With recent Pinterest updates narrowing your reach, you need to do everything you can to expand your audience. This in-depth post explores all the options available to you, to expand your Pinterest reach including:
- Multiple Pinterest Accounts
- Multiple Pins for Each Post
- Marketing Tools
- Group Boards
- Repurposing Your Content
- Smarter Fresh Pin Curation
- Marketing to All Pinterest Feeds
Note: Pin scheduler Traffic Wonker has sadly gone out of business, but owner and CEO Andy Fling has given me permission to share his useful Pinterest research and other information on my site. I jumped at the chance as Andy is the smartest guy I know when it comes to Pinterest!
1) How to Grow Pinterest Traffic with Multiple Accounts
One of the most importing things I’ve learned about Internet marketing is that you need to build “points of entry.” Points of entry are ways in which people find you. Most of the time this will mean building links.
Imagine that you just set up a store in the city where you live and you bought billboard advertising space on a busy street. People will see your store when they pass by, and they’ll also see the billboard. If you have a blog and a Pinterest account, you basically have an equivalent amount of advertising in the digital world. Now imagine buying advertising space on three more billboards on busy streets around the city. These billboards will give you access to additional audiences, and bring far more customers to your store. That’s how multiple Pinterest accounts can grow your traffic.
Before Pinterest launched in 2010, I drove traffic to my elementary music site, MakingMusicFun.net, with a collection of free WordPress blogs. All of these blogs have their own Pinterest account now and a TrafficWonker account that keeps them active every day. These Pinterest accounts are driving traffic to MakingMusicFun.net that I wouldn’t otherwise have, and it only takes about 10 minutes per account to manage all of them.
2) Multiple Pins for Each Post
This is another way how to get more Pinterest traffic – create multiple pin images. It only requires a little time and some creativity to design. Some Pinterest marketers only create one pin for their posts and they think their job is done. This is one of the best ways to expand your Pinterest traffic.
Pinterest values the addition of fresh images for older posts. Posting only one pin over and over again, is a little like running the same TV ad and expecting people to respond to it.
This morning I saw an ad for Tootsie Pops that originally ran in 1984. It was the one where the boy asks how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. The wise owl says, “1,2,3…CRUNCH. The world may never know.”
I loved that commercial back in the 1980’s and loved seeing it again. However, if that ad had been running non-stop for decades, I would be pretty tired of it by now and rarely paying attention. Google AdSense publishers struggle with the same thing. They call it “ad blindness.”
Avoid Pinterest pin blindness by designing pins with fresh graphics, photos, colors, and varied titles.
I was pretty sure that one of my posts was going to be a winner even before I started sharing it. I created ten images and gradually added them to Pinterest. The social shares grew rapidly for almost two months thanks to this aggressive effort. Pin designs included significant design changes and title variations. Below are three of the pins I posted.
3) Marketing Tools
Every tool on this list will help you expand your reach, and help you make the most of your time.
a) TrafficWonker – TrafficWonker applies the same algorithm that billion dollar tech giants Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google use to understand and optimize their marketing campaigns. Every day TrafficWonker reviews your stats to understand what your followers are engaging with most. Sadly – Traffic Wonker is no longer in business.
b) Tailwind – To expand your reach we love Tailwind for Tribes. With the magic going out of group boards, Tribes still represents a great way to connect with followers from other pinner’s accounts. Some of our TrafficWonker members subscribe to Tailwind for just that purpose. It’s the perfect partnership with TrafficWonker!
c) MiloTree – MiloTree is a pop-up that helps you grow your email, Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook following, and it can be set up in a few minutes. No technical skills required. This is a good tip how to grow Pinterest traffic quickly.
d) Pinterest Save Button – When you add the Save button to your blog pages, your customers can save your post images to Pinterest, and more people can find your content.
There are three types of buttons to choose from:
1) Image Hover – When someone hovers over an image on the page, the Save button displays.
2) Any Image – If someone clicks this button, they can save any image on the site.
3) One Image – This is a Save button for a single image on your page. It requires technical coding.
The right tools make Pinterest marketing easier and more effective.
4) The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Pinterest Group Boards
Being invited to join a Pinterest group board, when they were first introduced, was like getting a golden ticket. This ticket gave you access to the followers of every contributing member, which could mean a significant bump in traffic overnight if you joined a good board. These days, the best group boards attract little interest in your pins and may negatively affect your account. Our best guess is that Pinterest has changed the algorithm to encourage us to consider Promoted Pins (paid ads) more often.
The Good – Some group boards are still helpful, you just need to try several out and keep the ones that serve you best. Look for group boards with 25+ contributors, and make sure everyone is staying on topic.
The Bad – Posting to a group board comes with a cost. Pins posted to group boards aren’t counted in the total pin count for your Pinterest account. Because Pinterest ranks your account based on its total size, every pin posted to a group board is a pin that doesn’t help your account grow.
The Ugly – Some of my most successful group boards are the boards I own. This seems to be true for other pinners, as they often place these boards higher within their collection of boards. However, Pinterest holds you accountable for all of the activity on the group boards you own. If someone violates the Pinterest Terms of Service your account could be suspended or terminated. I recently spoke with someone who had her account frozen because of an inappropriate pin. However, she was able to prove that the pin was not her own, and Pinterest restored her account. Pinterest doesn’t always consider requests for account review.
