7 Surefire Ways To Get Pinterest Followers With Little Effort

Pinterest is a great tool to use to generate more traffic to your blog, more email subscribers and more sales. If you’re reading this post, I’m sure you know this already!

And let me guess, here’s what you might be thinking: “If only I had more followers on Pinterest, I’d get more traffic, make more sales and more money!” 

Well, the truth is, this isn’t necessarily true. Nowadays, Pinterest followers aren’t nearly as important as they used to be.

Nowadays, Pinterest operates more like a search engine. They still have some elements of social media platforms (the followers + the ability to leave comments), but in general, they operate more like Youtube and Google, rather than Facebook and Instagram.

Think about it: how often have you been on Youtube and seen a completely random channel/video recommended to you that you’ve never even heard of before? This happens to me all the time. I’m not a follower of those channels, but based on what I’ve watched before, Youtube knows what to recommend to me and what I might be interested in.

It’s the same with Pinterest.

Rather than showing people content from accounts that they’re following, Pinterest will show them content that is related to their previous searches, because that’s most likely what they’ll enjoy.

And when your content gets recommended and seen by people enough, that’s when you also start gaining followers.

 

 

So, instead of asking “How can I get more followers on Pinterest?” , the better question to ask is “How do I get my content seen by more people?”

The more people who see your content => the more followers you’ll have.

As you can see, if you focus on bettering your Pinterest marketing strategy as a whole, you’ll also get more Pinterest followers.

So, with this in mind,  I’ll share with you my 7 best secrets that I used to get 15,000 Pinterest followers with little effort and simultaneously increased my blog traffic and my sales!

(Note: These figures are based on my own results. Have a look at the typical Pinterest/Tailwind results across all Tailwind members here!)

 

1. Pin At The Best Time For Your Audience (with Tailwind!)

 

This one is HUGE! I didn’t realise this before I changed my pinning schedule, but I was actually sabotaging my Pinterest growth by pinning at the completely wrong times. After I switched my pinning schedule, my Pinterest followers went from 1,000 to now 15,000+.

So when is the right time to pin? 

Well, this depends completely on where your audience and you live. Personally speaking, I live in the UK and most of my audience lives in the US. I had read online that the best times to pin were after work, around lunch time and 10-12 am, but I had never taken into account that these times are completely different for everyone depending on where they live in the world.

So, after I analysed my audience on Tailwind, I found out that the majority of my audience resided in LA and NYC, which meant that the best time for me to pin was in fact between 11 pm and 5 am! 

In NYC, this time is between 6 pm – midnight, which is essentially when people get back from work. It makes sense!

BUT because I was based in London, I thought that I needed to schedule my content at London times as well. Big mistake.

So, if you’re struggling to get engagement and followers on your Pinterest, check that you’re posting during the right times  for your audience. If you’re not sure how to do that, sign up for Tailwind (they offer a free 30 day trial!) and Tailwind’s Smart Scheduling tool will let you know.

Here’s how to set it up:

1. Navigate to Publisher-> Scheduled Pins in the left menu.
2. Click on Add/Remove Time Slots
3. Now, click Recreate Schedule under General Queue.

 

 

2. Pin Consistently

 

Another reason why Tailwind has played such a huge part in the growth of my followers is because it’s made my pinning consistent. I now pin 30 pins per day during my optimal times with the Tailwind Smart Scheduler.

Pinterest is all about consistency. Whether you pin pins 5 times a day or 30 times a day, it’s more about the consistency of your pinning patterns rather than the amount of pins that you put out to the platform.

So, whether or not you use or plan to use Tailwind, this is SUPER important! Take a look at how much content you have on your blog and then decide how many pins your going to post per day. It can be anywhere from 5-30 pins per day, as long as you can keep doing it consistently.

Once you’ve picked your schedule, don’t deviate from it. If you have absolutely nothing to pin during certain times, just pin content from other bloggers or retailers. As long as you keep your schedule consistent, Pinterest will reward you!

 

3. Master Pinterest SEO

 

It’s a common misconception that Pinterest is a social media. Actually, Pinterest is NOT  a social media: it’s a search engine.

And what this means is that you should treat it as one. Make your profile, boards and pins easily searchable by using keywords and hashtags that your audience is likely to type on the search bar on Pinterest.

Also, when you are creating new content and new pins, check that there is ACTUALLY demand for these keywords. If you focus on creating problem solving content for your audience, you’ll soon find that your content is getting more clicks and your profile more followers!

