When you start a blog what you really need is to get people over there. You can write the most interesting blog posts but if no one knows that they exist your blog won’t go far.
While there are multiple ways to bring traffic to your blog, I really believe that Pinterest is the best way to generate page views to your blog.
In my view, the power of Pinterest is mostly in its search engine capability and I use it to get targeted organic traffic to my blog. In other words, I bring people that are interested in my content so that it will be so much easier to convert them (meaning to cause them to make the decision to purchase what I have to offer). And I give you my exact strategy in my course Pinterest from P to T (from Pinning to Target visitors).
Pinterest from P to T
However, like everything, Pinterest marketing has to be built step by step otherwise it won’t work.
I’m telling you this because I have been there. When I first started I didn’t know much about Pinterest. All I knew was that it was a good way to get traffic to your blog so I started pinning without any strategy and without following Pinterest best Practices. Obviously, I didn’t see any results! So I started studying and I then started to understand the importance of creating your Pinterest profile the right way.
Having your Pinterest profile set up in a certain way will help people find it, navigate it easily, and understand what it is all about.
However, most importantly, following some steps on creating a Pinterest profile for your blog will help you grow on Pinterest. It will give you authority on Pinterest and it will make your pins easily findable.
Pinterest marketing is complex and to see great results you need time and effort but creating your Pinterest profile the right way is the first step that you need to take.
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Create a Pinterest business account
If you want to use Pinterest for business, you need a business account.
This is important because it gives you more features like: access to analytics and the possibility to verify your website. We will talk about the importance of getting your website verified in one second.
As you may know Pinterest rewards creators by showing their pins more frequently. In other words, Pinterest rewards people who bring new content to its platform.
If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. People go on Pinterest to find content that inspires them or solves their problems but if creators don’t put their content on the platform, Pinterest can’t do much.
So, Pinterest wants to make creators (people that bring new content to the platform, people like me and you) happy so they still give Pinterest content to show.
But if you don’t have a business Pinterest account, Pinterest won’t know that you are a creator. So, get a Pinterest business account and take advantage of the special treatment!
Pinterest rewards content creators! Let Pinterest know that you are a creator by getting a business account.
You can either start your business profile from scratch or convert your personal Pinterest profile into a business one.
However, before going with the second option you need to take into account two aspects:
take into account Your Pinterest followers
If you have lots of followers on your personal account, you will be tempted to switch that into a business account to keep all your followers.
But not all followers are the same. The kind of followers that you have on Pinterest is really important.
In fact, when you post a new pin on Pinterest, to understand if it is good pin, Pinterest will show it firstly to your followers and, only if your pin gets interaction from your followers, will it show it in other places.
Consequently, my advice is to keep your followers only if you are sure that they will be interested in your business pins.
Let me give you an example. If on your personal Pinterest profile you pinned a lot about travel and the majority of your followers are there because they want to know about travel the following will happen. Once you switch to a business account dedicated to your blog that is mostly about home decor your old followers (interested in travel) probably won’t interact with your new pins (about home decor). This will send Pinterest the signal that your pins are not so good and consequently not worthy of being shown to other people.
take into account Your private interests
If you have lots of interests not connected with your blog topic, it is probably better not to convert your personal account into the business account connected to your blog.
In fact, if you use Pinterest to organise your personal interests, once you change your private account into a business one you will need to make all the boards not related to your blog as secret boards. This will make the organisation of your private interests harder.
This for two simple reasons:
- People that land on your profile because they were interested in your blog topic will get confused by seeing so many other topics on your profile. And probably they won’t follow you as they don’t want to get pins not related to the main topic on their feed.
- The more a Pinterest profile is niched down the better. This will help Pinterest understand what your content is about and give it the right exposure.
Pinterest makes your life easy as if you decide to have more than one Pinterest profile you can switch between them quite easily.
Before switching your Pinterest personal account into a business one, take into account these two aspects.
