How to Set Up A Pinterest Business Account For Your Blog
Pinterest is a great source of referral traffic for bloggers. Since I started actively investing my time in using Pinterest to promote my blog content, the traffic to my site has more than doubled in four months. Pinterest is now the number 1 source of referral traffic to my blog, responsible for over 70% of my page views/session. To get started on making this happen for your blog, you need to start at the beginning by setting up a Pinterest Business Account for your blog or website. In this post, I’m going to talk you through how to set up a Pinterest business account for your blog.
Please note that everything in this post applies to any small business website as well, it’s not just for blogs although for the purposes of this post that is what I’m focusing on.
Why Do You Need Pinterest For Your Blog?
So many people mistakenly think Pinterest is a social media platform, but it’s not. Pinterest is a search engine. People use Pinterest in a very different way to how they use Facebook and Instagram.
You need to think of Pinterest rather like an old fashioned (before computers) file or folder with different dividers in it. The dividers are the boards within your Pinterest account, and the pins themselves are the pictures and article you cut out of the magazines because they inspire you, or you want to refer back to them in the future. All without the mess of the cuttings or glue!
Twitter, Facebook and Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) used to be a great source of referral traffic for blogs. After the algorithm changes made in the last couple of years, we saw the reach of blogs, business posts and pages take a huge hit. We all realise that ultimately Facebook wants you to pay them to boost your post to reach a wider audience because they are a business. And that’s great. But Pinterest can still offer you an even better reach, for free.
Done right, Pinterest can still give you great blog post referral traffic for Free! Yes, it’s got the promoted pins functions. And yes, I’m sure that they too will move towards a similar model where you will need to pay for higher reach figures, it is a business after all. However, it is still possible to get great referral traffic to your blog using Pinterest, without having to boost every single post.
First Things First: How to set up a Pinterest Business Account for your Blog.
You may have a Pinterest account already set up. If you do, I would still urge you to go through this list and make sure you have done all the actions. This will ensure that your blog’s Pinterest business account is set up correctly to give you the best chance of achieving good results.
Step 1: Make sure you create a Business Account.
You can keep your personal account for personal use, but if this is for your blog or business, you need to set up a Pinterest business account. A business account on Pinterest is free, so go ahead and set it up.
Use your brand name to create your Pinterest username so that it aligns with the overall branding of your website/blog.
If you already have an account set up for your blog, but you set it up as a personal account, you can convert it to a business account for free. Go ahead and do that now and then you can come back to this list and carry on with the actions.
Pin this post now to refer back to later.
Step 2: Claim Your Website.
Under ‘Edit Settings‘, you will see the option to ‘Claim Website’.
Claiming your website means you are linking your blog or website URL and your Pinterest Account.
Note: It’s also possible to link your Etsy, Instagram or YouTube accounts, but for now you don’t have to.
You will be required to add a meta tag or HTML code to your HTML file in your website. It’s not as scary as it sounds for all your non-bloggers. If you get stuck, please do give me a shout, I will be happy to walk you through it.
Step 3: Apply For Rich Pins
This is a really cool function by Pinterest. It allows all pins created and linked to your site to update automatically whenever you change the details of that post (referred to as an article by Pinterest). This applies to recipes, products and articles.
For example, if you were to sell a really cool product i.e. a purse priced at $20, and then you change the price of that post on your website in 6 months time to $25, then the old pins you created will automatically update.
Note: You only need to go through this process once, using one blog post. After that, the process will roll out automatically for all pins linked to your blog or website.
Step 4: Set up your profile image.
Set your profile image up in Settings. I would strongly suggest you use a good quality headshot picture of your face, rather than your branded logo. Pinterest research shows that users still prefer to see the face behind the brand as they find it more relatable.
Your Pinterest profile image size should be 180 x 180 pixels.
Step 5: Craft a Profile Description
Craft a profile description that is keyword rich that will help people know what your profile or brand is about. Remember, Pinterest does make use of SEO so try to use SEO keywords that align with your brand.
Step 6: Create 5 Pinterest Boards
Go ahead now and create 5 Pinterest Boards. These should be 5 boards that you will pin yours and other people’s content to but that are aligned with your blog content.
Each of these boards should have a description with keywords in them and at least 3 hashtags in that description. Yes, hashtags in Pinterest.
Then go ahead and add some pins to these boards. I would recommend a minimum of 20 per board.
Step 7: Create A Pin Template.
By creating a pin template you will be able to brand your pins. This helps your pins to stand out and be recognised as yours, and it also helps to save time when creating your pins going forward.
Canva is a great resource to get started as they have a number of Free templates available for you to use to get started, and you can personalise these with your brand colours, fonts, etc.
The recommended Pin size is 600 x 900 pixels.
Like I said above though, Canva has a Pinterest Template size so you don’t have to worry about making a custom size.
And there you have it. A step by step guide on how to set up a Pinterest business account for your blog.
After that’, you have one more task, and it’s pretty simple:
Get Pinning!!
I hope you found this post useful. Look out for the next post: How to create a pin.
If you want a more thorough and step by step instruction manual for Setting up your Pinterest Business Account, take a look at my book: How To Use Pinterest. It will walk you through the whole set up process, step by tiny step, as well as full details on how to create pins, boards, and a basic schedule for beginners.
How To Use Pinterest – eBook
If you would like to follow me on Pinterest you can do so by clicking the button below which will take you straight through to my Pinterest business account.
If you have any questions about how to set up your Pinterest business account, please do comment on this post below, or send me an email.
If you would like me to set up your Pinterest business account profile for you, I have a new product available in my store. You can order it today, or send me a message to chat about it first.
Set Up Your Pinterest Business Account
this is amazing article
very much effective