How We Got 5 Million Pageviews On Pinterest With Little Effort

Just last mont I celebrated going semi-viral on Pinterest and reaching 3 million Pinterest views – I felt excited and thrilled to see this kind of growth on my Pinterest profile.
ow, one month later I’m sitting on 5 million Pinterest views and counting. So, how did I achieve this and what’s been the impact of it on my blog? Does reaching 5 million Pinterest view even matter?

To answer that bluntly – no, it doesn’t matter. What matter is how many of those 5 million people actually end up on your blog.
Fortunately for me, those 5 million Pinterest views have translated to over 90,000 monthly pageviews on my blog. Now THAT’s worth something, because I can monetize it.
So, if you’re looking to increase you’re Pinterest pageviews, make sure that they translate to blog pageviews too.

So, How Did I Get 5 Million Pageviews On Pinterest?

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

First and foremost, we have to talk about my content strategy. I switched up my content strategy pretty drastically in the beginning of September. During the summer, I was getting 70% of my traffic from Google, which amounted to 900-1000 daily unique visitors from Google.

However, Google had a major core algorithm update in the beginning of August which hit my site really hard. I’m still not sure why my site was hit, but I lost 50% of my Google traffic and since then I haven’t been able to recover it.

I hired a page speed optimisation specialist in the hopes that he would be able to speed up my site, and I personally went through meticulous steps to try to regain my rankings, but to no avail. What happened instead is that I lost a further 10% of my traffic – right now, it’s sitting at around 400-500 daily visitors from Google.

So, what has this got to do with Pinterest? Well, everything! I saw that my strategy with Google was failing, and it was giving me a lot of stress and anxiety.

Being a full-time blogger and having 50% of your traffic taken away from you for what appeared  to be a completely random reason was incredibly stressful. Fortunately, I didn’t lose any of my income that month, but I knew that I had to find another traffic source for my blog.

I had heard that many bloggers had achieved astronomical growth very quickly with Pinterest, so I knew that it would be the best hope for me to quickly regain my traffic.

Creating The Right Content

My strategy with Google had been to create a lot of very niche posts that would target small keywords and get ranked in Google. I was happy if I got 500 monthly page views on a certain post per month, because I was writing dozens of them. Heck, I even paid writers to write them for me some times.

However, because these posts were so niche specific, they hadn’t achieved great popularity on Pinterest, which is completely understandable. I knew that if I wanted to achieve success on Pinterest, I needed to start writing different content. Content, that would resonate with as many people as possible and get shared loads.

So, instead of going after very niche keywords, I started going after very BROAD keywords. Keywords like “Halloween Makeup” and “Fashion Inspiration” and others that were popular both on Pinterest and in my niches.
To get popular on Pinterest, you’re better off targeting keyword that are ALREADY popular on Pinterest. I’m sure that there are some people out there who have managed to grow a decent income and a decent Pinterest profile from some obscure niches, but that isn’t the norm. Stick to topics that are popular on Pinterest, like recipes, parenting, fashion, DIY and beauty.
Find a couple of bloggers that are already succeeding on Pinterest and copy what they are doing. A quick tip here – check Buzzsumo to see what the most shared articles on Pinterest are from your favourite bloggers, and see if you can write your own version of the article and add more value to it.

I consistently use both Buzzsumo as well as Pinterest and Tailwind in order to find out what content is already popular on the platform, and then create my own articles based on that.

Taking The Pinterest Traffic Avalanche Course 

Okay, so there were a couple of shortcuts that I took when I grew my Pinterest traffic. First and foremost, I signed up to the Pinterest Traffic Avalanche course, which is created by Alex and Lauren from Create and Co. I had previously taken their Six Figure Blogger signature course, which blew my mind, so I knew their Pinterest course had to be good too.

Before taking this course, I had been frantically searching for any articles related to Pinterest marketing, and it came to the point where I was reading contradicting advice from several different blogs. People were writing about their posting schedules and different tips, and often times it was like comparing apples to oranges.

Furthermore, many of the blogs weren’t being 100% transparent in their strategy: often, they were giving very vague advice and I was left feeling that I had just wasted 10 minutes of my time.

So, instead of diving deeper into articles about Pinterest marketing, I set out to read reviews about different Pinterest courses – I wanted to see if they could provide more value than free blog posts.

The answer is yes – it was great to have a blueprint for success from people who actually drive almost half a million monthly pageviews to their blog from Pinterest. There was no questioning what tactics would work and what wouldn’t – these guys had tried it all and were giving me their best advice.

From 1 Million To 2 Million Pinterest Pageviews…

Gaining traffic on Pinterest was just about following their advice down to a tee. And guess what? It worked. My growth didn’t come over night, but you can see from the graph how it’s beginning to work from Mid-September: this is when I had my first pin go viral, and it made my profile explode from 1 million to 2 million Pinterest pageviews in a matter of 3 days!

After that, I continued to use the tactics in Pinterest Traffic Avalanche, and I also added Tailwind Tribes to my repertoire, which further boosted my Pinterest pageviews to 5.7 million! I will talk more about Tailwind Tribes in the next section.

The most important lessons that I learned from Pinterest Traffic Avalanche were to do with strategy and pin design. The ninja secrets were amazing for coming up with new content and Lauren’s tips on pin design were the reason why my pins originally went viral.

So, should you buy this course? Absolutely. If you’re not yet achieving the results that you want with Pinterest, the Pinterest Traffic Avalanche course is an amazing tool to start with. It doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner or an advanced user of Pinterest – if you’re not happy with your results, there’s probably room for improvement. That being said, if you are on track to smashing your Pinterest goals and think you already know everything about Pinterest, this course will be too basic for you.

