Hello everyone! You all are very aware of content marketing and strategies that can boost your blog traffic. Well, I have something more to add to that.

For all you readers here, I have a solid game plan on Pinterest. This social networking website is one of the richest in terms of daily traffic among all the giants, and the benefits are countless. It comes right behind Facebook and Twitter in terms of daily visitors and user base. So, it is absolutely a loss to not make use of Pinterest for your blog promotions.

It is as straight as the title says – Maximizing Pinterest in 21 days. Yes, you will be having loads of followers and huge returning traffic if you keenly go through this article.

Cynthia Sanchez was my mentor in this venture when I first started off with Pinterest. I knew very little about Pinterest and its scope. I started following her on Twitter and Pinterest and got hold of some exceptionally working methods through her blog – OhSoPinteresting.

Day 1 – 10 | Building a significant Pinterest following

Building a follower list is very important on all social networks. Just think of a situation wherein you have loads of stuff to show to people, but there is no one in front of you. What’s the use of having great things then? But, if another guy has average stuff and loads of people in front of him, chances are more that his average stuff might get more popular. So the moral is – first build your audience.

I will show you exactly how I built my audience. You must not start spamming however, because spamming might cause your account to be deleted permanently. So don’t hurry, just follow these steps regularly; you’ll have loads of followers.

1. Go to the search option and search for terms in your niche ( I searched for “socialmedia”, “blogging”, “jquery” for my profile).
2. This will give you a list of results. Results will contain pins, boards and pinners.
3. Our target is pinners, so we select the “pinners” tab.
4. Now we get a list of people who are in the same niche as mine. Now we have two jobs.

In order to showcase your blog and work, you must interact in a healthy manner with these pinners. They are bloggers or people just like you; so don’t panic or don’t behave like a robot when you approach them.

So, here are the two things we need to do now –

1. Once you have followed a lot of people, chances are that 50-60% of them will follow you back (provided they are from the same niche).
2. In case you want to increase the chances even more, you can do another thing. Just after you click follow on someone’s profile, open one or two pins and produce some comments and like on them. This will show the user that you are interested in their content. Chances of following back will increase that your work will be appreciated too.

• Must read: Definite guide to get more followers on Pinterest

Day 11 – 14 | Focus on Pinterest Boards

Our next focus shall be on boards. Pinterest boards are a massive source of traffic for your Pinterest profile, as well as your blog. So don’t neglect this stuff.

In these 4 days, we have two works to do –

Create your own boards

Creating boards is easy. Just visit your Pinterest profile and click on the “boards” tab and select “create board”.

Once you click on “create board”, a pop-up will open (see the above image). Fill in the fields correctly. One interesting thing here is the last field – “who can add pins”. This field will determine whether your board will be a group board or not.

In this field, who will be able to add people to pin something. I suggest you make at least 2 to 3 group boards. This increases interaction and traffic to your profile.

Also, remember that you must create at least 7-8 boards minimum for your profile. Out of this, 5 boards may be from your niche and 3 boards must be essentially from other niches. This makes your profile well found in searches and not boring.

Search and join group boards

Searching group boards is easy. When search results are displayed, select “boards” just like you selected “pinners” previously. Now look for boards with an icon on the top right corner (see the image below).  These boards are group boards and have a large following base.

Join these boards to gain maximum traffic. How do you join? Here are two methods –

1. Visit the board and find out the user who created the board (admin). Now find a pin from this person on that board itself and comment on that pin. In your comment, mention that you would like to join the board as a contributor. Also, provide your Pinterest profile URL in the comment.
2. This feature is new and very easy. Pinterest has introduced private messages. So just visit the admin’s profile and send a message.

Day 15 – 18 | Connecting accounts and joining friends on other platforms

Now is our step to use other networks to the fullest to stretch our traffic further. There are options from wherein we can connect  Facebook and Twitter to our Pinterest profile.

This procedure ensures that when you pin something on your Pinterest profile, your pin is automatically published on Facebook status and Twitter. This has a couple of benefits –

1. Your follower base grows significantly because they are able to find you on both platforms.
2. Your content is shared virally because followers on Pinterest might be different from that of Twitter. So, when your content goes to Twitter, the different set of people share your content once again.

Another important part is joining Pinterest related people on other networks. Just search for Pinterest related groups on Facebook and Pinterest related lists on Twitter and join the gang. These people share and help each other.

Day 19 –21 | Learning to create Pinterest ready stuff

Making Pinterest ready stuff is important. Pinterest shares and pinning is only helpful when you know the following very well –

1. Infographics

Infographics are long pictures with lots of information stuffed in a stylish manner. Images are always good to the readers’ eye and therefore, infographics have a high share count. Create infographics for your content and do share other’s infographics as well.

       2.   Rich Pins

Rich pins are a feature from Pinterest that use schema.org and microdata like information to determine content properties. These include author, publisher details, title, etc. This gives a bold look to the pins, and contains direct CTA information like website/blog URL, author, nice big title, etc. Learn more about rich pins here.

      3.  Pinterest ready images

Pinterest loves images that are good to the eye. So make sure that you make your blog article images catchy. Otherwise, you Pinterest followers would not find your pins interesting. Involve CTA images, or images that would prompt the user to open the pin or the blog article.

General task – do this for all 21 days and beyond

After following all of the above tips, you will start noticing significant blog traffic from Pinterest. Now just keep in mind the following –

1. Increasing follower list and groups is not a one-time process. So, repeat that regularly.
2. Share your Pinterest profile with all your other social network followers and let them know that you are on Pinterest too.
3. Make use of Pinterest badges and share buttons. This is a must for more traffic. Attach the share button to your posts.
4. Share content regularly. Even if you are not posting regularly on your blog, share other content from the same niche. Followers do not like dormant users.    
5. Don’t forget to like and comment on other’s pins. Use it just like Facebook. What do you do when you find a nice status update on Facebook? Think it this way.

For further reading on maximising your marketing on Pinterest:

• How to use Pinterest for marketing your blog
• 11 Pinterest tools every marketer should know
• How to get eMail notification for Pinned articles from your blog

That’s all from my end. I wish you all the best with these ways. Follow them ethically and you would surely reap great results. Do share your experience of driving blog traffic from Pinterest.