Just started a blog? Then you need to figure out how to use Pinterest – and fast, because it can drive a huge amount of traffic to your blog!
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Why do I need to know how to use Pinterest?
Learning how to use Pinterest is super important for your blog, and I’m going to tell you why.
When you first start a blog there are a LOT of things you need to get your head around quick sharpish. It can be difficult to decide what’s the most important, especially when you’ve just started and people are telling you lots of different things. Should you sign up to Amazon’s affiliate marketing programme? Should you start an email list? Is Instagram important? Some bloggers will tell you to do these things straight away and I get that – the longer you leave it the earlier you wish you’d started!
However, as someone who blogs as a side hustle as well as working a full-time job I’d argue that TIME is one of the most important things to consider. You need to think about what can have the biggest impact on your blog in the shortest amount of time. And that’s where Pinterest steps in.
Yes, you can sign up to Amazon’s affiliate programme, but if you’re hardly getting any blog views then you’re unlikely to make any affiliate sales. Ditto your email list. And as for Instagram, most people tend to stay on the platform and it’s notoriously hard to grow on. So I’d argue it’s not where you should be spending your precious time. This is why it’s really important to know how to use Pinterest to grow your blog traffic. If you learn how to do it right, Pinterest can make your blog grow FAST.
But I already know how to use Pinterest…?
You may be thinking you already know how to use Pinterest. If you’re anything like me you probably had a Pinterest account for years. You’ve probably got boards on everything from living room decor to puppies to travel inspiration. Is that going to help your blog? Unfortunately, probably not.
The difference is this: you want to learn to use Pinterest as a tool for driving traffic to your blog. That’s different to pinning and repinning whatever you fancy. You need to think about what sort of content gets the most traffic on Pinterest, what images your audience will like, what sort of caption makes people want to click on your pin, how to optimise your descriptions, how to tap into trends on Pinterest… and that’s just for starters. However, I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Let’s double back…
Why should you listen to me?
I know right. Why should you listen to me? I’m another average blogger hanging out in my tiny corner of the internet. I’m not a blogging or a Pinterest expert, nor would would I claim to be. I’ve still got tons to learn about blogging, trust me. However, I do know a little about Pinterest now, mostly due to my near surgical attachment to it. I won’t go through a day without creating and scheduling pins to drive traffic to my blog!
As a result, what I have managed to do is grow my blog from zero views (literally zero) up to nearly 10,000 views per month since I started my blog in October last year. I’ve also now got over one million monthly viewers on Pinterest. That second stat might sound pretty impressive, and it does feel pretty cool to hit that big landmark, but it’s not really as meaningful as it sounds. It just means a million people see my pins each month when they’re scrolling through Pinterest. In other words, it’s a vanity metric.
The most important thing you need to focus on when it comes to Pinterest is people clicking through to your blog through your pins. If you can create attractive, well-designed pins that sell your content and make people want to click through so they can read more then… well, you’re onto a winner. So how do you go about doing that? Well, right now I’m going to defer to an expert, because they’ll be able to teach you more than I ever could…
Who can teach me how to get better at Pinterest?
Who can teach you how to use Pinterest? The answer is Pinterest expert and one of the most successful bloggers around, Ell Duclos. Let me be clear: the biggest game changer for me when it comes to learning how to use Pinterest properly was signing up for Ell Duclos’ Pinterest course.
You may have heard of Ell before, or you might not, but what you need to know is that she’s a Pinterest guru. She’s grown her blog from zero and now gets over 100k blog views per month as a result of her Pinterest strategies. Crazy! And the best thing about her is that she isn’t keeping all her Pinterest secrets to herself. Nope, she’s sharing them with blogging community as part of her AMAZING Pinterest course, Pinterest with Ell.
I took Ell’s Pinterest course after around four or five months of blogging and it just changed the game overnight for me. I was getting less than a hundred blog views per month at that time, mostly because I didn’t really know what I was doing. OK, I didn’t know what I was doing AT ALL. I’d seen people talking about Pinterest on social media so I’d thrown up a few random pins that linked back to my blog, but they didn’t have any sort of impact. Of course they didn’t, they looked awful! You can have a laugh at one of my first ever pins in this post I wrote all about how to create clickable pins in Canva. Go on, you can laugh. It’s so bad!
