3 Vital Pinterest “Rules” To Follow To Drive Traffic To Your Blog
Pinterest Rules To Drive Blog Traffic
We’ve all seen them…
Those pins that get 1,000 plus shares, that is.
Also known as going viral.
I don’t know about you but as I dive deeper into these Pinterest waters, I’m seeking to uncover the secret to going viral.
Is it about the number of followers you have?
Is it about the number of group boards you’re on?
Is it about getting your pin re-pinned by a pinner with lots of followers?
I believe all of those elements are important right but based on my research and what I’ve been learning, there are 3 foundational Pinterest rules or elements that are crucial to getting your pins that virality factor.
1) Your pin’s picture
2) Your headline
3) Your keyword
So let’s discuss these different Pinterest rules to see what we need to do with them…
This post may contain affiliate links which means I get a commission if you purchase something after clicking on one of those links. But don’t worry. I’m not going to recommend something I don’t really believe it because that would just be wrong.
How To Drive Traffic To Your Blog Using These “Pinterest Rules”
Keep in mind that while I am calling these tips Pinterest rules, I’m using rules in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way.
Why?
Because although these are good rules to follow, following them does not guarantee any you will actually go viral.
Virality is sort of an elusive phenomenom like catching lightening in a bottle. I do believe these tips will set you on your way to getting more clicks on Pinterest though.
I remember how clueless I was when I first started pinning on Pinterest.
I didn’t get just how important the visual was in Pinterest but duh I should have.
Pinterest is a visual search engine so our pictures need to be:
- Beautiful: No lie, I’ve seen a pin that creeped me out and that was not their intent. I didn’t even want to look at it because it made my skin crawl. Needless to say, I scrolled past that pin so fast. Think beautiful or pleasing to the eye.
- Clear/not blurry/crisp
- Long and vertical: Short horizontal pins typically don’t get as many repins as long vertical pins. I typically do 735×1100 or longer, if I have more than one picture on the pin.
- Stand out or grab attention which is admittedly rather difficult in this day and age.
- (Updated tip: search Pinterest for the topic that your post is about. Then try and create a pin that stands out from all of the other pins in the top results).
- Honest: Don’t show a picture of money when you don’t talk about money in your post…make sense? (Update: some people do choose pictures for their pins that have nothing to do with the blog post topics…it’s up to you but could be seen as click baity).
Exception To This Pinterest Rule:
However, as important as these things may seem, is it possible that a pin may have an ugly picture, be short and horizontal and not have a professional picture and still have thousands of shares?
Yes of course. Remember these are just suggestions and a good starting point.
So that’s one element of a potentially viral pin, ya’ll, but we know that’s not enough.
Our headlines are just as important.
2) Craft Awesome Headlines To Help Your Pins Go Viral
Again, I’ve messed up on this one so many times, guys.
Okay, first of all, a lot of my pin headlines were too wordy, as my sister Kim would say.
I would try to stuff every keyword into the title as I could and it just didn’t flow, you know?
And guess what.
The pins didn’t catch on. Surprise surprise.
They probably didn’t want to take the time to read that long headline and moved on. Oh well, you live and learn
So now I try to follow these headline rules…er suggestions… that I’ve learned studying popular pins.
- Be clear: Be clear about the kind of content you will give them. For instance, I could have named this post “Pinterest Tips 101” but that’s very vague. So I named it “The 3 Most Important Pinterest Rules You Must Follow To to Increase Blog Traffic (Or Do You…)” which is more transparent.
Exception To The “Be Clear” Rule
- However, you still want a little mystery in the headline.
You want people to be like “What are the 3 must follow rules”. So the titles are clear and mysterious at the same time which seems like a paradox but….okay maybe it is a paradox but hopefully, you know what I mean.
- List posts and How To posts are popular.
I love a good list post and I love learning how to do something. These are among some of the most popular pins on Pinterest.
They are popular because with list posts you have a buffet of choices from which to pick and it’s all nice and organized.
How-to posts are popular because it’s solving a problem we are having.
Exception To The List Post Rule
- There is an exception to the list post rule and that is sometimes it gets a little tiring to learn 15 ways to do something. Sometimes I just want to learn one awesome way to do something that’s in depth. Those posts can get a lot of repins as well.
Your pictures and headlines don’t matter though if no one can find your pin. That’s where keywords come into play.
3) Use Keywords To Get Your Pins Found In Search
You need keywords to help you get found in Pinterest search.
If you’re not found in search then you may not go viral unless it gets shared by a big pinner and it takes off or it gets shared by group board pinners.
You should use Pinterest keywords should be in your Alt tags, headlines/text overlay, and pin descriptions.
I get my keywords from the Pinterest suggestions that appear underneath the search box after you’ve searched for your main keyword.
For example, when you search for blog traffic on Pinterest, they give you other keywords people are searching for like blog traffic tips and blog traffic increase.
You should use Pinterest Keywords should be in your Alt tags, headlines/text overlay, and pin descriptions. Share on X
Exception To All Of These Pinterest Rules
Sometimes, you can have the “right” picture, the “right” headline, and the “right” keywords and the pin still doesn’t go viral.
Virality is unpredictable and magical.
You can try so hard to make it happen but sometimes the pin you think is bomb, bombs and sometimes the pin you think won’t really go anywhere and that’s the pin that goes viral.
Pinterest Strategies That Gets A Blogger Over 100,000 Page Views Per Month
Although there are rules to going viral and exceptions to those rules there is a book that does give some pretty dope Pinterest tips that could help your pins go viral and get your tons of page views.
Wait, tips is not the right word.
Tips are like “apply for rich pins”. This book gives advanced strategies.
They aren’t tips that I’ve read anywhere else and I’ve read a lot of Pinterest articles and they all are like “apply rich pins, have a good profile photo”, etc.
All good tips, yes, but sometimes we need higher-level strategies to put us over the edge and give us an advantage and bring more traffic.
That’s what I feel like this book does.
It gives you the tactics she used to get 150,000 page views per month.
The book is called Pinteresting Strategies and I use it as a reference guide to see increasing blog traffic from Pinterest.
If your Pinterest traffic is stagnant, then this book is a great investment.
Free articles are great but eventually, you have to decide if you’re in this blogging thing as a hobby or if you are doing this as a business.
If this is a hobby then you don’t really need to worry about getting this book.
But if you’re into blogging as a business, investing in books, courses, digital products, and conferences are a must.
Do You Feel Hopeful About Spreading Your Message Further?
I hope you feel a little more excited and hopeful about the possibility of going viral on Pinterest.
Of course, following these guidelines are no guarantee of going viral but I believe they can definitely get you closer.
Hmmm, is there such a thing as medi-viral or half-viral?
Okay maybe not but I know as we keep working, learning, and improving our techniques, it’ll happen.
Okay, that’s all from me…thanks so much for being here and God bless.
Need help scheduling your Pinterest Pins? Get thee to the Tailwind website immediately. You will be blessed.