Verify your website
Let’s be honest, when you just start Pinterest doesn’t know you and if it doesn’t know you, it doesn’t trust you.
The problem is that getting Pinterest’s trust is vital for Pinterest marketing, because if Pinterest doesn’t trust you it won’t show your pins.
There are different ways that you can gain Pinterest’s trust but the most powerful is definitely verifying your website.
Pinterest wants to give its users the best experience and for sure doesn’t want to promote spam. By verifying your website you are telling Pinterest that you are legit.
Actually, you are letting everyone know that you are legit as Pinterest will put your website URL in your profile page with a little green tick to say that you are verified as you can see on Tinylovebug’s profile (another website of mine).
Plus, that link is clickable so people can reach your website easily.
Verifying your website not only tells Pinterest that your website is legit. It also says that you are a curator (someone that creates and brings new content to Pinterest. For this Pinterest will reward you by showing your content more often) but it also gives you access to the third section of analytics: “Your website”.
This section of Pinterest analytics is definitely the most important as there you will be able to see everything that is going on with the pins directly connected to your website.
Once you have verified your website you can apply for rich pins.
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Apply for rich pins
Rich pins are prettier and more informative than normal pins.
When your pin appears on the home feed with hundreds of other pins, it will stand out more if it is a rich pin.
Can you see the difference between the rich pin (on the screen-shot above) and the pin that isn’t a rich pin (on the screen-shot below)?
The first one is nicer and gives more information about the article. The second pin isn’t a rich pin as it brings you to a landing page that isn’t on my website so I wasn’t able to make it rich.
Plus if you have verified your website the link to it will be under each of your rich pins, it doesn’t matter who pinned it.
If you have rich pins enabled, Pinterest will show your pins more as Pinterest knows they are from your website and not a spam site.
Having rich pins enabled is also really important from an SEO point of view. In fact, when you pin a rich pin from your website it gives Pinterest lots of data. Pinterest will automatically get your post title, your meta-description and your meta-tag.
The more Pinterest knows about your pins the best it can show them on the appropriate settings.
Another pro of having rich pins enabled is that you can see the analytics for the individual pin.
If you open your pin on its right corner you will see the statistics for that pin.
If you don’t have rich pins enabled on Pinterest you are missing out
If you need a step by step guide on how to create your account, verify your website, get rich pins and start with pinterest the right way, you can enroll on my FREE course Pinterest for New Bloggers.
NEED HELP WITH PINTEREST?
Take my FREE 9-day email course and start with Pinterest the right way! Enroll now – it’s FREE!
Choose a great Pinterest profile picture
Your Pinterest profile picture is the first thing that someone sees when it lands on your Pinterest profile.
You can either use your logo/favicon as I’m experimenting with my brand new Pinterest profile created for this website.
Or make stuff more personal and use a photo of yourself as I do on Tinylovebug’s Pinterest profile
Probably, the photo of yourself will work better as people tend to feel more connected to you.
Anyway any kind of photo you decide to use make sure that it’s high quality and that it still can be seen even in a really small dimension. Keep in mind that Pinterest users often use the platform from their mobile.
Add keywords to your name
Of course when you create your Pinterest profile name you want to put the name of your blog there. But an easy way to make people understand what your blog and your Pinterest profile are about is to put some related keywords next to your name.
Having keywords on your Pinterest profile name will also help Pinterest show your profile for the right search query.
As you can see, I put the name of my blog and then added a couple of keywords that are related to my niche.
Write a keywords rich profile description
Keywords are really important in Pinterest. In fact, Pinterest has a built in search engine and you don’t want to miss out on its power.
Your Pinterest profile has to be SEO and a big part of this is to use keywords.
Use only keywords that are related to your niche.
However, if it’s true that you want to use keywords to come up on the search results, it’s also true that who actually decides if is interested in your profile is a human.
So, your description has to be created to be found by a machine but in a way that appeals to real people.
Use keywords on a natural way, don’t keyword stuff your description.