I knew I needed to do something different so I signed up for Ell’s course, my first real investment in my blog. As soon as I took the course and started implementing some of the strategies from Ell’s course my views shot up to nearly 3k for the month. And they’ve continued to grow from there.
If you’re worried about getting value for money, Ell’s Pinterest course is one of the best investments I’ve made in relation to my blog. Here’s why…
5 reasons why I love Ell Duclos’ Pinterest course:
- It’s suitable for complete beginners. You don’t need to know ANYTHING about Pinterest before you start the course. Ell will take you through everything step by step so you can learn as you go. It’s not one of those courses where you feel totally overwhelmed with information. The course is clear, informative and all super useful – and you can start putting it into practice straight away.
- It’s affordable. There are a million Pinterest courses out there and a lot of the time they’re super expensive. I can’t believe how many times I’ve scrolled through a Gumroad page only to find out that the price of the course is WAY out of my budget. Dropping loads of cash on an ebook just isn’t realistic for bloggers just starting out. However, Ell’s course is great value for money at $46.80.
- You’ll be part of a community of bloggers. When you sign up for the course Ell will add you to a Facebook group she runs with all the other bloggers that have done the course. She’s super active in the group too. I can’t stress how useful this group has been for me – I’ve picked up so many hacks and useful advice. Remember when Pinterest updated their algorithm recently and bloggers everywhere were having meltdowns because their blog stats had plummeted overnight? And I include myself in that! Ell was so supportive. I posted in the group asking if anyone else was experiencing a drop and Ell got back straight away and was super reassuring. She’s so knowledgeable about all thing blogging and if you’re part of this community you’ll definitely absorb lots of her helpful advice.
- You can get results with Pinterest pretty quickly. The great thing about Pinterest, as opposed to SEO, is that the results are pretty quick. You might not get lots of clicks straight away but you’ll definitely see more engagement with your pins. And when you do start to get the clicks it’s super exciting. As I said earlier, the first month I started blogging I got 81 views. As soon as I started implementing Ell’s Pinterest strategies my blog traffic shot up. I’m now heading towards 10k blog views this month. That’s an insane jump, and it’s all down to learning how to use Pinterest.
- In case you haven’t realised yet, I’m a total fangirl for Ell. She is one of the nicest bloggers out there, is super supportive of everyone’s blogging journey, and always she makes time to reply on social media. Not all bloggers are like this, trust me. Oh, and have a mentioned she’s totally killing it? Whenever I’m having a low day I remember that she started her blog from nothing too and she’s turned it into a full-time career. She’s one of my biggest inspirations.
Sound good? You can sign up to Ell’s Pinterest course right here.
Is there anything else I need to know?
One thing that you might hear people talking about when it comes to growing their blog traffic using Pinterest is Tailwind. Tailwind is essentially a scheduling tool that enables you to schedule all your pins in advance. Some people have great things to say about it. I know from taking her course that Ell has had huge success with Tailwind, for example.
I signed up for Tailwind earlier this year, full of optimism, but to be honest I’ve not really had great results. In fact, my views actually dropped. This isn’t something unique to me. I see in the Facebook groups I’m in and on social media that a lot of bloggers find the same thing. Which is a little odd considering it’s Pinterest’s official partner, but that’s another story!
The key takeaway is this: it’s worth trying out Tailwind to see if you like it. They have a one month free trial, which will allow you to get a feel for it without committing. However, you do you. It really doesn’t matter what other bloggers suggest or advise or tell you is a must-have. You need to see how it works for you. I’m seeing more engagement by manually scheduling my pins on Pinterest, so that’s what I’ll continue to do for the foreseeable future. However, you might try Tailwind and love it. It’s your blog so figure out what works for you – it doesn’t matter about anyone else!
One final thing before you go…
I didn’t want to end on a bum note so here’s one final thought on Pinterest before I go. And it’s this: Pinterest isn’t actually that hard once you know what to do with it. I know, I said it! But it really isn’t. You learn the strategies, you apply them, and you see what works. Anything that doesn’t want you analyse and change – just like I did with Tailwind.
Two things: it can take a little bit of time to get better at designing pins, and it also takes time to build up your click through rate. But as long as you’re consistent in your strategy you CAN grow your blog views using Pinterest. I’m no one special and I’ve managed to do it, and it really gives me hope that I can turn this blog into a profitable income some time in the future.
So go for it – back yourself and believe that you can do it!
