30 Day Pinterest Strategy To Get Followers and Traffic To My Blog

Okay I’ve had my pinterest account for awhile and been pinning my blog posts there with the hopes of getting a ton of traffic to make money from pinterest. Well basically, there have been no significant results (from all my effort!) other than a few followers and an occasional visitor to my blog. What am I doing wrong?

I tell you anyone who first enters the world of pinterest marketing, will be clueless on what to do.

Plus, if you are busy enough, you can’t spend all your time making pins for your blog posts, then pinning on pinterest, repinning yours & others pins, following accounts and basically socializing (kissing a**) to get followers.

By doing all this means you will have no time for anything else and doesn’t guarantee there will be significant enough results for the time invested.

I thought it was more than enough just to click and save my pins from my site to pinterest, and do nothing else. I was wrong!

What I’ve heard is to use a 80/20 rule, which means repin 80% other people’s pins and 20% your own. Hello why would I do that, so that everyone else gets traffic to their blog and I don’t?!

 

I read a review of a popular pinterest traffic strategy course (I won’t mention the name as I can’t earn a commission for promoting it unless I buy it first!) which states it’s the wrong approach as that blogger successfully pins & repins 90 to 95% of their own pinterest pins. I think I like this strategy which time-wise makes more sense to me.

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Also, you don’t need to have a lot of pinterest followers to get traffic to your blog either. Just need to get your pins ranking on pinterest to get views to them. That sounds about right since a lot of pins are found through searches.

So that brings me to keywords. You have to have the right keywords in the description of your pins. I have noticed that many of the top pinners are using hashtags with their descriptions, eg. #makemoney #makemoneyblogging etc.  Well that makes sense to do, as the search will bring those pins up and if yours is near the top or stands out from the crowd, then bound to get clicks.

The pinterest know-it-alls (definitely I’m not one of them!) will tell you to follow group boards and then get invites to them so you can pin your pins there. Well I’ve followed some and tried to get invites but so far been ignored. Is pinterest a popularity contest, where if you don’t have hardly any followers or much views on your account, you do not fit the bill to get invited? Seems like it.

What I’ve also heard is that you don’t need to follow a lot of people either to grow your followers, just be active on pinterest and naturally they will grow on their own. I wonder if they mean “active” as in spending many hours a day on pinterest? Not going to happen for me as I value my time!

Okay enough of this nonsense. After picking up a few pointers of my own and ignoring the ones that I don’t think make sense, I’m going to use my pinterest strategy to grow followers and get some traffic to my blog posts.

Afterall many are making money on their blog from the traffic they are getting from pinterest (eg, 100,000+ pageviews a month) so I want to get in on it too but with the least amount of time and effort!

My Easy Steps To Grow Followers and Get Traffic From Pinterest in 30 Days

1. Spend no more than 30 minutes on pinterest per day (time costs money, set an alarm!).
2. Pin and repin mostly my own pins (using the 10/90 rule not 80/20!).
3. Follow 10 new people a day (mainly accounts that have a lot of views & niche related).
4. Follow back some followers (a little etiquette to enhance the pinterest effect).
5. Add hashtags to my old pins and to new ones (let that pinterest search engine find me).
6. Try to join and get invites to popular group boards (sooner or later I’ll get invited!).

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I already started implementing this strategy and my followers are growing (over a 100 now…yay!) and had a few visits to my blog too.

My plan is to streamline the process so that I spend less time on pinterest while achieving good results. Once you find something that works, you have to rinse and repeat to keep the pinwheels spinning!

Do join me to make this a big success by following me on pinterest and, if you like any of my pins, please repin them (I need all the help I can get!). Also if you have a group board, invite me as obviously I’m not a social butterfly (not even close)!

I will update when the 30 days are up and let you know how I did!

Want to test out my pinterest strategy, too? You will need a blog first, which is easy to set up with Bluehost. Not only do you get a special discount on hosting through my link, you also get a free domain name, ssl certificate & a 1-click wordpress install so you can start blogging in minutes!  Check out my tutorial on how to start a blog 

30-Day Update: After following my pinterest strategy for 30 days, the results show that it has been working. I started with less than 30 followers and my monthly viewers on my pins was around 170 which was only giving me a few visitors to my blog. This was from months of just pinning my posts from my blog to my own few boards, nothing else. Obviously that wasn’t working!

Now after 30 days (spending no more than 30 minutes daily on Pinterest), I have over 400 followers and over a 1000 monthly viewers on my pins, which is growing daily. I think this is a significant turnaround and if I upped it a couple notches would have even better results than this. But my time is limited, so this is the strategy that works best for me.

What did I do? First I mainly stuck to daily following around 10 like-minded active people with a lot of monthly viewers and followers. Since this strategy is a little more time-consuming as you have to look at each person’s profile to follow (rather than just follow a whole bunch of random people), is the reason why cannot follow too many people daily (to stay within the set time limit) when also have to do pinning.

From this, I realized if I’m checking out their followers list to see who to follow, then others must be doing that too, even if randomly. So if I am a follower of a popular pinner, then I may also gain some followers from just following them.

But I also realized the following part is not the most important part, as many are doing well without a lot of followers, but it sure looks good if you have a 1000 or so followers than say only 10. It’s all about the visual on pinterest as to what impression you give.

Don’t expect that whoever you are following will follow you back, as many don’t, but continue to follow as will indirectly get followers. I also do follow some back as part of (strategic) pinterest etiquette. My goal is only to reach 1000 followers, then I will use my time to focus more on the optimizing and pinning aspects.

I have tried to get invites to numerous niche-related group boards, with some that didn’t respond as yet (can be slow) or maybe won’t at all (their loss). One group board owner’s condition was (which is not mentioned on the board only when replying by email) for me to repin 20 of her pins first (before getting an invite) from her other personal board that contained pins to amazon affiliate products on her site (not any real useful info, I might add).