The only thing that I didn’t like was that the course didn’t lay out any strategy for Tailwind Tribes, which is why I had to do a lot of work trying to figure out the best ways to use the platform. However, everything worked out well for me, and I ended up boosting my Pinterest pageviews to 5.7 million by using my own strategies. (Note: These figures are based on my own results. Have a look at the typical results across all Tailwind members here!)

Use Tailwind Tribes To Grow Your Traffic

As I mentioned, Tailwind Tribes has really been my ultimate secret to reaching 5 million monthly Pinterest views. Although the scheduling side of Tailwind is great by itself, I wouldn’t have achieved the explosive growth that I experienced without Tailwind Tribes. (Note: This is based on my own results. Have a look at the typical results across all Tailwind members here!)

Why are Tribes so powerful? Well, they work like Pinterest group boards were meant to work – they have the potential of putting your content in front of millions of people.

When you share a pin to Tailwind Tribes, you need to share at least one other pin from another member in the Tribe. This way, you’re almost always sure that someone will re-pin your content from Tribes to one of their boards, and from there other users will be able to share and interact with your pin too. It has a compounding effect which can be very powerful if done right.

I have a very aggressive strategy with Tailwind Tribes and I am currently using the Unlimited PowerUp package which let’s me be a part of an unlimited number of tribes and post as many pins to my tribes as I want per day. I also use catchy headlines to create curiosity in people, and design beautiful pins in Canva which look professional, so that users are more likely to click over to my blog.

Keyword Your Pins And Boards Properly

 

Proper Pinterest SEO is a must if you are serious about achieving long-term traffic from Pinterest. Remember, Pinterest is a search engine first and foremost, and not a social media platform. Treat it as such!

You want to make your pins as easily discoverable as possible by using keywords on both your boards and image captions.

Use Catchy Headlines To Create Curiosity

This one is a big one. You need to give Pinterest users a reason to click away from your site and head over to yours. Lame headlines just won’t do the trick, and people are more likely to scroll past your images.

My two favourite ways of creating catchy headlines is by 1) creating numbered lists and 2) including “How To” somewhere in the title. Readers love these. Headlines that include lists, such as ” 5 Ways To Explode Your Blog Traffic” are my favourite, because I know that they’ll be a relatively quick read – I can just skim through them and if I don’t like what I see, I can click away.

Also, make sure to add intriguing adjectives into the title that evoke emotion, such as best, incredible, ultimate, mouth-watering, etc. Here’s a list of 300+ more powerful words to use in your titles.

Use Tailwind To Schedule Your Pins

I’m sure that you’ve read this everywhere – you need Tailwind to grow your Pinterest traffic. Well, you don’t necessarily need it, but it makes things a heck of a lot easier. My audience lives mostly in the US, whereas I live in the UK, which means that the peak times for me to post pins to Pinterest would be from 1 am to 5 am. I’m never going stay awake just to manually pin to Pinterest at this time, so I need Tailwind in my life.

My blog traffic also hugely increased after I started implementing my exact Tailwind strategy. I go through my entire Tailwind strategy in Explosive Traffic With Tribes by using the Tailwind Plus Plan and you can get a free month of Tailwind to try for yourself by clicking here

Tailwind let’s you schedule all of your pins in a matter of minutes, which is a huge time saver. It also schedules all of your pins at the optimal times, which makes a huge difference to your Pinterest profile growth.

P.S. Don’t Forget About Design

Of course, you need to create amazing pins that make readers want to click over to your blog too, but I’m sure we all already knew that, right? Canva is my absolute favorite place to create pins, and it’s free too!

The best pins have a ratio of 600:900 (long vertical) and pins with a clearly legible title in the image work best. So, forget about using fancy fonts that are barely readable on your pins. Yes, using them to highlight a word or two is fine, but you should be able to see the most important words in the pin in a matter of a millisecond – that’s how long you have when people are scrolling through their Pinterest feeds.

Better yet, highlight the most important words in a contrasting color to the background to bring it to the forefront of the pin!

But Most Importantly…

There’s one thing that I left unmentioned in my list and that is….*drumroll please* patience.

Patience, patience, patience. It would be impossible to become a successful blogger if you didn’t have enough patience. Granted, it took me only 2 months to go from 1 million Pinterest views/mo to 5 million Pinterest views/mo, but before that it took me almost a year to get to 1 million Pinterest views!

So, if things are taking a bit longer than you wanted them to, remember to be kind to yourself. Work hard and focus on creating content that resonates with your audience, but remember that everything takes time.

Which Of The Techniques Works Best? 

There’s no way of saying that one technique is better than the other, because they all work in harmony. However, I have to say that I gained the biggest impact with Tailwind Tribes – they were hands down the main reason why my Pinterest traffic exploded.

I had been following all the other tips that I mentioned here for a loooooong time, so I can be sure when I say that I changed nothing else in my Pinterest strategy when traffic started to really take off for me.

I always thought that I needed more Pinterest followers to gain substantial traffic to my blog – the biggest bloggers out there had hundreds of thousands of Pinterest followers, so no wonder that they were getting hundreds of thousands of visitors to their blogs, right?

However, I quickly realized that with Tailwind Tribes, I didn’t need to gain a huge audience before I was able to put my content in front of a lot of people – with the help of other people spreading your content, it didn’t really matter how small my account was.

If a pin got picked up by a ‘power pinner’ (aka someone who has a lot of influencers and followers on Pinterest), my pin would be successful and attract a lot of views!

*Pin it*