When it comes to driving traffic to your website, there are literally hundreds of different tactics you can use to get results. Some paid, some free, but all of them have a time, place, and benefit depending upon what your business is and the goal of the traffic.
That said, right now, Pinterest is my current favorite traffic source. Period.
Well, I should say it’s my current favorite ORGANIC traffic source!
I’ll get into ads in another post, because I am currently experimenting with various ad platforms to see what performs best where, but right now, let’s focus on organic.
For me, organic traffic is honestly where it’s at right now, for a few reasons:
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It’s free. Let’s face it, no matter how much money you’re bringing in, free is always better because the lower your business costs, the higher the profit when that revenue hits
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It’s oftentimes more targeted. People click on an article I write because the title sounds interesting to them, which means they actually want to be on my site, which leads me to
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They convert higher. Yes, my ads convert very well, but if I’m being honest, those that land on my site because they found an interesting article tend to want to click through to my opt-ins and offers much more frequently
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The ROI is higher. It doesn’t cost much to put out a ton of written and video content. Especially since the majority of the time, I’m personally writing it myself. Which means, substantially more of the revenue I get from those who go on to convert via organic traffic turns into profit than those hitting me via ads.
Basically, all of that is saying I make more money on my organic traffic, and get leads who want to buy more often that way as well.
Feels like a win-win-win to me!
The Proof
Ok, I could go on to give you a bit of a how-to on what I did to get the results I discussed, but I figure it’s best to show a bit of proof first.
After all, why would you want to listen to me before you have at least something that shows I know what I’m talking about?
You wouldn’t.
I wouldn’t either.
Here is a brief snapshot of my traffic for the month of November, 2018:
I didn’t get started with consistent daily Pinterest activities until October, 2018.
And boy, does it show.
Yes, it does take a month, or at least a few weeks, for results to start showing heavily.
But when they do? Man does it TAKE OFF.
And as long as you stay consistent, your traffic will not only stay consistent, but will increase exponentially each day.
That’s my favorite part of this whole process, if I’m being honest. This is the easiest way that I have found to consistently increase my traffic each and every day.
The Method
So now that you’ve seen some proof that I know what I’m talking about, let’s dive into what I did, and how I did it.
I will say, these results are what I saw when I put in this work.
This may or may not work for you the exact same way, but it’s not hard, and it’s not costly, so the only way to find out is give it a go!
The Content
First and foremost, content is the most important part of this equation.
Without solid content, you can’t implement any of this.
I try to publish often, but there are times (like the holiday season) that it just doesn’t happen.
That’s ok, as long as you get yourself a fairly decent store of content going on your blog.
Keep your content strong, add picture examples where relevant, and get a solid word count going.
Ideally, you’d like at least 20+ pieces on your blog that are solid, on topic, and relevant to your audience.
This will ensure you can cycle through content frequently without posting the same thing twice in a short period of time.
I also try to keep each content piece around 1k words or more.
Obviously there will be times when I don’t get that many words in, and that’s totally ok! As long as I actively try to keep the content solid and on point, that’s what matters.
I also want to make sure that each piece of content gives value to my readers. I don’t want to slap something up to just to have it there. It has to make sense and it has to help them in some way.
The Attention Grab
It’s one thing to put out a solid piece of content.
It’s quite another to use a good title to gain attention to that content.
You can write the best piece ever, but if no one sees it, it doesn’t do you or your audience any good.
So, you need to create a killer title and fantastic promotional images to go with it.
Pinterest is not just a search engine, it’s a very visual search engine.
You absolutely need for your headline and images to be attention grabbing.
For me, personally, I have found Canva to be the best place to get my images. I spent some time digging up the best templates to use for my own personal Pinterest aesthetic and use them in conjunction with stock images that fit my style to create the perfect images for each post.
And if you’re thinking that ‘images’ in the last paragraph was a typo, then boy do I have a surprise for you!
I usually create 4-5 Pinterest images per post (you can’t see them all because they are hidden till you hit that Pin button on the side).
But, creating multiple Pinterest images for each post has drastically increased my real estate per post.
I make sure each image has a different headline and a different feel, all while keeping to my core brand style.
This allows me to not only get more Pins, more views, and more traffic to each post, attracting different audiences with each Pin, without really increasing my workload by a lot.
Here are a few examples of the images that I use:
As you can see, both of these pins lead to the same exact piece of content.
However, they look different enough to appeal to different people who are looking for this type of content.
So, recap. Your images should be:
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Vertical, try 600×900
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Have multiple variations
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Be on brand
The Promotion
Ok, so you have some killer content, you have a great headline, now it’s time to get it out there.
Go you!
I begin promotion by adding my pins, in all of the different styles, to my Pinterest scheduler.
I prefer using Tailwind.
It works really well for me, allows me to easily schedule to lots of boards at once with a click of a button, and it has tribes.
I’ll get more into the benefits of tribes and all that Tailwind has to offer later, but the theory is the same no matter what scheduler you use.
You should have at least 10 boards on your Pinterest account (again, I’ll do an entire rundown on how to set up your Pinterest for success later)
Each one should obviously be different, but you will find that often the content you write will overlap on multiple boards.
This post, for example, will go on my Starting Your Business, Growing Your Business, Social Media Marketing, and Content Marketing boards, for example. Actually, it’ll probably ultimately end up on more boards that than, but you get the idea.
I won’t pin this piece to each of these boards at the same time, I’ll definitely space them out.
I’ll also make sure that I pin each image to each board at a different time. That way each pin hits each board 4-5 times with different images, making it much more likely to be found.
It’s also important that each pin that goes out shows up as a ‘rich pin’
This means that each pin has a great description with important keywords, and a great meta description that leads the reader back to my website for more information.
Getting your information out there as much as possible, as often as possible, drastically increases the likelihood of you being seen.
This amount of pinning, though, can often feel like a LOT of work. And it kind of is.
But something to keep in mind about the beauty of organic/search engine traffic is that once it’s out there, and being found, it will continue to be found and work for you.
Pin it, get it going, and it will keep going.
I have pins from MONTHS ago that are still getting me loads of traffic, and I haven’t really touched them in a long time. It’s great.
The Wrap Up
So, let’s take a brief look at what we talked about.
We now know that by creating not only killer content, but amazing headlines and images to go with it, and putting it all over your Pinterest, you can create a killer organic strategy.
Putting in the work now, and keeping it consistent, will have a huge payoff later on down the road.
It will take some time, this isn’t an overnight thing, but the payoff is absolutely worth it.
