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Pinterest is the largest source of traffic to my blog.  But it wasn’t always like that.  Pinterest used to be this confusing place full of weird DIY crafts that never turned out right, workouts that went undone, and cookie recipes that I tried once and forgot about.  I kept hearing all these stories of bloggers though, who said Pinterest allowed their blog to explode! I just didn’t see how.  Then I finally took a free webinar and it all started to make sense.  I delved deeper and deeper into Pinterest, and I finally started to see traffic.  The one thing that stood out to me amongst all the learning was this mantra  “Think of Pinterest not as Social Media, but a Search Engine” – and that’s how it all clicked for me.  From there it was just learning how to optimize my Pinterest for my benefit. That’s why I want to share with you the best tips I have learned on Pinterest Optimization for Beginners.

 

Without further ado…here are my best tips on Pinterest Optimization for Beginners to Pinterest!

Make Your Bio & Name Pinterest Optimized

Your Pinterest Name and Bio should be easily recognizable, and understandable.  Your Pinterest Name should be *Your Name* | *Your Blog*. For example, my Pinterest name is “Sydney Zaruba | The Boho Traveller”.  That way, no matter if someone searches my name or my blog, I will show up in the results.

Your bio needs to, in a few short words, describe what you do, your goals, and how you’re going to help the people who are coming to visit your account. Here is a photo of my Pinterest account description below.

It reads “A Flo-Grown daughter of the ocean traveling around the world.  I write articles to help other millennial women travel sustainably and beautifully.”  This bio does 3 things.

1. Tells you where I am from
2. What my passions are (the ocean & travel)
3.  What I write about (travel, aesthetics, and sustainability – but what are aesthetics? It is also a teaser – I write about photography & editing)

You want to make sure you claim your domain for your blog and make sure your photo is easily recognizable to you!  Your handle should be something simple, like your blog name or your name.  Not cutiepiesurfer1994.

Have Searchable Board Names, Not Cutesy Ones

So you’ve probably got a Pinterest account already, right? One you started in high school where you planned your dream wedding, cute baby names, recipes and crafts you’ve never actually tried?  Awesome!  So you’re slightly familiar with how Pinterest works when it comes to re-pinning and saving things!

Now forget all of that.  I want you to go through your Pinterest account if you’re going to continue to use your old account (I did, but it isn’t necessary – you can always create a new one!) and DELETE or Re-Name all of your boards.  You want your Pinterest account to be a resourceful place, not a place where you have crammed all of your thoughts.

When it comes to board names instead of “Travelz for Fun Bucketlist Stuffz”, name it something practical such as “Europe Travel Tips” or “Italian Countryside Villas”.  The more specific the better.  When you are starting out you want all of your boards to be in the same niche so that you can claim authority on that topic.  Nearly all of my boards but a few blogging/digital nomad boards are all travel related.  “Italy Travel”, “France Travel”, “Packing Tips for Travel”.

Forget the cute names.  Make this a useful space people can come to when they need advice!

When it Comes to Pinterest Optimization For Beginners, You’ll Need to Optimize All Your Boards

Now that you’ve renamed your boards to be practical, we want to optimize the boards themselves!

Make sure to add a description and category to all of your Pinterest boards.  This tells Pinterest more on what your board is about and helps it to show up better in search results.  You want to include keywords in your board descriptions.  Once you have done this, make sure the board has at least 10 relevant pins in it.  If there are any irrelevant pins, be sure to remove them.

Make your Pinterest Boards Very Specific

It’s really easy to make very broad Pinterest boards and dump everything there, but I really want to challenge you to not do that. Try to get really specific with your boards.

I will give you an example to show you what I mean.  I wrote an article last year after I traveled to Salem, Massachusetts for my birthday in October, it’s a travel guide of what to do in Salem during this time of year.  It’s titled “What to Do in Salem in October” – most of my pins for this article read something to that effect.  Of the many pins, I made for this article they all got pinned to the following boards.

• Salem, Massachusetts Travel
• Massachusetts Travel
• Halloween Travel Ideas
• United States Travel
• Best of the Boho Traveller

This Salem Guide got pinned to all of those boards, in that order.  See how they go from most specific to least specific?  That is currently one of my best-performing articles regarding Pinterest traffic.  And it’s because I got VERY specific with my boards.

Another Pinterest Optimization Tip For Beginners – Make Sure All of Your Pins are Properly Optimized

Now that you have some boards going that are properly named and optimized, let’s get down to the pins themselves. One of the biggest problems with beginners with Pinterest optimization is that they are unsure of what should go in the Pin Description.

Here is a guideline to Pin Descriptions:

• can be up to 500 characters – I use charactercounter.com to make sure I use them all and don’t go over
• Needs to explain what your blog post or article is about.
• It should make the reader want to click the pin to learn more.
• When making pin descriptions you should NOT keyword stuff
• Do include hashtags relevant to the article (Up to 10)
• Should NOT just be the article title.

The Pin description is what will take someone to click your pin. Make the information in it worthwhile and get that click to your blog!

Use Tailwind to share other people’s pins as well as your own.