Tell your readers what is in for them, explain to them how you can help and let them know what results they will achieve if they follow your tips.
Keywords are a big part of Pinterest SEO, use them in the right places
Create Pinterest boards
Yep, without boards you won’t go far on Pinterest. Boards is where the magic happens.
Stay on topic
Firstly: the only boards that you want on your profile are boards related to your blog topic.
I see people sneaking in boards not related to their blog probably to increase their Pinterest monthly views (the number you can see in the following screenshot) but let me tell you something: Pinterest monthly views mean absolutely nothing! You want people to your blog, so who cares if they are on your Pinterest profile if they are not interested in what your blog has to offer?
For example, let’s say that you blog about finance, and you decide to create boards about keto diet as keto diet is a hot topic on Pinterest. This will attract people over to your Pinterest profile increasing your Pinterest monthly viewers. But they are the wrong people, if they came to your profile to learn more about keto diet, they won’t translate into visitors to your blog. This is because as per this example you write about finance, remember? Whereas they’re interested in keto stuff.
You are using your time working for someone else that actually writes about keto by giving them exposure. Lots of energy used for nothing.
Having boards that aren’t related to your main topic can actually harm your profile in at least three ways:
- Pinterest works a lot like Google, so the more your profile niches down the better. If you have a miscellaneous of topics Pinterest can’t understand your expertise and you run the risk that it won’t show your profile for any of them.
- People that find your profile get confused and probably won’t follow you. If they are interested in the topic of your blog they probably don’t want to see pins about other stuff in their feeds.
- It will hurt the visibility of your pins. Pinterest decides if a pin is a good pin (and worthy to be shown more) by the interaction that your followers have with it. So, if someone is following you for a topic that isn’t YOUR topic, probably when they see your own pins about your own topic they won’t interact with them. This makes Pinterest believe that your pins are not interesting. Using the example from before: if your blog is about finance, probably your own pins will be about finance. But if someone has followed you because they were interested in your “keto diet” board (full of other people’s pins as you don’t blog about keto) once your own pins about finance will come up in their feeds they won’t interact with them. (They are not interested, they want to know about keto!) This sends Pinterest the message “This pin sucks”. I really hope this makes sense because it’s really important for your Pinterest marketing.
need help with your Pinterest strategy?
Please, be aware that I’m not saying that you don’t have to pin others pinners content, what I’m saying is that content has to be related to your blog topic. Pinning high quality pins of other people in your niche can help your Pinterest marketing a lot. Especially at the beginning:
You are telling Pinterest that you are a good curator. When you just start and Pinterest doesn’t know you, you have to show that you aren’t a spammer and that you can help your followers (their users) by showing them high quality pins.
People can reach your profile through a pin that you pinned from someone else. With it being that pin about your blog topic, they can find something else among your own pins that can interest them. This way you get traffic to your blog.
When creating Pinterest boards for your profile stay on topic otherwise you can harm your Pinterest marketing
How many boards you need
You want to have a fair amount of boards on your Pinterest profile. The more boards you have the bigger is the number of times that you can pin your own pins. But be careful because once you have created your boards you have to curate them. This means you need to pin consistently to them and you need to pin high quality pins. Pinterest judges you also as curator.
I would start with at least 10 boards directly related to your blog topic.
Don’t create all the boards at once, as when you create a new board you want to fill it in. No one wants to see a board half empty. But you don’t want to swamp your followers with one thousand pins all at once.
So create your boards gradually, fill it in and, after a while, create more of them.
Create Pinterest boards in a strategic way. Think about what you are planning to write on your blog and create boards on a way that your pin can go into at least 3 of your boards.
Let’s say that you have a travel blog:
Probably, having a board for each city you write about may be too much. However, it depends on how many cities you are actually going to write about and how many posts you plan to write about each of those cities.