5) Repurposing Your Blog Content
A well-written post takes a long time to create. Repurposing your content will make the time you spend more vauable, and extend your reach in the same way multiple Pinterest accounts do.
Two of the best ways to repurpose your content are through:
a) Digital Books
b) Video
a) Digital Books – Digital books are easy to create and are generally regarded as having more value than a blog post. All you need to do is create a cover, format your blog post, and find a place to post it. Scribd is one of the best sites to download and contribute digital books, and your resource may be appreciated on that site.
b) Video – More and more people prefer to watch a video over reading. Making a video that shares your post with this audience is another great way to connect with them. You can share the entire post, just the highlights, or split it up into several videos. YouTube will probably generate the most traffic for your blog, but other sites like MetaCafe.com, Twitch.tv, GodTube.com might be worth exploring.
I have a very helpful post on how to Repurpose Your Blog Content – might have some tricks you haven’t seen before! I’ve always got lots of tips on how to grow Pinterest traffic and how to gain Followers on Pinterest.
6) Smarter Fresh Pin Creation
Posting the same pins over and over again for months at a time used to work great, but those days are gone. Your followers want fresh content on a regular basis.
If you’re not familiar with this update, Pinterest is now limiting the first impressions of your pins to your followers. If they engage with your pins, by expanding them, saving, commenting, or clicking through, Pinterest will share them with more people. This is a good tip how to grow Pinterest traffic quickly.
This means you need to keep your followers happy with fresh content. On Pinterest, fresh means:
a) A New Pin for a New Post
b) A New Pin for an Old Post
c) A Pin That You Discovered and Shared from Another Pinners Account
Because you can’t create 100 new posts or pins each week yourself, discovering and sharing pins from other pinner’s accounts will comprise most of your fresh content.
There are three ways to find quality content. I’ll share them in order of effectiveness – ending with the most effective.
a) Pinterest Pin Search
b) Top Pinner Boards
c) Scan and Queue the Most Saved Pins from Any Board with TrafficWonker
a) Pinterest Pin Search
This is a dynamite way to find fresh pins for your followers. Pinterest wants visitors to be dazzled by the pins they find on their site, so Pinterest Pin Search always yields great results.
Here’s what you do:
Step 1 – Search for top quality pins with Pinterest Pin Search. Enter keywords that you use to describe your own products and content.
Step 2 – Save pins from the top of the search results to your account manually or schedule them.
The only downside to using Pinterest pin search is that the same pins pop up in the search results again and again. After a while, this strategy will no longer be useful.
b) Top Pinner Boards
Curating fresh pins from top pinners involves a bit of guesswork, but it’s a good way to find quality pins to share with your followers. These pinners have grown a large audience because they consistently share quality pins. Sharing the pins that they share should benefit you too. I have a whole post on pin curation check it out.
Here’s what I did:
Step 1 – Search Pinterest for pins or boards that rank high for your search term.
Step 2 – Visit the account of the pinner who saved that pin.
Step 3 – Click “pins” to see which pins they are posting often. If a pin is repeating, it’s probably performing very well for them.
Step 4 – Save these pins to your account manually or schedule them.
7) Marketing to All Pinterest Feeds to Expand Your Pinterest Reach
To get the most out of Pinterest, you’ll need to consider how people find you and how to optimize your account for every possibility.
When visiting Pinterest, visitors search in the following ways:
a) SmartFeed
b) Pin Search
c) Board Search
d) People Search
e) Hashtag Feed
a) SmartFeed
The Pinterest SmartFeed is the homepage for Pinterest. It’s the page people see when they log in. The Pinterest algorithm carefully considers each pin it adds to this feed so that visitors have the best experience with the site.
b) Pin Search
The pin search results show pins with many saves, typically from established pinners. Ranking high in the pin search results will require smartly written, keyword rich pin descriptions, great pin design, and a dynamite blog post. Finding your way to the top may happen quickly if your post goes viral. Most of the time it will require patience. This is the trick how to get more Pinterest traffic – your SEO is a critical factor.
c) Board Search
I’ve ranked 51 boards #1 in Pinterest board search, and 71 more boards in the top ten. The formula is pretty simple. You need more pins than the board in the number #1 spot. If they have considerably more followers than you, you’ll need a lot more pins.
d) People Search
To gain greater visibility in Pinterest People Search, you’ll need to include a keyword or two with your name or business name. An example would be “Jenny Brown – Baker.” This is going to be so helpful to expand your Pinterest reach.
e) Hashtag Feed
To work the Pinterest Hashtag Feed to your advantage, use longtail keywords (3 words in length) and unique hashtags (like your business name), that will give Pinterest visitors a large collection of your pins to browse.
by Andy Fling
Founder and CEO of TrafficWonker.com
Other posts from Andy you might enjoy:
Become Number One in Pinterest Board Search
How to get 10M Impressions per Month
How Many Pinterest Boards is Too Many?
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