
Ugly Pin Design
This was an area I struggled with for a while.
One day I came across a blog post that gave reasons why your not seeing success on Pinterest.
The first reason was “ugly pin design” Every since reading that post I worked really hard on my pin design.
I even started investing in pre made pin templates. For me the pin templates have been a game changer.
They look great and its easy to create new pins by changing the image and headlines.
If you decide to create your own pins here’s a little guide on making click-worthy pins.
- Vertical Pins-create pins with vertical dimensions like 1000 X 1500 or a 2:3 ratio. (600 X 900)
- Keyword optimized-make sure to use keywords to describe your pin
- Use readable fonts-remember users will come to your profile by mobile device and you want to make sure your pins have big clear readable headlines.
- Use nice unique images-if possible try not to use free images from free websites. These images stand a chance of being used before by another Pinterest user
Plain Pinterest Pin Titles
The purpose of a catchy headline or title is to grab attention, or create interest. Your Pinterest titles have to do just that.
You have about 100 characters to fill with the most relevant keywords to your post.
Pinterest can also read the text on your pins, so your titles are a way to tell Pinterest what’s on the other side of the pin.
Its important to use keywords in the pin title, but let me suggest using alternate or different keywords in your pin titles.
This is a way to add more keywords, you have them in our bio, in your board description, and on the pin description.
No Pinning Strategy or Pinning Frequency
With the recent algorithm updates Pinterest has put a huge emphasis on fresh content.
There’s also an emphasis on how often we pin. You can be pinning to much and this can hurt your account.
You may also be pinning with no consistency. Pinterest likes consistency and they like when users are on the platform.
A good strategy is to pin daily to show consistency. Consistent pinning is better than volume pinning. Don’t batch create 50 pins and pin them on the same day.
Instead find a daily number your comfortable with and pin daily. A general number is 15-25 per day. Maybe you have a newer blog and don’t have enough content.
Determine a number of daily pins based on your content and work the platform. So if you decide to pin 5 times daily, make that happen.
Your consistency and fresh pins will help to improve your account reach.
Like most bloggers you will be pinning your own pins and other users pins.
My advice here would be to pin your own content more often and not repin (pin others content) as often. Try a 70/30 ratio and work towards a 90/10 ratio with 90% of the pins being yours.
As a reminder Pinterest has come out and said that they are looking for fresh new pins.
Not pinning new pins is one of the 8 Pinterest mistakes that will slow Your blog’s growth
Manual VS Scheduled Pinning
So the debate continues-manual VS scheduled pinning. Do not rely solely on a scheduler on your account.
I would suggest that you do a combination of the two, if you are unable to commit to a full on manual strategy.
In using a scheduler you can use the native scheduler built in to Pinterest or use Tailwind.
Whatever you decide to do as far as your strategy I would include 20 min to an hour of daily manual pinning.
Remember Pinterest likes active users on the platform. This happens only through manual pinning.
Get A FREE 30 day look at Tailwind Here
Not Knowing Your Numbers
A basic rule of thumb for growth is, you need to track your progress and analyze whats working vs whats not working.
In the Pinterest world the most important numbers to track are clicks. Clicks on your pins are what lead to blog traffic.
Clicks lead to more people signing up for your email list, or your website offering.
Learning which of your pins are bringing in the most clicks can be beneficial data that you can use to create similar content.
Now I have to say this about one of the other metrics Pinterest gives us and that is impressions. I have seen just about every blogger say that this is not important, and it’s a vanity number?
I will suggest this to you. Pinterest is a publicly traded company on the stock exchange. They spend lots of money on infrastructure and systems to make their business profitable.
I can’t see a company of this magnitude spending money to create a system to track impressions if their wasn’t some importance in this metric.
This does not make any business sense to me.
I was a financial planner for over 10 years, and in sales the more attempts you make the better your chances at closing a sale.
When I look at my Pinterest data from 3 different profiles, the profile with the most clicks also has the most impressions.
I believe that impressions are an important metric to track. The more impressions or potential eyes on your pin, the greater the chance of someone clicking on your pin.
