Pinterest Traffic Secrets

Pinterest is huge. I mean really HUGE.

“Pinterest — valued at $3.8 billion in its last venture funding raise — will have more than 40 million monthly active users in the U.S. by the end of 2014, according to eMarketer. It finished 2013 with 34.9 million, of whom 30 million were women.”

– Forbes magazine Nov. 3, 2014.

Pinterest traffic rank in Alexa is an amazing 16th in the United States

If you don’t already use Pinterest I’m certain you’re at least aware of it.  If you don’t know what Pinterest is it’s kind of like an old-school corkboard.  Users create and share the collections of visual bookmarks or ‘boards’.  Boards can consist of any topic and people get really damn creative with them.

Did you know you can drive massive amounts of highly-targeted targeted traffic to your own website by using Pinterest?  The key is to do it in a subtle manner that doesn’t piss off the entire Pinterest nation.

Now I’m not to going to get into how to set up an account with Pinterest since there are tons of video tutorials out there on Youtube and elsewhere for that.  So let’s get right into how to generate Pinterest traffic to your site.  Here are two quick tips to get your account primed to become a traffic generating machine for you:

• Create a good strong profile page that includes your best content and important information about you and your business.  Use a picture of yourself and write a few action-based blurbs about what you and your business are good at
• Link your Pinterest account to both your Facebook and Twitter account.  (Note:  With Facebook you can only link your personal page and not your Facebook Fan Page if you have one).  There is a Social Networks page for you to link your accounts
• Add Pin It buttons to your sites

• Rule#1:  Never Sell On Pinterest
• Rule#2:  See Rule #1
• Your goal is to create interest in your topic on Pinterest and lead them to your site in a cool way
• Only use images you have permission to use.  Find some copyright-free or public domain images
• Focus on creating original content instead of pinning only other people’s content
• At least 50% of your content should be your own and linking to your site
  
• Know your audience.  Pinterest attracts mostly women so cater your approach to be very female friendly

Infographics:  People love looking at infographics and they will enable you to demonstrate your expertise, provide value, and build relationships.

Tutorials:  Tutorials get a very high click-through-rate especially if you provide solid easy to follow content.

Pins That Include Text:  Use a simple free app such as Picmonkey to place text over your images.

Checklists:  I know, I know.  Everyone is sick of checklists including me.  But they still get good responses so use them without being too lame about it.  “Nine reasons why…”  “Eight amazing facts about…”  “Eleven foods you must avoid..”  You know the drill by now.  They suck; but they work.

Video Pins From Youtube:  This is a powerful pin strategy that most people are clueless about.  

Now that you have your account set up properly and know what to pin let’s get down to brass tacks and discuss traffic strategy.  You must engage your audience to trigger action and traffic back to your site.  How do you do that?

• Follow other users that are interested in your niche.  They can be competitors – it doesn’t matter
• When others comment on your pins make sure to comment back.  Search engines love social conversation triggers on a topic
• Every one of your pins should have a Call to Action such as “repin this” or “go here” or “click below”.  Again you can use Picmonkey to add buttons and other text
• Use your best keywords so peeps using the Pinterest search feature can find you
• You can set up contests to win prizes and or your product (whatever) for the most repins or referrals of your content
• You may comment on your own pins as long as you’re not a tool about it.  In fact, that way others will know they’re dealing with a human and not a Pinterest-bot.  Strike up conversations and be cool to others!  
• Cross-promote your pins to other social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, and whatever else fits your niche.

You might also like: Pinterest automation guide

And Pinterest bans affiliate links