Blogging 101: How to Utilise Pinterest

Create different Boards

Not all the content you pin will be for your blog so create multiple boards which cover the different topics you cover in your blog and also topics you might just be interested in. Also create a board specifically for your blog and pin your images to both boards to increase possibility of impressions.

When thinking up which boards to make, think of which boards you would like to see, and what you would search to find them.

You can also join group boards, like mine which helps you interact with other similar content.

Imagery

If you haven’t used Pinterest before, the main thing you need to know is that the entire platform is all about interesting images. Make sure that you’re headers or blog imagery is high quality, and shows what your post will be about whilst catching people’s attention.

You can use Photoshop, or free alternative Canva to create templates for blog heading pins like the one above. For all my Blogging 101 series I’ve used the same imagery, just changed the heading so that’s it’s clearly part of a series of posts. Which is conveyed over on Pinterest as well.

Use Pinterest as a Search Engine

Pinterest indexes your images within the site and works as it’s own search engine, as well as Google and other SE’s which will index you in their own image searches. Make sure your privacy settings allow for your content to be searched

Utilise SEO keywords in your image title, alt text and in the description of the pin. Your boards should also utilise keywords to drive traffic towards your pins.

Pin It Button

You don’t always have to be the one pinning from your site, if you create a ‘Pin It’ button over your images then readers also have the option to pin to their boards. This also shows your readers that you have Pinterest and they may want to follow you.

Engage

Pin other peoples pins! The same as with other social media sites, if you don’t take time to engage with other people then they probably won’t engage with you. Spend a few moments everyday looking through your feed, and also looking through different keywords which are relevant to your own content.

Follow other blogs and join group boards with the same niche as you. There’s so many group boards that you can find on Twitter that people are asking for someone to join. If you join them, you can plug your own posts but also find similar blogs to you.

Don’t forget that as Pinterest is a search engine you can use it as inspiration for yourself. Using your own keywords you can find images and blog posts around these topics to see what others are talking about. You can also find good inspiration for outfit posts, beauty looks and DIY projects for your everyday life.

Create Hidden Images

If you’ve seen some of the long, large images that are used most on Pinterest you might think that it won’t work for your blog because you don’t want to use long portrait imagery. But you don’t have to! You can create the long image and then hide it on your blog, whilst also having it available to pin with a link to your post.

1. First, upload all your Pinterest images into your post.
2. Switch on over to the Text/HTML composer view
3. Before your image code, add the following: <div style=”display:none”>
4. And after the code, close the open code with this: </div>
5. Then use the Pinterest Browser Button to Pin the image