 |
| Source: Little Bits Of Lovely |
I'm going to start this post by saying I'm really no expert when it comes to Pinterest, social media, SEO or anything of the kind, my boyfriend studies IT and the first thing he said when he looked at my blog was "you could really improve your SEO" - whatever that means, but I'm learning and trying to discover the best ways to market my blog and boost traffic. Recently in a bloggers chat the topic was the best way to gain traffic and bloggers use of social media, there were several bloggers discussing Pinterest and how they want to start using it or they don't understand, I tweeted a few people saying it's my main source of traffic and a few people replied asking for tips, so I thought I'd do my 5 easy tips for helping boost your traffic.
1. Try to join a bloggers board! MissMakeupMagpie created one, here, it has over half a million followers making it great exposure for you and your blog. It's currently closed to new members but if you are part of it start making use of it, if half a million people see it and only ten of them pin your post, all of their followers will see it, then if 3 of them pin it all of their followers will, and so forth. If you can't join at the moment still follow the board because she may open up to new members again, plus it's a great way to find new blogs, which leads me on to my next tip.
2. Follow and pin other peoples posts. If you're not going to follow and pin other peoples blog pictures, why should they follow and pin yours? Not only are you helping other bloggers out by getting their name out there, it's also getting your name out there to them. If you're their only new follower that day or you're one of only 3 people that pin their post, odds are they'll check your page out and will hopefully stick around.
3. Try to make your pictures look as nice as you can. I'm not saying I'm a photography maestro, but Pinterest is a vain little part of the Internet, the people like things to be pretty, bright and clear, or to at least look like they've been taken by a DSLR expert. If you look at pictures on the bloggers board the ones with the most interactions are the bright and sharp pictures. Of course certain pictures such as MAC products are always going to get a lot of pins, but if you can make a unfamiliar product look interesting people are more likely to become interested.
4. Post links to your blog and the posts. I'm honestly not patronising you here, because when I started using Pinterest I forgot to do this myself, it was only weeks later I decided to go back and change them, however by then they'd become lost in the abyss of Pinterest. Have your blog and Twitter linked up in your bio and I would recommend installing a Pinterest button to your blog, such as this one here, so you can automatically pin pictures from your blog and then don't have to worry about putting the link to the blog post manually. Pinning through a button will do it all for you, put the link, the title and your name, it's so simple!
5. Post at the right times! Just like your blog posts and tweets, you need to post pins at the optimal time to ensure you're reaching the largest amount of people possible. From experience I've found around 10am/11am and 7pm-9pm the best times to post, sometimes the 10am one can be a bit hit and miss, you'll either got loads of people or just a couple, but some of my most popular posts have been through pinning at 10am. The best way to find out is through your own trial and error, but as a starting point I would say 7pm.
Hopefully you found these helpful, these are just the basic ways I've helped boost my traffic. I've basically doubled the amount of traffic I receive since signing up to Pinterest and like I said, it's now become my main traffic source. These tips won't bring in millions of people, but I feel like following these few steps will help anyone to increase traffic, even if it's only a small proportion of their regular views.
Let me know if you found these useful, or your best tips!
