In Part 3 of my series on how to use Pinterest for specific niches, I’m talking about Pinterest for bloggers and how to use Pinterest to grow your blog! Pinterest and blogging are a match made in heaven and if you have a blog you NEED to be on Pinterest.

(In Part 1, we talked about Pinterest for photographers, and in Part 2, we covered Pinterest for wedding planners).

Let’s jump into in!

Why Pinterest is ideal for bloggers

Long before other businesses and niches had jumped on the Pinterest train, bloggers were taking advantage of the platform. Pinterest is an ideal platform for bloggers for two main reasons.

1. You job is creating content, and lots of it, and Pinterest accounts do best with a consistent supply of fresh content. 
2. In many cases, your goal is simply to get website traffic. If you’re a service or product-based business, Pinterest traffic is the top of your funnel- once people reach your site, they need to then convert them into clients or customers. But for bloggers, website traffic in itself is one of the main goals for using the platform, so things are more straightforward for you.

What can Pinterest do for bloggers?

Pinterest is designed to drive traffic, and bloggers want website traffic! So, the main thing that Pinterest can do for bloggers is to increase website traffic. Increased website traffic grows your blog and can get you bigger sponsorship/influencer deals, etc.

But that’s not all that Pinterest can do for you. Once you get people to your site, consider what next steps you want them to take. For bloggers, that can include clicking to your affiliate links, following you on IG and LIKEtoKNOW.it, signing up for your email list, etc.

What Pinterest can do for you specifically depends on your marketing goals. Maybe you’re just looking for website traffic, or maybe you want to promote other actions once people get to your site. If this is the case, make sure your blog posts and landing pages are optimized and include CTAs to guide readers to the next step.

How to Use Pinterest for bloggers

In this series, I’m not covering general Pinterest basics and am focusing on specific industry tips instead. For info on Pinterest 101, you can grab my free guide here.

As a quick overview though, you’ll want to:

Create a business account
Claim your website and related accounts
Enable Rich Pins
Fill out your profile
Conduct keyword research (very important!)
Create your boards
Create your pins

As a blogger, the bulk of your content will be your blog posts, and this can be all you pin. Depending on your marketing goals and what you offer, you can also pin,

• Leads for your email list
• Any products you sell
• Gift Guides (these do really well around the holidays!)
• Instagram posts
• Anything else you want to promote

Create the right Pinterest Boards

Deciding which boards to create is fairly easy because you already have your content pillars outlined in your blog. Start off by creating one board dedicated to all of your content, where you’ll pin everything from your blog. Next, create a Board for each category you have on your blog. 

From here, go through your categories and see if you have any sub-categories that warrant their own boards.

For example, if you’re a wellness blogger, you may have the following categories on your blog: recipes, exercise, mindfulness, natural beauty. These are your main Board categories starting out.

Then, go into your recipe category on your blog. Do any sub-topics jump out? Maybe you share a lot of smoothie recipes or a lot of healthy dessert recipes. For each sub-topic that you create content for on a consistent basis, consider making a board for this topic.

Note: you don’t need a board for every sub-topic. For example, if you’ve only shared two smoothie recipes, it’s not time for a smoothie Board. Only create Boards for the sub-topics you regularly write about.

Use Pinterest Trends to plan your content

Pinterest Trends is an amazing tool that Pinterest offers (for free!) that allows you to see when content is trending on the platform. For bloggers, this is a great tool for planning your content calendar! (I also think it’s fun for personal use! I’ll use it to search topics I love, like home décor and wellness and see what’s new!).

There are two main ways you can use it. First, simply scroll through the categories Pinterest highlights and see what’s currently trending in your category (this is very general and only applies if you cover a popular category, like Food & Drink, Home Décor, Travel, etc.). 

Next, using the search bar, search for topics in your niche to see how they’ve trended over the last year. So sticking with your wellness blogger example, I did a search for smoothie recipes, and you can see that they get the most search results in the spring.

The search results page also recommends related search terms and shows popular Pins for the topic you searched. 

Creating Story Pins for Bloggers

Pinterest recently released their new Pin format, Story Pins, and they are really prioritizing them at the moment, so you definitely want to use them! If you don’t have access to them yet, you can request access here.

For some niches, finding content for Story Pins can be tricky, but bloggers have a serious advantage in that the kind of content you create for your blog will likely do really well in Story format. Things like recipes, styling tips, hair tutorials, # Ways to, How to’s, etc. do really well as Story Pins.

You can learn more about Story Pins and how to create them here.

Optimize your traffic from Pinterest

Like we mentioned earlier, you’ll want to decide what your Pinterest marketing goals are and optimize your site to encourage this. Using affiliate links and CTAs, you can funnel the website traffic you receive towards your goals.

Optimize Your Site for Pinterest

Make it super easy for your website visitors to share your content (free marketing!) by optimizing your website for Pinterest. This includes having a Pin It button, including a CTA on your blog posts asking readers to share to Pinterest, asking visitors to follow you on Pinterest, and sharing vertical images on your site.

As you can see, Pinterest is the perfect platform to grow your blog! If you’re not already using it, it’s time to get on the platform!

Ready to start growing your blog with Pinterest? Head over to my services page to see how we can work together!