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It’s been over a year since I started using Pinterest to promote my blog. Today Pinterest brings 90% of the traffic to my blog.
When I first joined Pinterest, I couldn’t get any traffic. It wasn’t until I started using Tailwind, that I saw an increase in my traffic. I wrote a case study on how I went from 0 to 250 daily visits using Tailwind.
The truth is that after a few months using Tailwind, I felt that my traffic stopped growing. It was good traffic (6,000 page views/month) but I wanted more. No matter how many new posts I published or how many times I changed my Pinterest schedule, I didn’t see any traffic growth.
I did try a lot of strategies that other bloggers share on their blogs, things like the 80-20 rule or the 20-80 rule and even pinning less frequently. They didn’t work for me!
I invested a lot of time and effort in growing my Pinterest but I didn’t see any results. That was a really hard time for me 🙁
One day, looking for new Pinterest strategies, I stumbled upon Carly’s blog, and I found the Pinteresting Strategies course. I had heard of manual pinning before but it seemed like a lot of effort and I thought that Tailwind could do the same. I was wrong!
I got convinced to buy the course after reading the success stories of other people. Many of the testimonials were bloggers that doubled their traffic a few days after taking the course. After all, a price of $47 compared to other Pinterest courses that charge $150-$200, was not that bad. (Sometime after, when I finished it, I realized that Carly’s course worth much more than $47).
Enroll for $97 (Pinteresting Strategies)
I was determined to give it a try! And it was the best thing I could have done! As you can see in the image below, my traffic quadrupled in less than a week.
But not only that, my Pinterest reach also increased consistently since I started following the course’s strategies. I was stuck on 350k monthly viewers for months and in less than two weeks I jumped to 700k. I wish I could have done it earlier!
It doesn’t look like it’s going to slow down the growth for a while. More traffic means more readers, more email subscriptions, and more money coming in.
That’s great!
This Is What I Really Did To Quadruple my Traffic
What did I REALLY do to multiply x4 my traffic in less than 7 days? I divided it into three easy to follow steps. After reading Carly’s course, it only took a few hours of my time to implement her strategy.
1. Created 10 New Pins
I already knew that vertical pins perform better than horizontal pins, and that catchy titles drive more traffic than boring not-exciting titles.
What I didn’t know is how to create amazing pins that Pinterest loves. These strategies were covered in Chapter 5 (What makes a Great Pin).
I implemented all these strategies (one by one) and created 10 new pins (as a test). You won’t believe if I tell you that as I’m writing this, most of these pins are directing over 80% of my blog’s traffic.
I also purchased stock images (from Haute Stock) because, as mentioned in the course, paid stock images tend to perform better than free stock images. This is because Pinterest is flooded by free stock images and sometimes it may treat them as spam (this is just a theory and it doesn’t necessarily need to be true). I tested it myself, and I found out that my own pins created from paid stock images are receiving more traffic than pins using free stock images.
2. Worked on Pinterest SEO
As pointed by Carly’s course, Pinterest is a mix of search engine and social media platforms (with a human component).
I followed the SEO strategies from Chapter 7 and Chapter 8 (SEO for Pinterest), and the fact is that keywords are the key thing in Pinterest. As a search engine, Pinterest tries to show the most relevant pins in the smart feed every time somebody does a search.
That’s why optimizing your profile, boards, and pins with the right keywords is one of the MOST important tasks.
Group boards are not as relevant as they used to be but they still work. Most of the traffic now is driven by the smart feed which is basically a search engine (similar to Google).
So I followed the strategies in the course and in less than 48 hours I got my first viral pin, you can see in the image below.
This screenshot was taken from one of my recent SEO optimized pins went viral after I changed the pin description.
During my 7 first days, I got 3 viral pins that brought thousands of page views to my blog (I will explain this later in this post).
3. Combine Tailwind with manual pinning
This is perhaps the most important of the three steps and I truly believe this is the strategy that made my Pinterest account stand out (I can’t demonstrate it but that’s my gut feeling).
As I said before, I was used to leaving all the hard pinning to Tailwind. After reading Chapter 9 and Chapter 11 (My Pinning Strategy), I understood what my problem was.
While Tailwind is great, it does all the pinning way too automatically, plus it follows always the same pattern.
From the course, I learned how to find which pins perform best in Pinterest’s eyes from my Google Analytics. This is something I could never have been discovered myself and I’m so grateful Carly was willing to share.