For example, if you plan to write just an article about Barcelona, I wouldn’t create a board about the city of Barcelona (and I would probably pin this post to a more generic board like “Europe” or “Summer destinations”) but if you are planning to write: Barcelona in general, What to try in Barcelona, Best time to visit Barcelona, Where to eat in Barcelona, Barcelona itinerary, What to pack for a trip to Barcelona and so on, I would definitely create a board for Barcelona but also some more generic boards like Spain, Europe, Summer destinations, Where to eat when abroad, What to pack for your trip and so on (if you think you will write more about these topics)
What you are aiming for is to have at least 3 boards for each topic you will write about so that you can pin your own pins multiple times.
You can, and should, create multiple pins for each blog post as Pinterest rewards fresh pins.
Warning: do not repin your pins to all the related boards at once. Space them up. You can easily do this with Tailwind.
Remember, don’t go overboard with boards (pun not intended lol) as once you have them you have to curate them to gain more authority with Pinterest.
Do you need to create Pinterest board sections?
Board sections don’t have any SEO at this stage. So, to take advantage of the boards’ SEO, I would create a board for each topic you plan to write about.
Besides, if you use Tailwind it won’t pin directly to sections.
Board sections are more for “regular” Pinterest users to keep their stuff organised but they don’t work really well for Pinterest marketing.
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Naming your Pinterest boards
Choosing the right name for your Pinterest boards is really really important.
- People will understand what your profile is about mostly by your board names.
- People will understand what your board is about from its name.
- Pinterest boards can rank on Pinterest and even on Google
- Pinterest board names give Pinterest an idea of your niche
- Pinterest boards transfer the SEO juice to the pins pinned into it.
Actually, how you name your Pinterest boards is so important that I wrote an article all about how to choose Pinterest board names, and believe me, you want to read it.
Create Pinterest boards strategically to get more traffic to your blog
Create a board for your work only
Having a board dedicated just to the content of your blog is really useful.
People that arrive on your profile can check out your own work easily.
I’m not talking only about your potential followers but think about brands and other bloggers that may want to collaborate with you. They want to especially check out your pins.
So create a board exclusively dedicated to your blog content and make it the first of your profile. This will make your own pins more visible.
To move your boards around you need to go on “boards” and then choose drag and drop from the drop-down menu.
Create board covers
Ok, this is not essential, but it really helps with getting your profile nice, in branding and easily navigable. I create my board covers and all my graphics with Canva pro.
Turn on the featured boards on your Pinterest profile
Make your favorite Pinterest boards the first ones that people see.
You can choose up to 5 boards to put on a rotating showcase that will appear at the top of your profile.
To make your featured boards shows go into setting → edit profile and at the end of the screen you will find the feature
Click on edit and pick your favourite boards to show
Of course you want to put there the board dedicated to your blog content.
Group Boards
Group boards can be great for a few reasons:
– get your pins in front of thousands of people
– repin your own pins as much as you can (without spamming)
– get your profile active
– find quality pins to repin
However, once you become a contributor to a group board, that board becomes part of your profile and it will influence it.
So, before accepting an invitation to a group board be aware that being a contributor to a bad group board can actually harm your Pinterest profile.
Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to evaluate a group board before joining it.
However, before applying you can check a couple of things, I’ve listed them in this article all about Pinterest group boards.
In the same article, you can also find a list of group boards open for contributors 🙂
It’s time to pin
Now that your amazing Pinterest profile is ready the question is: what should I pin and especially should I start pinning my content right way?
Yes, you can start pinning your own content right away but at the beginning, I would use the 80/20 rule (80% content from other blogs and 20% of your own) as you need to make Pinterest understand what your profile is about and especially what kind of pinner you are.
In other words, Pinterest doesn’t know you and your content yet so at the beginning, you need to show Pinterest that you are a good curator (you pin other pinners’ high-quality pins and you are not a spammer).
Plus, probably at the beginning you won’t have much of your own content and one of the rules of a good Pinterest marketing is to pin consistently without being spammy so integrate your own pins with other pinners’ high quality pins. But stay in your niche.