It’s the law of large numbers!
Now over to you
I’m curious? What are some of the things you’ve learned that can slow your blog growth down? How did you fix low traffic issues? So we can learn more here leave comments below. We appreciate hearing from you!
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33 Responses
Great tips! I’m just starting with blogging and Pinterest so I’ll definitely use these tips!
Great to hear Kelsey glad this helped
This is really relevant for me as I am improving my Pinterest strategy this month. I have succeeded in increasing both my views and followers, but I know I can incorporate some of these lessons to increase my link clicks.
Thank you!
Thank you Rachel and much success to you in your blog/Pinterest journey
I am so guilty as charged here – I never have been able to master pinterest like I should. Thank you for the article and sending me on the right path
Glad you stopped by Lisa..So glad this was helpful and much success to ya!
Thank you for this Pinterest information. I am planning to update my Pinterest. I never used it for my blog and I am trying to start doing it soon this is very informative.
I am finding it extremely difficult to pin 7-8 fresh new pins a day as a new blogger, which is 50% of the minimum of the 15 that you suggest (with the other 59 coming from other bloggers). And you suggest that it should be 70/30% ratio. I spend time creating beautiful pins; it takes at least an hour to make 3. The other problem is that I do not have enough content yet, in my opinion, to make that many. I am going to figure out how to make my own template to try to speed it up, but I feel like content creators are expected to run some sort of pin factory when all I want to do is create solid, authentic content. Hopefully, I will figure out a way to do both.
I here you Robyn..I have an account I’ve been experimenting with and it’s doing pretty good last 30 days..daily pinning 1-2 fresh pins and no more than 5 repins..also pinned 90% of fresh pins to one relevant board..lower numbers are okay as long as it’s fresh content and consistent..
Thank you so much for the tips! We have been wanting to grow our Pinterest so will be using these tips 🙂
Awesome Marissa sounds good! Glad this helped
Thank you this has been so helpful! I’m just starting out with pinterest so will take these on board!
Awesome Kat glad these helped and much success!
Great tips, very helpful for using Pinterest.
Thank you for stopping by Leeandra
This is a great post on how to get started with Pinterest ! These are some very IMPORTANT tactics here! Love the keyword advice for your pin title ! I never thought about it like that! Great post !
Thanks Pam for stopping by! Hope this will add to your strategy
Pinterest is the one platform I am seriously struggling with. Such a great post.
Hey Tarryn keep working at it you will see changes and great results
This was so helpful! I have been trying to improve my Pinterest traffic, so thank you for sharing these tips!
These are all so helpful! Optimizing Pinterest is so important.
Thank you so much for writing this blog post! I will definitely keep these tips in mind since I am struggling on my Pinterest platform and am working hard to improve it.
Thank you for sharing this information. It was very helpful! I wondered a lot about the scheduled vs manual pinning and how many pins to pin each day. The keywords part was so helpful as well. I have been using the title of my post as the words for the post picture, title, and description. Now I know that I should look at each of those places as an opportunity to get keywords out there. THANKS!
Yes additional keywords placed naturally is a great help..Lots of news flying around about manual VS scheduled.i just try to give Pinterest what they ask for..fresh content and be active..they have to reward the activity at some point
Very informative. Thanks for sharing! Will apply some of these tips.
I’m just starting to use Pinterest and this post has been very helpful for me! I also signed up for your Pinterest course!
Awesome! Any questions don’t hesitate to reach out by email
Thank you so much for your post. As a new blogger there is so much to learn and it can be a bit overwhelming. I am doing my best to take it one day at a time (-;
Thanks for reading Nathalie and you will soon be a pro..one day at a time works because you are learning every single day
Very helpful! I need to step up my Pinterest game!
Yes Melissa Pinterest is a great tool once you get the hang of it..
As familiar as I am with Pinterest there are ALWAYS more things to learn and discover! I am really going to try improving my use of keywords, they’re so important! Thanks for sharing
Yes Kalin it’s great to discover new ways of looking at familiar subjects..keeps us fired up