Steal my Systems Part 5
Note: Full disclosure, this blog post contains affiliate referral links. However, I only recommend products that I use and love myself.
Pinterest is an amazing tool for generating traffic to your website. As a visual search engine, it attracts a very different crowd than those who search on Google. And with its Smart Feed you have a much greater chance of your pins being seen by those searching for you.
Typically thought of as a search engine for creatives, it is actually also a powerful tool for those of us who use blogging as a content strategy.
In fact, just doing a check of my website statistics for the first half of this year and it has accounted for 38% of my website traffic! And I can tell you in that time I would have spent no more than an average of 20 minutes a week on it.
Yes… that’s right 20 minutes a week for 38% of my website traffic.
But before you get too excited about this new found traffic generation tool, I do want you to remember that it is not the quantity of traffic that matters, but the quality.
While I do get such a large proportion from Pinterest and they do convert at a good rate onto my email list these subscribers are the lowest converting in terms of actual sales. They also spend the least amount of time on my site as often they will just read the blog post they are interested in and then exit. Also increasing my bounce rates. But having said that, for 10 minutes of work a week I don’t mind – it is just something you need to be aware of.
A key factor in this is that almost 50% of Pinterest users are from the USA. While numbers from other countries are rising, unless you have an offer that you can sell to US customers, it will likely mean lower conversions.
Before I get into showing you how exactly I manage my Pinterest in that small amount of time, you need to understand a few of the key principles of how Pinterest works.
For some basics on getting started you can read this previous blog post – Getting Started with Pinterest.
3 pinterest principles
Principle #1 : Repins Count
One of the ways in which Pinterest knows which Pins to show to people when they search is by the number of “repins” any particular pin has. This is a clear indicator of quality and they, of course, want to recommend the best.
So how do you get repins?
The first way is to repin them yourself! So this means once you have pinned one of your pins to your other relevant Pinterest boards, you want to “repin” from that board. If you pin yours directly from your blog or website to multiple boards you are diluting the effect.
The second way is by using Group Boards, which leads to principle 2…
Principle #2 : Extending your Reach with Group Boards
I do talk about this in the Getting Started with Pinterest blog but it bears repeating here. One of the best ways to get your pins seen (and re-pinned) by other people is to utilise group boards.
By finding and joining some group boards you can then pin your content (and others) to that board. The next time anyone else who is a member of that board logs in their home feed will include pins from any group boards they are a part of – hopefully yours included.
This is a much quicker way of getting your pins repin count increased without just relying purely on those who follow your account.
Principle #3: Pin Often
Pinterest favours those who use its platform often – in other words those that pin – and pin a lot. I’m talking somewhere between 50 – 100 pins a day.
And, of course, only a small portion of this should be your own pins. Nobody (including Pinterest) likes a Spammy McSpamburger.
So that sounds like hard work – but it doesn’t have to be! Enter my Pinterest system…
steps to 50 pins a day
Step #1: Build your Boards
The first thing you need to do is to make sure you have plenty of boards to pin to. You will want 10-20 boards with each catered towards a different topic your audience will be interested in (and relates to your business).
Once you have these boards setup you want to fill them, aiming for 100 in each. 10 x 100 = 1000 or 20 days worth of pinning 50 a day.
50 sounds like a lot! And when Pinterest wants you to space these out over the day it is easy to see how it will consume all your time.
For this, I use a scheduling tool called Tailwind.
Tailwind allows you to schedule as many times a day as you would like it to post for you.
Then, once a week, or once a day you fill your Tailwind queue with pins.
The quickest way to do this is to install the Tailwind Chrome extension and then go into Pinterest and type in the keywords of one of your boards. Scroll down the page a little and then click the Tailwind extension button.
This will bring up a second window where you can select which pins you want to pin to your board. Click through and select those you want and hit “schedule”.
Then enter the board you want to add them all to and select Schedule All. Repeat this a few times and you have done your 50 for the day.
Yes, this will obviously take you longer than 10 minutes a week! Don’t worry this phase is just for 1 month, after then we will switch systems.
Step #2: Pinning to Group Boards
As per the principles mentioned above, you also want to make sure to schedule your own pins to a number of group boards.
In addition, you want to pin other people’s pins to those boards as well. At least on a ratio of 2 other for every 1 of yours you do.
This is where Tailwind really comes into its own.
You can create “board lists” where you can group all of your group boards into one list.
Then all you do is click the Tailwind icon that appears over your Pin (from your main blog post board). Type in your board list name into the boards field and it will auto populate all those boards for you. Then I recommend you add an interval so that they aren’t posted straight after another and to avoid being seen as spammy. Finally, repeat this process for at least 2 pins from other people.
If you have 5 group boards you share too and 3 of your own posts a week that you pin to them (yes you can repin older ones to these boards too!), this equals 45 pins a week.
Step #3: Putting it on Autopilot
Once you have approx 100 pins on each of your boards, you are ready to start putting your Pinterest on autopilot using Boardbooster scheduling tool.
Boardbooster has an amazing “looping” feature.
This means that you can set it to repin pins from the bottom of your board back to the top – as many as you like a day! After a week (or however you set it) the pin with the least repins will be deleted, meaning you won’t have duplicates for long.
I have this setup for 11 of my boards with different amounts for each, depending on the starting size. Currently, this automatically gives me 36 pins a day – without me lifting a finger!
Step #4 : Automate Posting to Group Boards
In addition to looping, I can use Boardbooster to automatically post to the group boards that I share my blog posts to. Here I have set it so that each of the 6 top group boards I am part of 2 pins from my main general board: “Online Marketing Tips” gets pinned to them.
This means that I don’t have to worry about spamming when I share my posts as I am regularly sharing much more of others content.
This results in an extra 12 pins a day, bringing my total up to 48.
Combine this with pinning 4 of my own pins a week to these 6 boards (from step 2) my total is up to 52 a day.
Step #5 : Add new content
Of course, you don’t want to entirely keep repinning old content to your boards. So this is where my 20 minutes a week comes in. The first 10 minutes is spent scheduling my own pins. The second 10 minutes is to schedule new content.
I still use Tailwind for both of these functions. However, I now only pin 8 times a day using Tailwind instead of 50.
This means I try to find about 5 new pins per day of the week. And I do this by just going to my main Pinterest feed which is now showing me relevant content based on the group boards I am part of and accounts I follow. I just click the Tailwind extension and select any that fit my boards, then I assign them individually to the boards I want them to go to.
A quick recap
Ok, that is a lot of information to be sharing in one go, so here is a quick breakdown.
In your building phase, you will be reaching your 50 a day by:
- Repinning your pins (3) and other pins (6) to group boards (5). This gives you 6.42 pins a day
- Schedule the remaining 44 a day using Tailwind
Once you have 100 pins on at least 10 boards, you will be reaching your 50 a day by:
- Repinning your pins (3) to group boards (5). This gives you 2.14 a day
- Automate pinning 2 pins a day from your main board to group boards (5). This gives you 10 a day.
- Automate looping of 3 posts a day on 10 boards. This gives you 30 a day.
- Find 8 new posts a day to schedule via Tailwind.
conclusion
As with many things, Pinterest will pay off for you after putting the effort into the initial setup. However, the thing I really love about Pinterest is that it is evergreen traffic. Meaning the work you put in now, will build on itself in the future.
If you are interested in checking out the tools mentioned, you can get a Free Month long trial of Tailwind if you use my referral link.
Or, click here if you’d prefer to learn more about Boardbooster.