With time you can and you want to gradually increase the ratio between yours and other pinners’ pins.
But always space your pins up. The worst thing you can do on Pinterest is pinning the same pin back to back. This is one of the cases on which Tailwind comes in handy.
Win Pinterest trust by showing it that you are a good curator
The best way to deal with the Pinterest algorithm is by making sure your pins are fresh and new. So my advice is to create many new pins (you can create multiple pins for the same blog post), but we all know that in order for a business to work, time needs to be allocated towards other areas as well!
My advice is to keep creating your pins as usual (I use Canva Pro) and increment the number by finding a quick way to create more pins.
Tailwind is always here to help. As you may know, I consider Tailwind your best ally when it comes to Pinterest marketing and now they have made their product even better by adding new features for graphics as well! In fact, I use the app’s “Create” feature in order to increase the number of pins that I create for a post – And believe me; it’s fantastic!
The only thing that you need to do is write in your pin title and then Tailwind will automatically generate different styles! After it creates pins, I tweak them a little but honestly, you could use them directly.
Tailwind’s new feature lets anyone create their own pins without any hassle or work! Plus, it will also create graphics for other social media like Instagram and Facebook!
Even with their “free forever plan” you have the possibility to create 15 graphics each month for free!
Get followers
Pinterest followers are not important… wrong!
It’s true that you can easily reach people through group boards, Tailwind Communities, and good SEO. But your own followers are important because, as I’ve already said, Pinterest decides if showing your pin to a larger audience only if your followers have had a good interaction with them.
So having a good number of followers is advisable as more people have the possibility to interact with your pins. But you still need to have followers interested in your topic otherwise they could create the opposite effect: lots of followers but no one is interacting with your pins. For Pinterest this means your pins are not good.
There are some tips directly related to an increase in followers: ·
Use idea pins: Probably you have read somewhere that if you’re a blogger these pins are not for you, WRONG! It’s true that these kinds of pins don’t give you the possibility to add a clickable link to your blog but they really can bump up your Pinterest Marketing.You might be wondering why you need to use idea pins if they aren’t clickable. The reason for that is because these types of pins are great at raising your followers on Pinterest! They increase the chances of getting new followers by displaying a follow button after people view them, which will get more eyes on your profile and blog posts.
Use MiloTree: People want you to tell them what to do and MiloTree lets you customize a discreet pop up on your website that invites people to follow you on Pinterest.
Follow the followers of the leaders in your niche and the followers of big boards related to your niche. Not everyone will follow you back but a small percentage will. (Don’t follow too many people in one day otherwise Pinterest could suspend your profile as a spammer)
- Pin lots of pins from one single person, they will notice you.
- Use the social part of Pinterest and comment on some pins or engage with some other users. I haven’t tested this strategy as I use Pinterest more as a search engine.
- Promote your Pinterest profile on your other social media accounts, to your email list and on your own blog.
- Promote single boards. People are more likely to follow only a determinate board as its topic is close to their interests.
And say no to follow for follow, you don’t want ANY follower, you want people interested in your topic!
Having high quality followers is vital for Pinterest marketing.
Final thoughts on creating the perfect Pinterest profile
Your Pinterest profile is an important part of your Pinterest marketing since it gives lots of data to Pinterest and make people understand what your blog is about.
Since I believe in the importance of starting out with Pinterest the right way, I created Pinterest for New Bloggers. A FREE course that walks you through the creation of the perfect Pinterest profile and beyond. This free course shows you how to lay the foundations for great Pinterest marketing.
You can check out my FREE course Pinterest for New Bloggers here.
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2 thoughts on “How to Create the Perfect Pinterest Profile for Your Blog”
Marina; A big Thank you for this post topic. I have not tackled creating my business Pinterest page yet. There is so much prep…but your advice is excellent.
Thank you Joyce!
I know there are so many things to take into account but like with everything, if you want results it’s better to start the right way from the beginning.
You will see, one step at the time, and you will have the perfect Pinterest profile in no time 😉