The response to last week’s How to Grow Your Food Blog – Part 1 was awesome! I’m so happy that you guys found the information useful, and Thank You for all the feedback! I hope that this one is even more useful to you, and that you learn something new that you can apply to your blogging.

This week I’m going to talk all about Pinterest and how I made it my #1 source of referral traffic, but first, a funny story. I was on my computer the other night (as usual) and Ryan asked me what I was doing. “I’m Yum’ing stuff for people,” I said. “I probably have 60 more recipes to get through.” This was for one of the Facebook group sharing posts that I talked about last week. His response: “It’s awesome, blogging is like 5% baking, 5% writing, 15% photos, and 75% social media.” Though that may be a bit exaggerated, it’s not actually that far off. I spend a ridiculous amount of time promoting not only my content, but the content of other bloggers as well. I don’t mind it (most of the time), but it can get tedious. I’m going to look into a couple of social media scheduling tools to help with this.

Ok, let’s talk about Pinterest. I am still learning new things very day, but these are some tips I wish I had known about when I was starting out.

Pinterest is easily my greatest source of traffic, but it wasn’t always this way. I actually used Pinterest very little in the beginning, and didn’t see much referral traffic at all. A few key elements helped me change that.

[1] Tailwind

Tailwind is scheduling software for your pins.

The tool has algorithms that analyze your Pinterest profile to determine the best times to pin content for the greatest engagement. The ability to schedule pins out over the course of the day means that you’re always active on Pinterest without having to sit beside your computer. I was never a huge Pinterest user. I’d go on there maybe 20mins at a stretch a couple of times a week, at best. Now I still do that, but instead of pinning everything at once, I schedule my pins on Tailwind and have them staggered throughout the day/week. This means they get pinned at optimal times, not at 11pm when I happen to be on there but no one else is.

Not only that, but Tailwind is a huge help when it comes to pinning my own content to various Pinterest group boards (more on that in the next point). In my opinion, Tailwind and group boards go hand in hand. In order to maximize your exposure, you obviously want to pin YOUR content to these group boards, as this is one of the greatest marketing tools for your blog. Naturally, you don’t want to pin only your content though, so don’t forget to pin things from other great bloggers. Once I started using Tailwind, I saw a dramatic increase in my traffic from Pinterest.

I signed up with Tailwind on April 10th, 2015. If you compare the Pinterest referral traffic from March to April, you can see a significant jump, even though it was already a week and a half into April when I started using it. The Pinterest numbers for July are even more impressive. Now, I don’t equate this all to Tailwind, but it has definitely had a huge impact, and I’m so glad to be using it.

They have a great free trial where you can schedule up to 100 pins and see how you like it. After that trial I was sold and signed up for a year. It’s $10US per month after that if you sign up for a year, but it’s well worth the money in my opinion.

[2] Group Boards

Group boards on Pinterest are boards that multiple users can pin to. They’re identified by the little people icon in the top right of the board. Any board that has more than one contributor will show this icon. Some group boards are huge and have hundreds of thousands of followers, which could mean great exposure for your content!

The best thing to do is to try to get invited into some high quality, high profile group boards. This is not the easiest thing to do. First, you have to find these group boards. A good tip is to check out the Pinterest accounts of some popular bloggers. You’ll be able to see which group boards they belong to. You can see mine here. You can also check out something like PinGroupie which has a list of group boards that you can filter and search through. I’d recommend starting with boards from people you know though – that way you know they’re active and legitimate.

So, you’ve found a bunch of group boards… now how do you get invited?? First and foremost, read the description of the group board. Are they accepting new members? If so, how do you ask to join?

Assuming they are accepting members and there are instructions on how to join, the first thing you need to do is follow the Pinterest profile of the owner of that group board, since they’re the person you’ll need to contact for an invite. The owner is always the first person listed in the members list.

Sometimes the how-to-join is clear and easy. I’ve had most success with the ones that leave an email address to inquire about joining. If there are no instructions, you can ask to join by commenting on one of the board owner’s pins. I look for a non-group board on their page and look for a recent pin, then comment on it asking to join and leaving the email address associated with my Pinterest account. More often than not, I get no response. But then there are times that I do, and that’s awesome. I currently belong to about 20 group boards, and am not actively seeking to join more. 20 is more that enough to share your pins on.

When you join a group board, make sure to follow the rules!!

This is key, or you could get kicked out, and nobody wants that. Follow the rules, post your content and also repin others’ pins from that board, and stagger your posts (using Tailwind).

[3] Long Pins

Long Pins on Pinterest are collages of images from your blog post, along with text indicating what the recipe is.

Long pins take up more real estate in Pinterest and help your recipes get noticed. Some people hate them, but the reality is that they’re proven to drive more traffic to your site. So if you’re a blogger, you should be using them!

If you’re vehemently opposed to them, at the very least, use vertical pictures in your posts. Horizontal pins are so small they’ll never get noticed!

Look at that poor Oatmeal Banana Bread and those Cliff Bars lost in a sea of vertical pins.

It’s actually very simple to create these long pin collages. I use PicMonkey, which is free photo editing software, but you could use Photoshop or even Keynote. I’ll write a separate tutorial post on how to do this soon, but it’s really very easy!

[4] Board for Your Blog

The first board on your Pinterest page should be one that has pins directly from your blog.

This helps ensure that any visitors to your page know exactly where your content is and can search through the pins rather than your website. As soon as I publish a post, I pin it to this board.

[5] Pinterest Business Account and Rich Pins

Finally, if you have a food blog, it’s really easy to convert your regular Pinterest account to a Business account. You can do so here. Once you have that set up, I strongly recommend applying to get Rich Pins.

Rich Pins are pins that include extra information right on the pin. In the photo above, the Watermelon Breeze is a Rich Pin, while the cronuts are not. There are various types of Rich Pins on Pinterest, and the ones for recipes will show the name of your blog, your favicon, and a list of ingredients when you click to expand the pin.

Again, this helps your pins stand out more and (to me) it makes them look more legitimate.

I hope that these tips, combined with last weeks tips on How to Grow Your Food Blog have been helpful. If your goal is to get as much exposure as possible for your recipes (and really, why wouldn’t it be?) you need to spend a lot of time on social media promoting yourself. How else is your stuff going to get out there??

Another critical element to help ensure success across all of these platforms is food photography. But that’s another post… coming soon!