To get views to your blog from Pinterest you shouldn’t just be sharing your own articles!  Actually, you should MOSTLY be sharing OTHER people’s pins!  Seems crazy right? But nope, that’s what the Pinterest algorithm likes!  When you share pins from others it tells Pinterest that you are an active user and not just trying to mooch off the system.

I know many people don’t have the time to sit there and manually pin 80 pins from other people for every 20 pins you share of your own (this is a good ratio to keep if you can – 80/20) – which is why I wholeheartedly recommend Tailwind. With the free version of Tailwind, you can join up to 2 Tribes and use these to share content from other creators in your niche.  Tailwind allows you to schedule their content (and your own) throughout the day and the week so you can constantly be pinning, even when you aren’t actually on Pinterest.

After you’ve scheduled 100 pins using tailwind, your free trial runs out, and you will need to upgrade.  If there is one product I can recommend purchasing as a blogger just starting out, it 100% is Tailwind. This product changes the blogging game.

CLICK HERE TO GET A FREE MONTH OF TAILWIND PLUS AND SEE WHAT ALL THE HYPE IS ABOUT

Go ahead and share this post to your Pinterest account by clicking the “PIN” button on the image below!

Pinterest Optimization for Beginners: Utilize Group Boards and/or Tailwind Tribes

I know I just said you can go to Pinterest Jail for pinning to group boards too often, but as long as you are respectful of board rules and stick to your 80/20 ratio, you should be totally fine.

So why pin to group boards?  Group boards are a great way to get more eyes on your pins and raise your chances of getting repins.  Group boards are not as effective as they were in the past, but some of them still do me well.  When joining a group board, check to see if the members are actively participating in resharing pins from the other members, or if it is just a dumping ground for their pins.  If it’s the latter, you don’t want to be a part of it.

Why join Tribes?  I quickly realized that joining Tribes was a fantastic way to grow on Pinterest.  Since using tribes I have seen a huge uptick in my engagement and reach on Pinterest.  When you use Tribes properly, you should be engaging and interacting with people in the same niche as you and sharing your content to them to share, and sharing their content with your Pinterest as well.  Most of the people in Tribes are serious bloggers (it is a mostly paid service) so it is worth the investment if you want to get serious about blogging.

This AMAZING eBook by The Chic Pursuit literally taught me everything I needed to know about Pinterest Marketing & Using Tailing Tribes.  If you want to get more in-depth with you Pinterest, I totally recommend checking this course out. At only $37 – this eBook is 1000000% worth it.

Use Tailwind to share more of your pins when you can’t

Similarly to that above, you shouldn’t be spending all of your time pinning pinning pinning away! Outsource your pinning on Pinterest to Tailwind, so you can spend more time creating content and writing about what you love, instead of all the nitty-gritty sitting on Pinterest for hours at night pinning things.  Believe me, I get it, spending money is SCARY.  But this is one purchase on my blog that once I made, I felt so much relief.

When it comes to using Tailwind as a scheduler for Pinterest, this is the method I have found works best for me:
When I write a new blog post I create 30-40 pins for this blog post.  I maybe include 2-3 on the actual blog, but the rest I save in a folder on my computer.  They often look like this!

After I have created all of these I upload them all to the drafts section of Tailwind. I create a bunch of descriptions and import them into the drafts, select 3-5 boards to pin them to (most relevant to least relevant) and then schedule them in intervals!  I usually leave a minimum of 3 days in between each pin and a max of 7 days. This means different pins for the same article are going out over a course of weeks.  Once that is set I don’t have to worry about that article for a while and I can focus on other things, like creating more awesome content.

I usually spend about 1 hour one day a week scheduling all my Pins from other people through the week using my Tailwind Tribes (More on that below!)

GET YOUR FREE MONTH OF TAILWIND PLUS NOW

Have a “Best of *Your Blog*” Pinterest Board

One common mistake I have seen people not do that is very important to Pinterest Optimization for beginners and old salts alike: not having a “best of” Pinterest board.  A “Best of” Pinterest board is literally a Pinterest board that literally holds all of your pins from your blog on it!  My “Best of The Boho Traveller” board has hundreds (if not thousands) of pins from my blog.  That way if someone wanted to see specifically what I write about on my blog, all they have to do is click that board and they can get all of my travel and blogging tips in one neat little place.

Make Sure You are not Over-Pinning – Very Important when it comes to Pinterest Optimization for beginners – You WILL be punished and put in Pinterest Jail!

Now that you have all of these AMAZING Pinterest Optimization tips, you’re going to want to jump in and start pinning! But hold on just a second! You’re going to want to take it easy and ease into this.  If your account has been stagnant for a while, pinning 1-2 pins a month and all of a sudden you start pinning 30 pins a day….Pinterest is going to be very confused.  Start with a low number, and work your way up over the course of a week or two.

And whatever you do…

DO NOT! I REPEAT DO NOT! PIN THE SAME PIN OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER.  You WILL go to Pinterest jail.  You may or may not get your account back.  Sometimes Pinterest jail happens for no reason (happened to me before) – but more often than not, it’s because you were posting too much of your own content.  Make sure you stick to that 80/20 ratio.  Don’t spam group boards.  Make sure you are pinning fresh pins.  Trust me, you do NOT want to be in Pinterest Jail.

Pinterest loves fresh content, so share lots of that!

Don’t forget to Pin this Post!!