I am extremely excited to be bringing you a guest post today from the lovely Jo Linsdell, a book blogger living in Rome. She is an author, blogger, book reviewer, artist event organiser and a mother! Phew that is a lot of hats to wear but she seems to manage it very well! I met Jo through twitter and have found her to be a fantastic person to know in the blogging world. She is a very active blogger and is always happy to share your work or work alongside people to help boost their blog activity.
Today she is sharing with us her knowledge of Pinterest and how to use it as a blogger to increase your traffic. I for one am excited to learn more tips about how to use this particular form of social media.
I hope you enjoy this post today!
Guest post by Jo Linsdell
Pinterest Tips for Book Bloggers
How To Use Pinterest To Drive Traffic to Your Book Blog
Pinterest can be a traffic powerhouse for book bloggers, but you need to understand how the site works in order to get results.
I am, by far, not an expert on Pinterest, and I’m constantly learning ways to improve how I use the site. These are some of the things I’ve learnt since I started out on Pinterest though and I hope you will find them useful for leveraging your own content on the site.
Why Pinterest?
The good news is that pins have a much longer lifespan than posts to social media platforms. On social media you need to constantly be putting out fresh content as posts to Facebook, Twitter, etc… have a short lifespan. On Pinterest, your pins can be discovered months or even years later.
Getting started
Before we drive into the more detailed aspects of pinning make sure you have a Pinterest Business account. It’s completely free and will give you access to analytics on your pins and the ability to run ads.
Now you’re properly set up let’s take a closer look into the more technical aspects of using Pinterest.
SEO on Pinterest
SEO applies to all search engines, not just Google, and that means it’s super important on Pinterest. Yep, Pinterest is a search engine.
SEO is all about making sure your content reaches your target audience. Pinterest is a visual search engine which means it’s important that you make it clear what the content is about. Your basic Pinterest SEO strategy is therefore to make sure Pinterest understands what your pin is about by including relevant keywords.
Where your content gets seen
The smart feed is the pins you see when logging in to Pinterest. These are based on the boards you’ve recently pinned to, your favourite topics and pins you’ve engaged with recently.
The following tab is where you only see content from accounts you’re following. I suggest following other book bloggers so you can see what pins they are creating and become a more active member of the book blogging community on Pinterest.
Whenever your potential readers search for something on Pinterest, you want your pins to show up in the search results so they click on your pins and visit your blog. As with any other search engine, Pinterest uses an algorithm to rank search results. They take into account lots of different factors, some of which we may never know. The four main points to keep in mind though are:
1. Domain quality.
2. Pin quality
3. Pinner quality
4. Keywords
Much like Google, Pinterest wants to give priority to quality content. They look at how popular pins from your website are and how much engagement they get.
They also rate you as a pinner so if you’re creating popular pins you’ll do better in their algorithm. They don’t just look at the pins you create though. They also take into account the content you pin from others too. So make sure you pin quality content consistently for better results.
Make sure you’re using keywords in your pin titles and descriptions to help your content show up in the search results.
Hashtags are relatively new on Pinterest. When you publish new pins, use 2-5 relevant hashtags to the end of each pin description. Also try using your blog name as a hashtag as it will help users find more of your most recent content more easily.
Pinterest boards.
Make sure you create boards to cover all your blog categories and sub-topics. You may want to consider creating different levels of boards e.g. “Book Blogging” or “Book Blogging for Beginners”, and more specific long-tail keyword boards like “Book Blogging Ideas: Not Just Book Reviews”.
Create multiple pins for the same content and pin to different boards. This is a great way of putting new life into older content too as Pinterest loves fresh content. It also gives you the chance to experiment with different styles of pins to see which go down best.
Group boards on Pinterest can be a great way to connect with other book bloggers and increase traffic to your book blog. Check out my post on Pinterest Group Boards for Book Bloggers here.
Be prepared for the long game. You probably won’t see results immediately on Pinterest. It takes time. Don’t give up. If you pin consistently, using correct SEO, Pinterest can bring a lot of organic traffic to your book blog.
I hope this post has been useful and invite you to follow my pins at https://www.pinterest.it/jolinsdell and join me on my website www.JoLinsdell.com where I post about books and blogging.
Do you use Pinterest to promote your book blog? What Pinterest strategies are working for you? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
Thanks to Jo for such a useful post, I will be heading off to try out some of these strategies in order to try and boost my traffic using Pinterest! Will you be doing it too? Let me know in the comments!