Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Growing Your Blog: pinterest


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I’m participating in a series about Growing Your Blog organized by the lovely Kelly at LiveLaughRowe. The series which started this week is covering some hot topics including; link parties, conferences, social media, guest bloggers, giveaways, advertising, keeping and engaging readers and my topic, Pinterest.


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If you’re not familiar with Pinterest, brace yourself and start using one of the best tools to come along in a long time. Pinterest is a place to bookmark your favorite sites or pages from your favorite sites. However, instead of bookmarking or favoriting the URL, you pin an image from the site onto one of your pin boards.


Pinboard Snapshot
You can name your boards and group them into categories; crafts, home décor, recipes, places I want to visit – whatever you want to pin. This is a snapshot of one of my boards.


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That’s the basic idea of Pinterest – pinning things that you want to reference later or want to share. A visual bookmarking site. However, an interesting thing happened along the way.


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Pinterest has turned into a powerful tool for bloggers. Suddenly, Pinterest is the number one referral source for my blog. Here’s how it works; someone visits your blog and pins an image from one of your posts. The image links back to your blog and the pin gets repinned multiple times. The result is multiple hits to your blog.



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More and more bloggers and blog readers admittedly are becoming addicted to Pinterest and there is a lot of potential for visits to your blog.

Here are some ways to encourage pinning and blog traffic:

  • Add Pinterest buttons to your blog {follow me on Pinterest) and posts {pin it}.
  • Keep and maintain a pin board dedicated to your own projects. You should be aware that Pinterest Etiquette frowns on pure self promotion. Here’s what they say: Avoid Self Promotion - Pinterest is designed to curate and share things you love. If there is a photo or project you’re proud of, pin away! However, try not to use Pinterest purely as a tool for self-promotion.
  • Join Pinterest groups, parties and challenges. There has been a surge of these activities lately. Link parties and challenges where you make something you saw on Pinterest often times with a winner being selected. As with link parties, these activities could bring more viewers to your blog.
  • Follow other user’s pinboards and gain more followers of your boards.
  • Pin responsibly. Pinning and repinning can sometimes get sloppy. Whenever possible, pin from the original source just as you would want one of your images linked back to your site.

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For me, Pinterest first and foremost is still a way for me to visually catalog inspirational images and projects. The icing on the cake has been the traffic it has generated for me.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my insight into Pinterest. Tomorrow, head over to Imprintalish  for information on giveaways and advertising.







 The Grow Your Blog series continues all week with an exciting finale on Sunday to help you grow your blog. The participants are hosting a blog hop link party where you can introduce your blog. Join me on Sunday, February 19th and Grow Your Blog!

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As always, thanks for visiting.

Carolyn
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19 comments :

  1. thanks for this post! I've been intrigued by this 'pin' thing, I think I get it now!! :D

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  2. Yes loving Pinterest too, hadn't thought about link backs to your blog though! Interesting! I don't know why it didn't 'click' lol. Thanks for your post :)

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  3. Yay for Pinning! Thanks, Carolyn, for being a part of this incredible series. Right now, Pinterest is one of my top traffic sources. It's wonderfully fun and addiciting {wink}

    Cheers!
    Kelly
    www.livelaughrowe.com

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  4. Great post on Pinterest. I started using it before starting my blog. Now it has become such a marketing tool as well. I'm slightly addicted!
    Christina

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  5. Great tips! And thanks for mentioning about the {minimal} self-promotion! I so don't want Pinterest to turn into twitter! :)

    a

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  6. I love Pinterest! I was happy to see that after I joined some of my blog posts were already pinned. sweet surprise for me. Thank you for writing this, I agree it is great for bloggers.

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  7. Hi Carolyn! You mentioned Pinterest groups, challenges and parties- where do you find those? I am just using it as a way to catalog future projects and recipes, but I would love to expand!

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    1. Hi Mindy,
      Just Google "Pinterest Party" or "Pinterest Challenge" and you'll find a bunch of sources from a variety of bloggers. Have fun!

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  8. Thanks for sharing! Pinterest really is wonderful but I'm still a little insecure about pinning my own things. Maybe I'll start a "my projects" board :) I'm here from Kelly's blog & I'm a new follower!
    <3 Ashley

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  9. Great job Carolyn! Pinterest is definitely one of my biggest traffic sources recently. I love to follow others and see what is hot & trendy. Thanks for the tips!!

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  10. Yes.....the Pinterest bug has hit us too! Thanks for the info on Pinterest parties and challenges. That is helpful info also.

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  11. Thanks for the great information, Carolyn. I have to be careful about any time I stop over on Pinterest because I get pulled right in with all of the beautiful projects and photography!! I have noticed the number of referrals my blog gets directly from Pinterest as well - it has become a nice referral source.

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  12. Thanks for the tips! I was wondering about pictures....is it OK to use pics from creative commons at Flickr for posts that may be pinned? For example I did a post on playing with socks with my son but didn't have a picture so I found on one Flickr.

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    1. Hi Sarah,
      I'm not 100% sure but I would think as long as you credit the photo source it would be fine. It might be best to check in the Pinterest / Help section. Have fun!

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  13. Great post Carolyn!! Pinterest is also my top referal source for my blog too...it's so addicting too, but I love it!

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  14. Pinterest really is fabulous! I have been using it for several months now and it's amazing how much traffic results from it. I find it a great tool for remembering all those great projects & recipes I discover around the net. :)

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  15. I love Pinterest! I'm so addicted to it. I'd love to link up to parties, but I am new to arts and crafts and still have yet to start a project and all of the Pinterest parties and challenges I've come across require you to make something, so I do often feel a little left out. I wish there were more for people like me who use Pinterest for inspiration. Some day I will make something, I've started collecting supplies already, there are just a few more things I need, but I'm a rookie. Anyway, this was an excellent post, I found it very informative. I've been trying to figure out how to add the pin-it button to my posts and I have had the hardest time with that.

    Well, I'm Sarah, I'm a new follower, visiting your wonderful blog for the first time. My blog is Skylar Magazine, you are welcome to stop by anytime.

    Have a great weekend!

    Sarah
    http://skylarinc.blogspot.com/

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  16. Just found your tips for growing your blog. Thanks for the advice. I love Pinterest too.

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