Learn how to create and merge the perfect pinterest page to your blog to make it easier for people to find and follow you!
Pinterest is my best blogging tool. At the moment it brings in half of my daily traffic, since my blog is considered a baby (Sweet Tea & Thyme is about 3-4 months in at the time of writing this, but I’ve been blogging on and off for 4 years). It’s is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to blogging, especially food blogging. The beautiful photos that show off your French Toast or your Carnitas are bedazzled, glamorized, with it’s name in curly letters and your brand there for everyone across the globe to see.
By the way, are we Pinterest friends yet? If not, we should be. I have cookies.
I’d like to think of this post as a Pinterest/Blogging newbie guide to help start your beautiful, beautiful blogging career.
Unlike your blog or facebook page, when you post on Pinterest, the entire world will see your pins quickly and easily, hundred of thousands of potential readers will have eyes on your photos.
These are my last month’s (June 21-July 21) stats after creating a Pinterest account to go along with my blog in late April this year (2016), so about three month’s worth of work. *Pats self on the back a little*
So how to you get hundreds of thousands of eyes on your Pinterest profile? It comes down to a few simple things:
A few tricks on pinning, making your profile easy for the pinners to maneuver, and networking. Like, a lot of networking.
Let’s Get Started!
Eye Catching Pins
Everyone knows the ole “make long, vertical pins!’ trick. Your pin will be lost amongst the other thousands of vertical pins, because everyone knows about it. So how do you make your pins pop? I talk about it more in my upcoming post MAKE THE PERFECT PIN, but it’s all about giving your pin a feeling, with alluring colors that compliment the photos and really kind of guiding your viewer to say, “Hey that looks scrumptious for dinner tonight/my friend’s party/the next holiday.” and clicking on it.
Beautiful Photography
Pinterest and your food blog have something in common: the need for mouth-wateringly beautiful food photos. If you have a chocolate cake that you can barely see because of lighting, it will be looked over for the beautiful chocolate cake a fellow blogger has posted next to you with the bright lighting and great editing.
Learn how to take at least semi-good shots of food and edit them, and constantly practice to get better; those skills are worth their photo-shooting weight in gold.
Rich Pinning
You absolutely need to rich pin!
What’s rich pinning? As a business-profiled Pinner (as a blogger, do sign up for a business Pinterest account! It’s free), you can set up Rich Pin for all of the pins you create from your food blog. You also need to verify your blog’s website on your Pinterest profile. These things will index your recipe to Pinterest, add your logo and blog’s name, the ingredients and time to make, and a link to your blog and a button for them to click to follow you. It’s all about making it easier for the reader, and making it easy for them to come to your site.
This rich pin of my SUMMER PEACH CRISP shows what I mean.
Group Boards
They are 100% needed to expand. Big bloggers and small bloggers will repin your pins and their followers will repin and so on. I get so many visuals thanks to group boards.
Pinning Other Pinners’ Pins
Yes, you need to repin other blogger’s pins. No, it isn’t a competition; there’s enough room for everyone and you are both pretty, y’all. Most of my pins are other pinner’s pins, mostly other food bloggers that I know and other rich pins from those I don’t.
It will put your boards, and therefore your pinterest profile, out there so people may repin that pin, but they will follow you. And since they’ll be followers, they’ll see when your repin your recipes 7,000 times to your group boards and personal boards.
Alrighty, now that we know about the pins on your profile, let’s talk about your profile itself.
Your Profile
Your profile should have your blog’s name, a picture of you or your logo, a little bio of your brand, and your website somewhere on there.
Your Profile Picture should show your personality, be well lit, and clear. Same for your logo.
Your bio should be quick, be friendly, and say your blog’s name and message in there.
Got that? Good, now let’s work on the boards on your profile.
Your Boards
Your board’s names, their content, and their placement on your profile is pretty important.
Board names will tell your pinners what is in each board, and when it comes to placing those boards you have to be smart about it. It’s August so my summer-esque boards are at the top of my page, right after my blog’s specific board. Because, ya know, you wanna make sure they see your blog’s stuff first.
Because…ego, I guess.
I like to try to organize the rest of my boards from what I consider most popular to stuff the average pinner who is new to my profile probably won’t care about. It’s making it easier for the pinner to see something they want without spending a lot of time digging or looking for something; if they aren’t a follower of yours or you aren’t a big blogger, they probably won’t consider it worth their time. So make it easier for them so that it is easier for you.
Now that your boards are nice and organized, your profile is prettied up, and your pins are as rich as cheesecake, let’s go on with merging Pinterest and your blog.
On Your Blog
You want to give your reader who may not have found you on Pinterest to have a chance to see and follow your Pinterest profile. If they are one of the millions of Pinterest users across the world, and came to your blog (food-related or otherwise) they will probably follow you. And we want to make that as easy for them as possible!
Pinterest widgets and buttons
On Pinterest you can create a widget which you place into your sidebar, or wherever, with its tag. You can set it up to show only your blog’s pin board or all the pins you have. It’s a pretty flexible widget builder.
The buttons can be made on Pinterest, as a widget on your blog, or as a hover button, which you can find as a plugin on WordPress or on the widget builder on Pinterest.
I use the PINTEREST PIN IT BUTTON ON IMAGE HOVER AND IN POST plugin by Weblizar, which automatically gives a hover Pin to any image over 120 px on each post. Love it.
I also have a picture I created on Picmonkey in my posts recently, that’s linked to my pinterest account. I love it because it shows off a little more of my corny personality each season/month/holiday I choose.
Meet July’s pin picture. Isn’t it cute? And totally clickable!
Networking
Okay, so you are probably shaking your head like, “Britt, how am I supposed to network on a website that is completely visual?” Don’t worry, it’s simple: comment, like, repin, follow and join group boards. That’s it. You build your boards, follow other pinners in your niche, comment on pins you genuinely like, like them, share them.
And followers will come.
If you want to learn how to gain 300 Pinterest followers in a week, that’s coming up soon in my Blogger Resources.
I hope you found this little ‘intro’ into using Pinterest to benefit your blog useful, I tried to incorporate as much info as I could without sounding redundant, since so many people have given information on blogging and Pinterest.
Stay tuned for more Pinterest-Blogging info or check out my BLOGGER RESOURCES page for more useful information on how to start a blog, make it successful, and get your brand known.
Eden Westbrook is the recipe developer, writer, and photographer behind Sweet Tea and Thyme. A classically trained chef, Eden has inspired home cooks into the kitchen with cultural comfort foods, easy family-friendly eats and sweets, and glorious spreads for date night and entertaining since 2015.
Great post – I especially like your clickable, seasonal embedded picture! Such a cute and easy idea!
Thank you! They are so much fun to make and so personable, you know?
Thanks for stopping by, Liz!