A Morning With Pinterest

Last Monday was a gloriously sunny morning in Cambridge.

As beautiful as the city is glistening in the sun, it was the plans for the day which had put the spring into my step; a morning date with fellow Cambridge bloggers and Pinterest - who can turn that down?

Lizzie is everything you would expect from Pinterest - cool, easy-going and interesting! The whole meeting flew by, but I continued to pick her brains over lunch.

The real aim of the event (although it was really an excuse to spend an hour or so talking about Pinterest with lovely ladies), was to get hot tips on how to drive more traffic to our blogs by using visual discovery platform, Pinterest.

Twitter, Instagram, Facebook etc are great social media tools to boost blogging recognition, but Pinterest is different - and if you're already on there than you know it's more addictive than those three put together!

We sat back, listened and learned about all the new and exciting ways we can improve our pinning skills to optimize page views. What's wonderful is how simple and effective they are, but things you wouldn't think of doing (unless your Lizzie and a master pinner!). 

So, after giving my Pinterest a bit of a revamp, I've decided on the five best changes to you're Pinterest to help grow your blog!

Convert To Business - the quickest and easiest change you can make is to convert your pinterest into a business account. From this your verified link will show up on your page, you will also be able to see analytics on how you're engaging with your audience (something that's more important than followers), and the page views you're generating via your pinning. 

Tidy up - The first thing I did was to go through my boards and focus on each different aspect of what I've pinned within the board. For example, there was a board I had named 'Beauty/Hairstyle' - from this one board I created six new boards which were stand out aspects I had repeatedly pinned: e.g Red Lips, The Feline Flick, Radiance. Going along and making all boards have a sharp focus is a great place to start!

Be Search Friendly - A point that really stood out to me is making sure that all your boards have search friendly names; think about what you would type in and search for, would you write 'house decor' or 'H. O. M. E.'? This way you're boards will appear more in searches and bring more eyes to your pins.

Be A Helpful Pinner - The main focus for this is to write a detailed description on your blog pins. If you're a fashion blogger then writing how you would style up a piece of clothing featured on your blog would be a quick way to get your ideas out to other pinners and attract them into visiting your blog! By leaving the description blank, you're missing the opportunity to promote your blog and create new traffic. 

Convert To Vertical Images - Scroll down your Pinterest and it wont take you long before noticing the majority of images are elongated, they're easier to scroll through and more visually appealing. Therefore, when pinning from your blog, make sure that you've edited them to be vertical. Something I haven't done in the past, but a must from now on... with a little help from PicMonkey! 

I have noticed a huge rise in activity since implementing these with a few others tips and tricks which shall be to follow - a bit more technical but just as helpful and encouraging to help our blogs evolve! 

If you do fancy having a scroll through mine, it's Crave More Beauty. Leave your Pinterest down in the comments (or join if you're not already on there.... you're missing out on some truly wonderful procrastinating material). 

Happy Pinning!