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Thursday, January 22, 2015

How to Get More Readers as a Newbie Blogger using Pinterest

It can be a little daunting starting a new blog. You invest all this time and energy into creating a blog and writing posts and then nobody reads it.



Whatever your goal was in starting your blog, sharing your opinions or recipes, making some disposable income  or documenting your goals and progress,  we all want people to read (and even better share) what we write. So how can we accomplish this?

This is my second time around and it's difficult starting at the bottom but my #1 source of traffic has always come from Pinterest (about 70%), then Google, then referrals from other bloggers.

Almost everyone has a Pinterest account these days, and if you don't -- bookmark this page go open one and then come back. Then create a board for all your blog posts. You can see mine here.


Make it Easy for Readers to 'Pin It' and Find you on Pinterest


I recommend adding a pin it button to your posts - you can do this two ways: under settings or using the tutorial for a mouse over pin button from Kevin and Amanda. This allows readers to easily pin a post or picture they like with a lot less effort.

If I find a blog I really enjoy I like to check out their Pinterest page - make it easy for readers to find yours by placing social media buttons at the top of your page. See mine???

And lastly you can also add a widget for one of your boards - found under the settings (as I have done above) This is a great idea if it relates directly to your post, or has a collection of resources relating to your post topic.

How to get Re-Pins???


The easiest ways to get pins is to join Pinterest link-ups:

Creativekkids offers a few including Bloggers Brags on Monday - where you pin the two before your pin or the Ultimate Pinterest Party where you add your pin on Friday evening and everyone pins a few of their favourites Saturday morning.

Create-with-joy has a Friendship Friday link-up which starts Thursday evenings and every week they have a different social boost - so they have a Pinterest link-up approximately every 5 weeks.

I also just found #SoMe2 - Social Linky Party on Designed Décor and 3 other blogs where they have a social media linky every Tuesday @ 7pm that cycles through Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Bloglovin’, Google+, and Facebook.

You can find more Pinterest Link-Ups sorted by day of the week here:  Pinterest Link Parties

If you know of anymore I would love to hear about them as I'm always looking.

 

Group Boards 


Another good way is to join Pinterest group boards you can find a collection of group boards sorted by category on my Pinterest Group Board Directory.




Just make sure to ask for an invite to groups with categories you will be blogging about. (You can usually find how to ask for an invitation under the description.) I have found that I get about 8 times more repins from group boards because they often have a large amount of followers.

You can also try to follow people sometimes they will follow you back, although I don't find this is always the case with Pinterest as it is with Twitter.

Pinterest is the leading source of many bloggers views, and if you get your post in front of the right pinners it can easily get pinned hundreds of times.

You might also like How to make a Pinterest worthy image (for free) - because these days an image is just as important as the content.



5 comments:

  1. Love all these tips! And thanks for the links to pinterest link-ups. Pinned!

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  2. Olá Kristen, eu também gosto muito do Pinterest, mas a minha fonte de visitas não vêm do Pinterest, em Portugal ter um blog com audiência é muito difícil, ninguém comenta, já fiz comentários em blogs Portugueses e nem um obrigado recebi
    Ando um pouco obcecada em aprender a fazer imagens dignas do Pinterest, gostava de saber como fazes nas tuas imagens, esse rectângulo em transparente, eu não consigo, se me poderes ajudar agradecia muito.
    Beijinhos
    Blogueira on Line.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Do you add the pinnable photos to your blog post? The Pinterest dimensions are very large and it's causing my site to load slowly

    ReplyDelete