It’s been more than two months since I wrote for A Travellers Journey. I should have been sharing my travels around India and Nepal with you, but honestly I felt like I didn’t have the time. Travelling and working, while managing an office is difficult. I’ve struggled to find the balance between the two. I’m still adjusting, but I feel like it’s starting to come together.
So I’ve been thinking how can I come back and offer you something that’s really useful? Well in one word, Pinterest. Honestly, I can’t believe I only started to use Pinterest this year. It’s my number one source of traffic (and that traffic is growing).
A few facts about Pinterest before we start:
– There are 70 Million monthly active users on Pinterest.
– The half life of a pin is one week.
– 81% of Pinterest users are female (I didn’t realize that).
Stats are fun, but results are more important.
There are more referrals from Pinterest, like local Pinterest Indonesia and Australia urls for example.
I’m getting between 50-100 referrals a day from Pinterest. The closest competitor in terms of referral traffic is FB, which gets just 7-10 people a day. Now there’s one thing you will notice about this, the time on site for Pinterest is very low (a bit like StumbleUpon).
Setting Up Pinterest
I don’t know what kind of results you are seeing from social media, but… If you are getting less than 40 referrals a day from fb or Twitter then I strongly suggest you get a Pinterest account and start testing. Here’s what I’m doing.
Managing Your Pinterest Account
There are a lot of great articles online about how to setup and manage your first Pinterest account. I don’t want to create an ‘ultimate article’ on the subject. I want to give you a proven framework to work in so you can start getting visitors to your website.
Here’s a good in depth article on the topic:
How to Drive 3x More Traffic to Your Blog with Pinterest
If you want the basics in a paragraph here goes:
Pinterest is setup around boards and pins. Boards are like categories on your website and pins are the posts. To generate traffic and get followers you will need to join some boards.
There are a lot of travel boards on Pinterest. Here are links to the best travel boards I’m active on in Pinterest that you can send a request to join. To join you will need to follow the profile of the author and the board.
Board Name Board Author How to Join
Travel Blogger Community Emmy Ask for an invite from a member.
Indonesia Travel Firsta Ask me for an invite.
Beautiful Places Cong Comment on one of the board authors pins.
Explore The World Hsinchu Comment on one of the board authors pins.
Travel Community Emmy Ask for an invite from a member.
Travel Stories Jess Comment on one of the board authors pins.
Travellers of the World Tammi email: [email protected]
Bali Travel Firsta Ask me for an invite.
You should try to join boards that best match your website focus. You’ll also want to create one or two private boards where you can just post your own content.
Creating Pins
If you want to promote your content through Pinterest you’ll need to create some pins. The recommended size for Pinterest is 735 x 1,100. You don’t need to use that exact size, but I’d recommend something close to it. I normally use 560 x 977.
There’s a lot of online graphics design tools you can use for creating Pins. Below are some of the most popular online image editing software available at the moment.
Software Favorite Feature Relevant URL
Canva Free and easy to use with upgrades you need to pay for. canva.com
Pic Monkey Good free feature, complicated UI. picmonkey.com
Youzign Most features (like instant image cropping and text outline). youzign.com
Out of these three I personally use Youzign, which has the most functionality and is being continually updated. It is a premium product, but I think it’s worth the investment (especially as they are continually upgrading the software).
Quick Tips
I recommend creating a few pin variations for each of the posts you want to promote. It takes a little time, but you never know which pin is going to get traction. Take these
I’d recommend adding the Pinterest for Chrome Save Button to your browser. I use it to save new content to my account. If you’re running your website on WordPress you can add the Pin It Plugin to your site. The plugin lets you select a default image for posts on Pinterest (there’s a similar plugin for fb, which is really useful).
Posting Ratios on Pinterest
To grow your Pinterest profile you need to be active every day. Here are three simple rules to follow for growing your Pinterest account.
1. Find Your Feet
Join at least 6-7 boards. The boards should relate to the content that you are producing on your website. This will help you find the right audience for your content.
2. Become a Regular
Pinterest shows your content more the more active you are on the site. Post one piece of content to each board twice a day. The more active you are the more traffic you can expect.
Follow the 4/1 Principle
Pinterest rewards you for sharing content from other people. Pin four pieces of content from other people’s content for every piece of content you post.
You should post content to all of the boards that you are on at least twice a day (I try to post a lot more).
That’s it.
Final Thoughts
This post was created to be actionable. If you are running a travel blog, or any kind of blog really, and you are not using Pinterest then this is something you can act on. Just by following those four tips above you will start getting traffic from Pinterest.
Are you using Pinterest for your website? Have you got any tips to share or feedback to offer? Share your feedback in the comments below.
