How I went from 0 viewers to 50k monthly viewers on Pinterest... in LESS than 1 month!
Wow... I can't even believe I'm writing this post 🙊 it's been on my "ideas of blog posts" list for WEEKS, and I honestly didn't think I'd be writing it this soon! MAJOR GOAL HAS BEEN HIT 🙋🏻
Just over a month ago (in January 2018), I decided I was going to do an experiment. I've been an AVID pinner and lover of Pinterest for years. Legit, I am one of their biggest fans! If I'm ever stuck for meal ideas or a workout.. Pinterest saves the day!
I'd read online back over Christmas 2017 that Pinterest is a great source of traffic for bloggers, but I wasn't sure how it worked! I knew I wanted to start a blog but wasn't sure where to start. Then one evening in January, I saw a post on a bloggers group I'm part of on Facebook about Pinterest and how it's more of a search engine than a social media platform! My interest was piqued. I spent a week or so reading about Pinterest, pinning, adding your own pins, rich pins etc, and I was hooked! I had read a great article by a girl I follow on Pinterest about how she went from 7k to 100k in about 2 months, and I thought "no way, this is insane!". So there started the experiment.
I want to be as open with anyone reading this as possible, because it can be infuriating when you're hunting for information and statistics and people are so vague! So I'm gunna put my stats on here for you to see!
This is a screenshot from my Pinterest analytics from 29th January, 0 viewers and 0 engaged!
This is a screenshot from my analytics home page on the 28th February...
51.8k viewers and 3.2k engaged!
Never in a million years did I think I'd hit 50k! At the start of February, my aim was to hit 1,000 viewers by the end of February! Did that 50 times over. Growth has been crazy!
So, the crux of the post... What did I do?
Now, I'm no social media expert whatsoever, but I'm writing this because it's the sort of thing I wanted to find when I was on the hunt!
1. Board organisation
Right so, before I started this experiment I had loads of random boards! TOTALLY unorganised! So the first thing I did was hide these boards (because I wanted to keep them as they've got loads of helpful stuff on them, but they had 100's of pins that were just unorganised! Easier to start again). It's easy to do - go onto the board settings and switch it to hide!
All of my boards start with my blog name "Emmy", followed by what the board is about! What the subject is. For example, you know that if you go into my "Kitchen inspo" board, you're gunna find inspiration for kitchens! I'm a perfectionist, so it makes my SOUL HAPPY when I flick through and everything is formatted the same hahaha. Life.
2. Profile
When you go to follow someones Pinterest account, you want to know they're a real person right!?
I changed my profile picture, added my blog link & wrote something small about me! Simple!
3. Repinning
Now to the best part...
Every Pinterest user LOVES to pin, right!? Well I used to repin a few times a day when I had enough time, or when I was actively looking for something! Now I purposely make a habit of repinning AT LEAST 50 pins per day. Although sometimes life can get in the way (I'm human), but 99% of the time I stick to this. May sound excessive, but it's super easy! Pinterest is busiest between 9pm-11pm, which is when I tend to chill in bed, or on the sofa watching something blah blah. When I first started, I'd concentrate on one board per night! Do at least 50 pins, do another board the 2nd night and so on. Now I've got almost 50 boards, I search for whatever I fancy and just pin the night away. The most important thing is to pin what YOU'RE interested in. If you don't do that, then you'll find it difficult. I could legit pin for HOURS, but I have to stop myself before I go cray cray 🤦🏻♀️. Another important thing to think about is what is trending. If you pin things that trend, more people see your pins!
4. Your own pins
I've read online that the "sweet spot" on Pinterest is 80/20. 80% repins, 20% your own pins. Truthfully, I haven't stuck to this. I'm getting better at adding my own pins, but I normally just repin. I'm REALLY not the best person for creating graphics for pins, and it will take me upwards of an hour to make something, so this will take me a while. But I said I was gunna be open with you, right!? However, sometimes if I see a pic I like online, I will add that! I use Canva to create any pins I make! I've got the business account thing, so I can make as many on there as possible and use loads of the features that are limited on the free version! I pay something like £6 per month, so it's really cheap! I normally make pins for my blog posts and will then pin those to my specific blog board! When making pins specifically for blog posts, I also make sure I add my link so people can follow the pin to my blog post!
5. Tailwind
Finally, Tailwind! I'm adding this because it's something I am going to start using as of tomorrow, and I wish I'd known of it when I was looking around online. In the blogging Facebook group mentioned above, loads of the girls say Tailwind is the key to increasing your Pinterest traffic! It's an online website where you can schedule pins, join tribes and things. I'm very very new to Tailwind and how it works, so I can't comment on how effective it is, but I will do when I've got my head round it!
I'm hoping this will be helpful to someone! Trying to keep it as simple and easy to follow as possible!
Em x
