How to Drive Blog Traffic with Pinterest {and a Pinning Perfect Review}

Pinterest.

There’s a lot of talk about how Pinterest is such an important social media channel, especially for bloggers and other creators of content, because it drives a ton of traffic to different websites.

While I’ve heard this over and over again, I never really paid much attention to Pinterest. When I signed up for an account a couple of years ago, I thought of it primarily as a place to collect pretty pictures, primarily surf photos and a recipe or workout here and there.

I didn’t really pay attention to my account and I most definitely isn’t have a strategy. I kind of just hoped that people would pin some of my posts and maybe click through.

I finally accepted the fact that I had to figure out how to use Pinterest better and more strategically, especially since Pinterest rolled out its new Smart Feed, which has resulted in substantial loss in traffic for many bloggers.

Enter Pinning Perfect.

I finally bit the bullet and signed up to take the e-course Pinning Perfect (and paid for it myself). It’s through Blog Clarity, which is a wealth of knowledge and offers great e-courses for bloggers. I took the Content Brew class a while back and it changed the way that I think about content creation.

Pinning Perfect is one of the newest courses and it’s taught by Anna Luther from My Life and Kids. Anna has almost 34,000 followers on Pinterest. To say she’s a Pinterest master is an understatement. She shares so much of her knowledge with you over the course of this 2-week course and is an incredible resource.

Right away, I realized that there was so much that I overlooked on Pinterest. The daily lessons make you re-evaluate everything from images to board names to board organization to pin optimization to pinning strategy.

There was so much I wasn’t doing and I needed to think about a content strategy for Pinterest (and editorial/sharing calendar) that was different in specific ways from my blog. I mean, it was a little overwhelming but I feel empowered to start making changes to how I think about and use Pinterest (and hopefully make it a more useful tool!)

Some of the topics covered include:

• How to organize and clean up your boards (yes, your boards should be arranged in a specific order)
• How to incorporate Pinterest into you blog and overall social media strategy
• How to pin your own stuff effectively and strategically
• How to tap into what’s trending on Pinterest and what your followers are interested in
• How to make the best use of Pinterest Analytics and what it tells you about your followers and your pins

Anna also provides super helpful handouts like what the most popular Pinterest search terms are and an editorial calendar with a full year of trending topics and key words for each month (!!!). There’s a private Facebook group where you can ask questions and interact with others in the class.

Overall, I’m really happy that I took this class. I tend to learn more in a class format versus just reading a bunch of articles or books. With lessons four days of the week (and assignments), I was guaranteed to dig into the lessons and put some tips into action. Over the course of two weeks, I also managed to rack up quite a to-do list but I feel so much more confident in how to use Pinterest moving forward.

Registration for the final session of Pinning Perfect for 2014 is open but closes soon! It’s already more than half full so be sure to sign up. The course runs from November 3-14, 2014 and costs $65.

{I paid for the Pinning Perfect Course myself. While I am an affiliate of Blog Clarity and Pinning Perfect, I was not obligated to write this post. I only recommend products and courses that I truly find valuable.}

Rethink your Pinterest strategy with this one resource #Pinterest #socialmedia
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