Growing my Pinterest account has been straight up delightful. For years I’ve been on other social platforms trying to grow with mixed results at best. I just grew frustrated at the tactics for growth that were always changing. I’m sharing the free manual Pinterest strategy that started making positive changed to my account with you today!

I met other creatives that told me that Pinterest wasn’t frustrating and worth the investment. I’m so glad I listened because it’s true!

Why use Pinterest

Pinterest has been driving consistent traffic to my website for months and now is the biggest driver of traffic to my site. It is also a visual platform but acts like a search engine. It’s taught me a lot more about Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

Some of the frustration I have as an image creator is that once I create something, I feel that my reach was pretty limited to the social platforms I had.  It would remain limited unless I wanted to join the paid marketing arena.

In less than three months, I was able to expand my reach to over 1 million monthly viewers. 

Yay! Finally, I had a win under my marketing belt when I felt like I was sputtering along the struggle bus. These aren’t my current numbers and that’s okay. I’m learning more about the platform by playing with it and seeing what it likes and it doesn’t like. Isn’t that really how we learn about something?!

In full disclosure, I use a scheduler now so things are a bit more automated, but today I want to discuss the plan I had in place before I decided that it was worth the investment. All the tips don’t cost anything except your time to implement them and see if the changes you see and track are worth investing into a more automated system. Onwards with the manual pinning strategy!

Pre-tip

Sign up for Google Analytics. Linking this to your website will tell you where all your sources of traffic are coming from. (Social media platforms, organic search, referral traffic, etc.) If we’re being honest here, I became obsessed with data and numbers during the trial and error process. How do I grow?

There are quite a few steps, and I didn’t do all these tips all at once. I did them over time in chunks so it wouldn’t feel completely overwhelming.

Tip #1 – Sign up for a Pinterest business account.

It’ll signal to Pinterest that you’re not just there for recipes or party planning. You’re there to share content and want some eyeballs on your pins!

Tip #2 – Claim your website to your account 

These will improve your analytics and when you have pins repinned from other users.

 

Tip #3 – Throw in those keywords

In your profile, in your pin, in your board, basically ANYWHERE where you can put a keyword that makes sense! I’ve even seen people put keywords in their names.

All platforms like new material. From you or from others. It keeps the content train moving and you get to connect with other like-minded creatives and hopefully build positive relationships! It’s a win for everyone!

 

Tip #5 – Manually pin 15-20 pins a day

Watch what happens to your numbers. Pin your images with keywords so you can be found. Follow your analytics. Are people liking your content? In other words, are your pins being saved, repinned, or click on?

Troubleshooting

If you’re not getting traction I would start asking myself why? Common reasons why content is not getting the attention you want:

• The photos are not grabbing people’s attention – I can help with this!! Hit ‘Contact’ to shoot me a message and we’ll work on this together!
• The people you reached aren’t interested in your topic  – You want to reevaluate your audience + keywords and try again! I don’t always get things right out of the gate. A lot of the time I have to play around with different words to see what’s showing the kind of results I want!

After doing this manually for a while, I decided to invest in a scheduler. The schedule is helpful but it’s not magic. You still have to do your own keywords, content, and audience research!

Yup! If you’re on Instagram and you love a tag, it has a good chance of carrying over! Do a little search and see what the tags you’re thinking about look like and it that aligns with your audience!

My goal is to help other business owners grow their business. There are no affiliate links here. Just one business owner helping others out! Pinterest has been a powerful tool for me to increase my brand awareness by having my work reach more people, increase my website traffic, and ultimately increasing inquiries and clients! I hope this free Pinterest strategy works for you too!

Next Steps

If this free Pinterest strategy did work, and you’d like to know more about how to automate some of this process above, (so you can have more time to work on your business rather than in it)  sign up for my FREE PDF. I share my automation tips using Tailwind and the next steps in growing a Pinterest account!

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