I still can’t believe that this small change made me quadruple my blog’s traffic!
I also learned how to join relevant group boards for my pins, how many times to pin per day, and how to organize everything in an easy way.
Enroll for $97 (Pinteresting Strategies)
How I Got 3,000+ Pageviews In One Day
To end up this article I want to share how I got over 3,000 page views in one day (screenshot is coming from my Google Analytics). The results below are from a week after I put the strategies into practice.
These are the results of some of my 10 pins going viral (and getting a lot of repins). This is proof that the 3 steps I shared today are working.
If you feel your Pinterest traffic has hit a plateau, then you should really try this strategy.
What Pinterest strategy are you currently following? Are you happy with your results?
Hi Francisco,
That’s pretty awesome that Carly’s book helped you. I’ve picked up a Pinterest course when I first started learning Pinterest. I wasn’t familiar with the platform at all.
I’ve been using Tailwind for a little while. The past month, I’ve finally taken the time to really start learning the platform in and out.
It’s taking some time, but I am finally starting to see some results from my efforts. Nothing near what you’re getting. However, it’s nice to see my efforts paying off.
I may have to take a closer look at that ebook to see what I’m missing. I’m sure that I could pick up a few Pinterest tips to help me improve my efforts.
Thanks for taking the time to share and awesome job with your Pinterest marketing.
Have a great day 🙂
Susan
Susan, thank’s for your comment.
It was a 2-step process. First, I did what you did, I started with Tailwind. After some time (when I finally understood it) I got Carly’s book and I started learning a lot again. That’s how I got this results (and today I’m receiving even more traffic!)
As you said, Pinterest takes time and practice, and I believe you’re on the right track 🙂
Thanks!
Hi Francisco!
Really happy you published this article. Lots of great advice in here. I also bought Carly’s book and I learned a ton from it. I have been using tailwind and boardbooster for about 4 months and just haven’t been hitting the numbers that a lot of bloggers seem to be reaching with Pinterest. Now I’m doing the manual pinning method and on my second week. Things haven’t picked up quite yet but I did just take your advice and create 10 new pins geared towards the ideas from the book. I’m hoping at least one of them brings some favorable traffic! I just posted them yesterday so hopefully I have some results this week.
Thanks for the detailed post!
Robbie, yes, it’s such a great book. Good luck with your new pins and don’t forget to share your results 🙂
I would love to see how much traffic increase you get.
Absolutely! I’ll check back in and let you know how things progress. Also, I’ve been pinning about 50% my pins and 50% others. Are you following any rule for a ratio with Carly’s strategy?
My current strategy is 35% pins from others. I used to pin only 20%, but increasing the ratio has helped a lot. I might try 50% in the next Tailwind schedule.
This is great info I’ll be sure to use, as I’ve only just started using Pinterest. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks! And welcome to the Pinterest traffic world!
Carly’s book is great! I loved her ideas about manual pinning as well. It is great to see how much additional traffic you got implementing. I need to get my butt in gear with the strategies! Thanks for the kick 😀
Thanks Marlena. The key is putting in practice her strategies, just by reading it, a blog traffic will not take off. The implementation is the fun part! 🙂
Amazing results, Francisco! Carly’s ebook was a great tool for my Pinterest strategy at the beginning, I got great results from it! How many pins are you pinning manually daily?
I’m pinning around 15 manually every day. Sometimes is less, and sometimes is a bit more. However, I also include a few pins every day in Tailwind.
To be fair, I keep tweaking my strategy every two weeks 🙂
But the core is always the same, manual pinning to relevant group boards.
Hey Francisco thank you for sharing this. I too do both manual pinning and Tailwind. I flooded my Tailwind schedule with 50 or so pins a day and manually pinned about 5 pins a day but I see that I need to increase my manual pinning. Good stuff. Glad to see your boost in traffic. that’s awesome and very inspiring.
While Tailwind is great, I found out that a combination between Tailwind and manual pinning works best for me. If you start doing manual pinning, a good tip is to organise your pins as Carly explains in her course. That’s what I did and it helped me to avoid duplicates and focus on my best-performing pins 🙂
I personally pin manually more than 10/day
BU creating 10 pins are those 10 pins for 1 blog post? Can you elaborate on this please?
These are my top 10 pins from different blog posts.