3 Advanced Pinterest Tips For Beginners

Are you new to using Pinterest for your business, and looking for Pinterest tips no one will tell you? The tips below are tips I’ve never seen in the “newbie” blog posts I see out there. But before I get started…

Like many of you reading, I started my Pinterest account ages ago for bedroom inspiration and new recipe ideas.

In fact, my husband and I find it an incredibly valuable tool and have used it for lots of collaborative projects. Everything from shopping for pet supplies for a new dog, to deck ideas when we rebuilt our deck, to brand ideas when he agreed to help me with a new logo.

So even though I knew a lot about Pinterest, I never considered it super valuable for anything other than personal use.

Pinterest For Bloggers?

A few years ago, though, I heard something. A whisper from another marketer…

Pinterest is a traffic goldmine for bloggers. If you use a blog in any way to market your business, gain free traffic by using Pinterest.

At the time I had no idea how or why.

But let me tell you…

That person sure was right!

In the summer of 2018, I decided that after having a personal blog since 2011, I should try to make some money for it. At the very least, I wanted to cover my hosting, email, and landing page costs.

I decided to hire a coach – because I know there are TONS of courses out there, but coaching is the fastest way to success. After only a couple months working on monetizing my blog, I was making a steady income.

And my coach is the one who finally introduced me to the power of Pinterest.

After two months, I was already up to 200,000 monthly impressions. And then I spiked all the way up to 800,000 monthly impressions!

I thought I was super hot stuff UNTIL…

My traffic plummeted back down to around 200,000 monthly impressions. It stayed that way for months, and I just kept doing what my coach had taught me, and what I’d learned in a course I bought.

I knew the importance of manual pinning in addition to using a scheduler, but I didn’t know how to systematize those tips.

Eventually, I started trying some new things about 6 months later that made things click for me.

In this post, I’m going to share 3 things I wish I’d known from the beginning.

3 Advanced Pinterest Tips For New Bloggers

Tip 1: Think of Pinterest like you think of Google.

My first tip is…

Think of Pinterest like you think of Google. What is Google? A search engine.

Yes, Pinterest is a social media platform; and yes, it revolves around attractive visuals.

But how you see those visuals, and more importantly, how you find those visuals, is based on search engine optimization (SEO).

If you don’t know what SEO is, I’ll give you a real short definition: it helps people find the solutions you provide in the quickest way possible by optimizing your content for what they are looking for.

I won’t go too much into SEO here. But if you think Pinterest is just a place for pretty pictures, think again.

So, now that you know Pinterest is a search engine, just like Google is a search engine, you have some more advanced direction for how to use it.

Your images should be attractive, but more importantly, you should make it really easy for people to find YOU when they search for terms that are relevant to you.

Tip 2: Pinterest can get confused.

This tip relates to the first one.

Because Pinterest is a search engine, it gathers information from several places to determine what your pins are about. The title of your pin, description, name and even the URL of the pin all matter…

But your image tells Pinterest what you pin is about as well.

This may seem obvious, but many new bloggers are still missing what I’m about to say:

If you use free stock photos…then chances are, a lot of other bloggers and Pinterest users use those same free images.

I might use a free image for a pin about drinking tea for self care; and another blogger might use that same pin for time management tips.

And if Pinterest sees two pins with the same image, even if they’re about two different subjects, it might assume those pins are related.

That’s why your images matter: not just that they are attractive, but that they are more or less unique.

So, even spending $1 on a stock image is better than spending $0.

But original photography trumps all!

Don’t worry – I got up to 1 million monthly impressions without having original photography. But, your unique and relevant images will help the SEO of your pins in the long term, so don’t forget that.

Tip 3: Pinterest wants you to use Pinterest.

This is my last advanced Pinterest tip for new bloggers, and it involves the fact that Pinterest wants you to use Pinterest.

If you Google Pinterest tips, you’re going to see TONS of blog posts, and many of them say similar things. Which is understandable, because those tips work for the most part.

The tips I see most often are 1) set up a business account, 2) join group boards, 3) use Tailwind and schedule your pins.

And yes, that works. But that alone is going to cap your growth over time.

The thing that helped me explode my Pinterest growth was when I finally hacked how to combine my manual pinning efforts with my Tailwind scheduling efforts.

Group boards matter, Tailwind matters, SEO matters…and spending time on Pinterest matters.

BUT, you don’t have to work your life away on Pinterest!

I managed to get up to over 1 million monthly impressions with about 15 minutes of time on Pinterest 3 times a day: before work, at lunch, and in the evenings. And of course this varied. Sometimes I’d only spend 30 minutes a day on Pinterest and sometimes I’d spend longer. But Pinterest definitely rewarded me for my unique content and for the time I spent manually pinning high quality pins.

What’s Next?

If you’re looking to increase traffic for your blog or website, then I definitely recommend you join my group, Mindful Marketing Mavens.

Go Here To Join The Free Group