Here’s a snippet of the keywords that I’ve included on my profile:

 

 

Want to learn the ins and outs of Pinterest SEO? Head over to How To Master Pinterest SEO & Rank 1st Even As A New Blogger for a full deep-dive into Pinterest SEO!

 

4. Ask People To Follow Your Pinterest On Your Blog, Social Media + Email

 

Sounds simple, right? Well, sometimes common sense isn’t common practice!

The more you ask people to follow you on Pinterest, whether that be on your other social media profiles, your blog or your email, the more people will ACTUALLY take the time to follow you!

This trick is as simple as including a simple call to action at the end of your blog posts, such as: “Make sure to follow me on Pinterest for more awesome content like this!”. 

You can also include a link to your Pinterest profile in the footer of your email and include social sharing icons in the sidebar or menu of your blog, like these:

 

 

This will make it easier for people to find your Pinterest profile too!

 

5. Join Tailwind Tribes To Promote Your Content

 

Tailwind Tribes is the secret behind my success in blogging. For me, it was a total game changer.

I went from getting 50,000 pageviews on my blog to 90,000 pageviews in a matter of MONTHS.

Not only did my Pinterest followers increase dramatically, my blogging income did as well! Now, I earn anywhere from $3,000-$4,800 blogging every month, mainly thanks to Tailwind Tribes.

So, what are Tailwind Tribes exactly?

Tailwind Tribes are often quoted as the better version of Pinterest group boards and the main benefit of them is getting your content shared by people who ALREADY have thousands of followers. This means that even if you’re a new blogger, your content could reach MILLIONS of people with the help of other Pinterest users.

Here’s how many people have seen my content on Pinterest JUST because of Tribes:

Like I said, total game changer. 

 

6. Niche Down Your Boards (Clean Them Up Without Deleting Pins!)

 

Another great way of increasing your exposure on Pinterest is to niche down your boards. The more specific your boards are, the better.

Again, this all boils down to Pinterest wanting to appear more like a search engine than a social media platform. Pinterest wants to serve it’s customers the best way that it can, and the easiest way to do that is to show them exactly the content that they’re looking for.

The more niched down your boards are, the clearer the message is to Pinterest. So, instead of having a general board called Women’s Fashion, create multiple boards with more specifically keyworded titles, such as “Winter Fashion”, “Fall Fashion”, “Spring Fashion”, “Summer Fashion”, etc.

If you have many general boards, think about what different sub categories you can divide them to and then create new boards with those titles.

That’s exactly what I did with my Pinterest boards and it had a massive impact on my Pinterest growth. In fact, when I analyze my boards on Tailwind, I can see that my most popular boards are personal boards that are niched down.

All of my most popular boards are PERSONAL boards within smaller niches and NOT big group boards that are more general.

Because these boards are well keyworded and represent small niches, the pins from these boards appear higher on search results and ACTUALLY reach people on a consistent, long-term basis.

So, instead of focusing on applying to group boards that have 100k+ followers, focus on building up your own boards with better Pinterest SEO. I promise that you’ll see results quicker this way!

 

7. Create New Pins Consistently

 

Last but not least, you want to make sure that you’re creating new pins all the time. You should already have a schedule that you follow for creating new blog posts and you want to make sure that every time that you create a new blog post you also create some pins to go along with it.

Usually, I create at least 2 pins per article, but sometimes I like to go a bit extra and create 6 for a single blog post in one go. There really is no downside to doing this, as later on you’ll have more data to analyse and see what types of pins perform the best.

Also, you want to make sure that you’re creating new pins for your old content. Sometimes, it’s more cost-effective to spend 20 minutes coming up with new pins than it is to write a new blog post.

The key to remember here is to focus on creating new pins for old content that is already popular. For example, focus on creating new pins for your top10 blog posts FIRST and then move on to creating pins for other blog posts. This way, you’ll maximise your blog traffic and get more followers on Pinterest.

 

*Final Thoughts*

 

So, there you have it! These are my top tips to get Pinterest followers FAST. If you copy these tactics, I’m sure that you will see a massive improvement not only in the number of followers that you have but also in the blog traffic that you’re getting and the amount of money that you make blogging.

Currently, I get just over 1,000+ new followers on my profile every single month, thanks to the tips that I’ve just mentioned.

 

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