How to Increase Your Clicks on Pinterest and Traffic to Your Blog

How to Get Traffic from Pinterest

With over 14 million pieces of content pinned to Pinterest every day, this visual site has the potential to drive more traffic to your website than Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

I know this for my own personal experience.

When I log into my Google Analytics every month, I see that over 80% of my traffic comes directly from Pinterest. That’s more than Facebook, Instagram and organic search combined. That’s every month.

How can you use the power of pinning to bring this kind of traffic to your site? Keep reading to learn how bloggers and small businesses are seeing their traffic increase from Pinterest — and how you can do this too.

Focus on Clicks instead of Impressions

There’s a lot of numbers that we can use to measure what’s going on with our Pinterest account.

With the new pin stat layout, it’s super easy to see how people have interacted with your content after its been pinned. To view your pin stats, make sure you have a Pinterest business profile and have claimed your website.

Once you’ve gone through all those steps, you should be able to see the stats on all the pins that you have posted to your boards. A big thing to note here –  the pin stats for the content that you’ve pinned are only visible to you.

{ This was one of the big changes that Pinterest made – we can no longer see the repin numbers for content that we didn’t pin to one of our boards. }

Click on the See More Stats button and these 4 numbers show up:

• Impressions: The number of times your Pin showed up in the feed and was seen on Pinterest.

• Closeups: The number of times people tapped on your Pin for a closer look of your content.

• Saves: The number of times people saved your Pin to a board. This term has replaced the word REPIN that we were using.

• Clicks: The number of times people clicked through your site.

 

Most of us will look at these numbers and get excited to see how big that impression number is for our pins. And we’re like, “Holy crap! Look at all those people who saw my pin when they were using Pinterest!”

And so we focus on how we can grow that impression number.

I mean it looks like you’re reaching a lot people, right? Well, yes … and no.

Yes, your pin showed up in a lot of Pinner’s feeds but take a look at that Clicks number. How many people clicked on your pin and went to your website? I’m going to make a guess that the Clicks number is a whole lot smaller than that Impressions number.

If you’re really serious about increasing the traffic to your blog than it’s time to focus on increasing your click-through rate on your pins.

What does it mean to focus on Clicks rather than Impressions?

When your Clicks number goes up, it means that your pins are connecting with your customers and readers.

It means that you’re sharing content that resonates with them to help improve their lives with something like information you’ve researched to save them time, a process you’re sharing to help them make money, an organizational app to help them declutter their space or a special ingredient to make their favorite recipe even tastier.

Think about the posts on your site that are doing well on Pinterest. Or worse, content that’s not doing so great no matter how many times you add that thing to your scheduler.

Think about one specific post and ask yourself:

• Does the content of this post contain information that helps the people reading this?
• Are these steps what they need or am I just writing this because this is the stuff that a ‘health coach/fashion blogger/jewelry maker/fill in the blank with what you do’ are all writing about?
• Is this post sharing what I truly know can help them improve their lives, their income or that thing that keeps them up at night?

While you may be creating content like crazy because you think it’ll grow your blog traffic, that’s not the real reason why Pinners clicked on that link to read the post. They clicked because they’re looking for a solution to their problem.

For your pins to get more Clicks, you need to make sure that your content is fully focused on the pain point that they need to solve.

If you’re not sure or don’t know what your readers pain points are, try this exercise:

Write out a definition of who you believe is your ideal customer or reader of your blog. List out their demographic information { male/female, age, where they live, married/single, kids/grandparents } and 5 – 10 personality traits of this person.

I find that it helps to bring this person to life by giving him or her a name. Give her a job – even is she’s a stay at home mom { which is one of the hardest jobs in the world! } – and write out what a typical day looks like for her. Think about where she’s struggling as she makes her way through her day.

Think about what excites her and makes her happy. And then list out what causes her stress and anxiety in her life.

Once you’ve flushed out who she is and what she does with her life, ask yourself these questions about her:

• What is her biggest problem with the current way she’s doing things?
• What options has she considered to address her issues?
• What if there was a solution to her problem? What benefits would she see and how would it affect her life?
• If she does nothing, how will this impact her life?
• What stands in her way of actively resolving her problems?

As you start to work through your answers, you’ll start seeing a pattern come up for either the same words, emotions or problems. Take note of what you keep seeing come up with this exercise – it’s their pain points.

And once you’ve got a sense of your readers pain points, you can write your content in a way that helps resolve their problems.

Let them know how much you understand why they’re feeling this way or how you’ve handled something that they’re dealing with … and then tell them how you can help. Share with them how their life will change after they’ve read and taken the steps in your post.

Let them know that you have the solution to their problem and a plan that they can follow to get their next step or desired outcome.

 

Make Them Click

 Now that you’ve created this content that solves your reader’s pain point, it’s time to make sure that you get those Pinners to click on your image and go to your website. It’s time to use a call-to-action { CTA } to make sure that they can take the next step.

Adding in the CTA is a super important part of crafting your pin description that continues their pinning journey with you. First they discover your image, see your headline on your image, read the pin description detailing the problem you’re going to solve and now you finish the process by taking then to the next step by telling the to go to your site.

Try out these simple strategies to make them click on your pins:

Know Your End Game

What is the CTA that you want them to do? It can’t just be to read your blog post. What’s the real reason that they’re going to take their valuable time to click on your link?

Some suggestions for your CTA:

• Click a blog post or landing page with an affiliate link
• Sign up for your opt-in to get on your email list
• Schedule a session
• Purchase a product
• Download an ebook or workbook

Add the CTA to the image itself

Most of just add in the name of the product or put the name of our blog post in the image. Think about how you can create a smaller line of copy that adds in something like “Click here to download your FREE workbook” or “Click here to learn how these steps can help you save money!”

Use the CTA in the pin description

After you’ve included your keywords and phrases into the pin description, add in the same CTA from the pin’s image into the copy. Let them know what they need to do next.

Make the CTA very clear

Use clear and descriptive words that will inspire them to act and let them know WHY they should do this action. Use phrases like: Click here to get the simple steps to , Buy your XYZ product to feel better today, Download your copy to start saving money on groceries

Whatever CTA you decide to use, make sure that you take advantage of the fact that you’ve already grabbed their attention in that crazy busy Pinterest feed. They’ve connected to you, you’ve given them a reason to click over to your site … and now here’s what they need to do to take the next step.
 

 

Ready to take the next step with your Pinterest strategy?

If you need more help with reaching more people on Pinterest, I’ve pulled together a 25-page Pinterest Process Workbook to give you simple easy to follow action steps to give you clarity with your Pinterest strategy.

What you’ll learn:

• Understand how Pinterest decides which pins show up in the feed
• How to get more people to repin your blog posts, products and services
• Step-by-step process to create a personalized Pinterest strategy
• Monitor what’s working and what needs tweaking

You’ll also get a tracking guide that you can customize to monitor your Pinterest marketing plans so you can see which boards you should be pinning to and where to focus your time on Pinterest. Plus, you’ll get printable tracking worksheets to use every month to track your progress … all of this cool stuff for just $7 bucks!

Click here to get your instant download of The Pinterest Process Workbook.