How I Doubled My Pinterest Following

Pinterest is a huge source of traffic for myself and many other bloggers. It’s a platform that’s uniquely designed to send people to other sites, so no wonder it’s so effective at driving traffic! The question is how exactly do we get more Pinterest followers and more Pinterest traffic?

I’m happy to share what I’ve observed over the past 2-3 years of focusing on Pinterest.

First, don’t forget your ultimate goal for using Pinterest. A lot of people focus heavily on the number of followers they have and ignore everything else. Here’s the thing, though. More followers alone aren’t going to increase your bottom line or help you get more traffic. The only way they help you is if those followers see your pins and come to your site. Therefore, I prefer to focus on my traffic from Pinterest rather than number of followers I have.

Second, like most everything else, Pinterest will constantly change. What worked really well a year or two ago may not be as effective today. Whether you like it or not, there’s not really much you can do about it. For example, large group boards used to do really well and these days they don’t at all. This is just something you have to accept and learn to work with. There are also some strategies that tend to be more timeless that you can focus on which I’ll share in the next few paragraphs.

Third, it seems like different people have different advice for how to make the most of Pinterest. Some people say they’re having great success with pinning 100 pins a day while others say that’s way too much and they have great results with 25 pins per day. Some people pin to lots of group boards all the time while others do very little! So how do you know who to listen to? The truth is there’s probably some merit in all these different strategies. Pick the one that resonates the most to you, stick with it for at least 3 months and reevaluate.

Now, let’s talk about what you can do to actually improve your Pinterest traffic:

First and foremost, focus on creating great content and great pin graphics. If you have to choose between spending extra time creating your pin graphics or pinning 100 pins per day, I’d highly recommend pinning less and creating better pins. This will improve your traffic NO MATTER what Pinterest does or how their algorithm changes. I recommend creating tall, vertical graphics and using a compelling headline. It’s worth spending 10-15 minutes coming up with a great headline that will encourage people to click through.

Second, focus on building your own boards rather than pinning a ton to group boards. You have less control over group boards and those followers aren't your followers. It’s fine to pin some to group boards (especially if they are working for you), but don’t neglect your own boards.

Third, less is more! The best thing I did for my Pinterest growth was to focus on ONLY two of my boards. That’s right, in the time that I grew from 10,000 to 20,000 followers in just 3-4 months, I was mostly pinning to just 2 boards. I chose two boards that were closely related to my blog topic and that my own posts could naturally be pinned to. This way I could really strengthen them, grow them, and pin a lot of quality content to those boards.

Fourth, be generous with sharing. I’ve always shared more of other people’s content than my own. Pin a mix of your own content with other great content. I don’t think there’s an exact magic ratio, but right now I’m usually around 70% other people’s content and 30% my own.

Here is a recent scope I did on the topic, too.

What do you think? What strategies have been most effective for you to grow your Pinterest traffic?

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