I thought that was a lot to ask just for joining the board and mentioned if she could consider something more reasonable but of course she never replied back so I just unfollowed her and that group board. I have no time for silly nonsense.

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Right now, I have joined 5 group boards, that I am pinning to, which is making a difference. You do have to join popular group boards because they have a lot of activity and followers, as it helps to make a higher reach for your pins to be seen, repinned and hopefully clicked on.

I’ve been daily pinning and repinning my pins to my boards and the group boards I’ve joined. From what I read you should be pinning/repinning at least 50 pins per day. That to me is a lot as just means more time to invest that I don’t have so I’m sticking to a handful at a time.

When you think about it, one viral pin is all you need for a mountain of traffic. I did though increase the amount of boards I had, which is a good thing to do as you can target different keywords and aspects of a niche.

Mostly though I have been going through my old pins, adding tags, improving keywords and recycling them. You don’t necessarily have to have new pins all the time, just find a new group board to repin the older pins to or repin the popular ones on the same group boards (already pinned to) that allow it, just space it out a bit (like a few days or a week later) plus juggle them around on your own boards too.

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You can also make different versions of pins for popular blog posts like I did for my How I Make Money Selling On Kijiji. Some are making up to 4 pins for each of their blog posts (this one has 3), so that is another strategy to stretch out a blog post. Ramp up the ones that are doing well by repinning those.

I also have been spending some time working on my older blog posts by optimizing and making pins to pin on pinterest.

The main thing here is pin & repin daily on pinterest. It’s not about the amount because really who has the time to pin all day long (unless you outsource or that’s your full-time job!), just that you are staying active pinning something no matter how limited your time is. It will increase your monthly viewers, and that is what counts because you want clicks to your blog posts and any products you are selling.

Traffic from pinterest to my blog has definitely increased since implementing this pinterest strategy. I am going to continue joining additional group boards so that I have more places to spread out my pins. I haven’t had time to repin anyone else’s pins even though some are repinning my pins (much appreciated!). Maybe I don’t need to at this point.

Day 36 Update: Although I am still continuing to join group boards, as have joined 3 more bringing the total to 8, I decided to get around this group board thing by starting my own Blogging Lifestyle – The Best Of Pinterest Group Board. This is another way to gain followers and get exposure to my pins.

I sent invites to some of my followers who have already joined as collaborators. I am maintaining control over it by not letting collaborators invite anyone as I don’t want spammers or inappropriate stuff.

I think the popularity of the board will increase over time as more pinners join and contribute. So let’s see how this additional strategy will help in bringing pinterest traffic to my blog when the 60 days are up (24 days from now).
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If you would like to contribute to my group board, please follow me on Pinterest and then contact me here with your pinterest profile url & pinterest email address.

I will update one more time, when 60 days are up, to show further results of my progress.

60-Day Update: After 60 days of following my pinterest strategy, I am steadily making progress and learning things to fine tune it along the way.

Just to recap:

1. At the start I had around 30 followers and 170 monthly viewers on my pins.
2. After 30 days of implementing my pinterest strategy, I had over 400 followers and over 1000 monthly viewers.
3. At 60 days, I have over 700 followers and over 6000 monthly viewers (increased 6-fold from 30 days!)

As you see that is a significant increase when at the start was next to nothing. Although I have not yet reached the 1000 followers I was hoping to by now, I am getting there as get new followers every day. I think having my own group board also helps in this area. I don’t spend a lot of time in following people, as I have missed a day here and there lately, which is due to the time-factor and that I have been working on creating additional pins for popular posts and improving my marketing strategy.

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Make sure you are joining group boards because you have to spread your pins in many places so it won’t work just on your own boards alone (I tried that for some months and got next to nothing results!). At this time, I have joined in total 19 group boards (#20 is my own). And the tables have reversed in that I am getting invites to join group boards that I didn’t ask to join. I don’t refuse to join, even if they are small, as it means more places to get my pins seen.

Some boards do take time to reply and others for their own reasons may not invite you (their loss!). They may also have additional conditions which in some cases are unreasonable. One board creator asked (although stated it isn’t a requirement) if I could link to his new site on my blog, just for joining the board.

Hello again, one board alone is not going to make my pinning efforts a huge success so why he valued his board so highly and devalued my blog, is beyond me. Does he not realize how much a blog can make from paid advertising and why would I link for free if there wasn’t an equal benefit? Of course I replied and told him that it wasn’t equal and offered instead to pin a few of his posts from his new site to some boards. He never replied back and I didn’t get an invite either, so I guess it was a requirement afterall.

If you start a group board, don’t make unnecessary conditions because as your board grows, you have a platform to promote yourself, your blog, youtube channel or whatever without expecting even more on top from new members. My only conditions, if you want to join my Blogging Lifestyle group board, is to follow me on pinterest and pins should link to your posts/site (no affiliate links), that’s all for now!

My pinterest strategy is a success because not only have I gained pinterest followers and monthly viewers but I am daily getting traffic from pinterest to my blog. Right now, it may not be a high amount of pinterest traffic but it is growing and that is what counts!

One thing I never miss on any day is pinning (I pin both my own pins and others as well). That is something I emphasize you have to do on a daily basis as you have to be active on pinterest to achieve results. Whatever amount of time you can afford to spend in growing your pinterest account is worth it.

Those who are making more effort will obviously get better results but for busy people you need an effective time-saving strategy. That is why I have now added Tailwind to my pinterest strategy by trying out their free trial which lets you schedule & publish 100 Pinterest pins (no time limit). I will explain in more detail in an upcoming post how effective this additional strategy is.

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