Hello and welcome back to today’s blog post:-) 3 Pinterest Marketing Faults You Must Get Fixed Today. There are just so many different strategies flying around that it’s hard to know what’s right and what’s wrong?
Do you feel the same way?
Over the past few months, I have been documenting how I personally use Pinterest for the express purpose of transferring it all into blog posts to share what seems to be working and what doesn’t.
In my humble opinion, it’s no good just sharing what works if there are other aspects that you are doing incorrectly!
Makes sense Right?
We use Pinterest to drive traffic to our blog posts or affiliate offers. The better-optimized everything is the more successful growth we will have.
Pinterest is not an easy beast to master although it is a necessary evil.
Understanding how to use Pinterest is a never-ending game because the algorithm is constantly changing 🙁
We have to face the fact that we all make mistakes, however, the lessons learned can be life-changing when we persevere and get it Right!
I’m totally guilty of making huge mistakes which I will share with you throughout these blog posts.
This post may contain affiliate links. This means if you make a purchase I could receive a small commission. The price you pay will not be affected. This helps to keep me in coffee when writing for you.
Let us dive straight in:
Pinning Strategies
I confess I was totally confused about pinning strategies.
After reading a ton of posts and watching hour after hour of YouTube videos that all contradicted each other I bit the bullet and purchased Carly Campbell’s Pinterest strategies video course.
Firstly why did I choose to purchase this course when there are hundreds of others to choose from?
9 out of 10 blog posts recommend this particular course. It works for Carly and hundreds of others. I have seen social proof of growth to the blog views and therefore a ton of affiliate commissions have resulted as well!!
The first mistake I made was to repin from my own boards. Why is that a mistake? Pinterest knows it’s you doing the repin so that’s classed as fake engagement and that will mean you won’t get your pins shown to a wider audience.
That means it’s counterproductive.
The correct method is for you to repin your pin from boards that other users have pinned your pin to.
There is a sidenote to doing this. Check out that the board has been keyworded if it relates to your keyworded boards then repin it to one of your boards.
If it hasn’t don’t repin it!
The second reason I joined Carly’s course is because of its total value for money. I’m actually shocked she doesn’t charge a ton more for the course!
Here is an example of some repins :
For this example, I’m going to use the middle pin and the left pin.
when you open up the middle board you see this:
I didn’t copy the whole description but take it from me that it is an open board with no specific niche and no keywording which means I won’t repin this pin.
The pin on the left is on this board:
Because the board is keyworded and the pin and blog post is all about blogging I have repinned this pin to one of my own niche keyworded blogging boards.
Another mistake I was making was pinning all of my content to group boards and practically zero to my own boards. (Yes I’m blonde) not generally dumb though!
Do You Need Board Covers For Pinterest?
I just have to say I did not make this mistake personally!
Are you guilty of this?
The majority of advice in posts that I have read all tend to agree that it’s a big fat waste of time in making board covers.
Why? I hear you asking.
Nobody visits your profile except other bloggers and you!
Your audience spends its time in the search feature and of course clicking on pins that lead to amazingly written blog posts.
Spend the hours that you will be saving doing something productive like writing blog posts and creating shiny new clickable pins.
If you suffer from OCD then I can understand that you probably won’t be able to get past this point until you have made the board covers, but you really are wasting valuable time that could be better spent elsewhere.
Alt Text On Pinterest
If you know anything at all about SEO you will have had it drummed into you about filling in the alt text for images in your blog posts which helps Google to index your posts, and crawl your site, as well as helping visually impaired users by describing what is on the image.
Images are a very important part of a blog post they help to break up content but more importantly than that the images get ranked in Google which sends you more traffic!
You can very often find an image on page 1 of Google above any blog post.
I am totally guilty of doing this because SEO is something that was learned from day 1 of blogging!
Don’t under any circumstances do this anymore!
By using the alt text on Pinterest you are damaging what is shown on Google.
When posting your pin from your own blog post as opposed to uploading the pin directly to Pinterest the alt text description shows up in place of the pin description which is not what you want.
I hear Ya!
You want to write a pin description and be able to post directly from the blog post and you certainly want others to pin from your blog.
The way around this is to use the Tasty Pins Plugin. This does so much more than just the keyworded pin descriptions that are optimized for Google and Pinterest. It is a lot easier to use than it is learning how to code and use HTML.
It is a total time saver and worth every single cent. I love this plugin!
Using these tips will help to grow your presence and bring you more traffic.
A quick Recap:
- Pinning Strategies, only pin your pin once to your own board and then only repin your pin that others have saved from other keyworded boards to a different one of your boards.
- Do You Need Board Covers? No. Use your saved time to do something more productive.
- Alt Text, Do Not fill it in on Pinterest but make sure you do fill it in on your blog post!
Hello there! I have just finished reading your article about Pinterest. I must admit that I am exactly the same as you were. I have spent so much time looking for ways to promote my stuff on Pinterest. I really appreciate the tips you have given here and I know that I have made some mistakes along the way. I know that I have reposted my own pins several times. No doubt I have probably done myself no favours there!
Thanks for the tip about the alt tags too, that’s very helpful to know. I guess Pinterest uses the alt tag like a descriptive keyword.
One thing that I have never been sure of is should I add long descriptive text to my pins? I’ve never been sure if I should just post the image or if I should add a description like you would in Facebook for instance?
Thank you!
Andrew
Pins with descriptions get far more clicks than pins with no text. Always put keywords on the pins!
Hey Lisa, thanks for this helpful update on Pinterest marketing! I haven’t heard about Carly’s course before, let alone learning about Pinterest campaigning through her. I must admit a lot of people repin from their own boards unconsciously. They do so in the name of engagement, whereas Pinterest is smarter than all that. I started using Pinterest not long ago, and I am glad I came across your post. I am going to purchase Carly’s course on Pinterest marketing, rest assured. Thanks.
Joyce
You are very welcome Joyce, Thanks for dropping by.
The course by Carly is an eye-opener for sure.
Lisa.
Thanks for this important information.
I do not really have a clue when it comes to using social media, but it appears that I am really missing out because of it.
I will make note of all the advice that you given me and try to put it into action. Hopefully I will get it right. But I should probably watch the Carly Campbell girls first.
If you are not using social media you really are missing out!