A while back, I mentioned a few ideas for future blog posts that I thought you guys might be interested in. One of the ideas that got the most requests is one on how to increase your Pinterest traffic. I’m not exaggerating at all when I say that Pinterest brings in the vast majority of my site’s traffic and I love seeing my recipes, workouts, and general posts being shared and read!
Here are some of the major ways I’ve been able to increase my traffic from Pinterest and gain page views, readers, and self-confidence as a blogger. After all, I don’t think many of us can deny that seeing that our content is being read and enjoyed is a huge self-confidence booster.!
1. Improve Your Photography and Graphic Images
This is by far my number one tip on how to increase your Pinterest traffic. Almost 90% of the people who get sent my way from the site come from pictures of my recipes and this correlated DIRECTLY to me improving my food photography. After I gained some experience with my camera and learned how just the most simple and subtle differences in lighting/composition can make all the difference, I started getting accepted on to food spotlight sites like Foodgawker, Tastespotting, Tasteologie, Healthy Aperture, etc and visitors started to pour in.
Not only was it an added bonus to get thousands of unique visitors directly from those sites, but many of the people who found their way over to Apple of My Eye pinned the recipes and also explored around, leading them to pinning workouts or quick tips like my post on How to Lighten Up Your Starbucks Beverage (which consistently brings in a solid stream of visitors everyday, even though I published it over 3 months ago).
Looking back to my early days blogging about the food I ate, I feel a little embarrassed about the photo quality. Honestly, when I read my posts from just a half year ago I can’t help but wonder, “what was I thinking taking a picture of all those mushy granola fruit salads”? Yes, it tasted delicious, but for the people reading my blog, it probably looked revolting! After all, you eat with your eyes first. Luckily, I think my skill with a camera has increased a bit since then!
In the future, I’m thinking about writing a post on how I step-by-step take my pictures/edit them, but for now, I cannot recommend Lindsay’s Tasty Food Photography eBook enough(<— affiliate link!).
I bought it a while back and after reading it and practicing some of her easily explained concepts, I almost instantly started getting accepted into the Food Submission sites I mentioned above.
I literally did a happy dance when my Healthier Cinnamon Roll Scones appeared on the site and later, when my Healthy Skillet Lasagna was accepted, it ended up being one of the most popular recipes on Foodgawker for a month and was pinned almost 13,400 times! That certain recipe brings in hundreds of visitors a day and, without improving my photography, it would probably have just been lost in my archives- even if it tasted just as delicious!
I really, really can’t stress how much your photography matters when it comes to increasing your audience and traffic!
You can read a more throughout review of Lindsay’s eBook on my giveaway post for it. (Her posts on the income of her food blog is also such an interesting read, they’ve been posting income reports for the past few years and have built their blog up from making only a few dollars a month to over $15k. Fascinating!)
2. Design your images so they’re easily noticed by the people scrolling down Pinterest. If you’ve been reading Apple of My Eye for a while, you might have noticed that I usually post a picture that has a few images in a vertical collage with a few eye-catching keywords. This gives me an advantage on the site because they take up more room on Pinterest and are therefore more likely to be noticed by those scrolling by.
To make my images, I go to picmonkey (it’s free!), click on the “Make Collage” button, choose “Ducks in a Row”, rotate it so it’s vertical, and get to work putting a few of my images and text on it. Super simple, but it makes a big difference!
3. Don’t be afraid to ask your readers and fellow bloggers to pin your images if they find them tasty or helpful! Social networking is such a powerful tool and great way to connect and help each other grow our sites and get to know each other.
In fact, if you find this post helpful and don’t mind, I would really appreciate it if you could pin a recipe or workout (or two 😉 ).
If you’d like to be friends on the site, here’s my Pinterest account! (shameless self-promotion). Follow me and I’ll follow you back!
4. Another great way to increase your Pinterest traffic is to pin pictures to your site at optimal times. Here’s a chart I found that shows when most people are pinning away!
5. Joining group boards (where multiple members of Pinterest can pin) is a great way to expose your site and reach a wider audience of people.
I was thinking of creating a group board where us bloggers could all pin together. Let me know if you’d be interested in joining the group!
So there you have it! I really hope this quick guide helped give you guys a starting idea on how to increase your traffic from Pinterest. It’s SUCH a great tool and viral pins can bring in tens of thousands of page views a day. In my opinion, Pinterest is the #1 best, fastest, and easiest way to grow your blog and I have to give most of my quantitative success as a healthy food/lifestyle blogger to it.
Let me know if you have any questions!