15 Pinterest Tips To Grow Your Following

I have a total of 7, count them 7 followers on Pinterest. The focus on Pinterest began because I learned this is a great way to drive traffic to your blog. Nothing comes easy and I fully intend to work for the followers I want to gain. I signed up for a lynda.com class, free through my library and so far, it has given me many tips and tricks I never knew. It’s video tutorials, with an area to take notes, the transcript and even a printable worksheet(s). Below are the tricks I’ve learned so far and I hope you guys can use them too!

1. When you start your Pinterest account, you’ll want at least 10 boards with a minimum of 5 pins in each.
2. Pinterest images should be no smaller than 80×120 pixels or 120×80 pixels but you want to make sure images are larger than this because at that size, they would look tiny on Pinterest.
3. The taller the image, the better. They do better than smaller, rectangular images.
4. Your image should be an absolute match to the topic. Pinners should not have to read into the body of the text to understand what it’s about. Here is where I put this to work for my Hotel Sandwich Trick: 
5. The first image eludes to a hotel room but the second image uses the picture to catch the attention. Side note, I really need to add the word “more” so people don’t think it will only cost $20 for a suite. Crap. I used a program called snag it to do the text overlay. Best $50 I ever spent and it’s for life. Often times you can google a coupon for snag it and get it even cheaper. I use it ALL THE TIME when I want to circle stuff in my pics or add text.
6. You can use up to 100 characters to describe a post but only 25 are visible.
7. Before pinning something, click the link to ensure it’s not spam. If it’s spam and Pinterest catches it, you could potentially look like you are the spammer. I did not know this and probably pinned 20 things yesterday without doing this. Gulp!
8. I’m not going to go into detail about making all your pins rich pins but go on Pinterest and learn how to make all your pins rich. They stand out more and do better than regular pins.
9. Click and drag your blog board to show up first.
10. Not that I’ll ever get there but the max number of boards one can have is 500 boards and 200,000 pins. What sicko ever gets to that limit?
11. Food is the largest category on Pinterst.
12. The most successful pins tend to link to URLs that add value for the user. The most successful pins are: recipes and other tutorials, pins that inspire design and home decor. Pins that spark an emotional response such as humor or a quote are great too!
13. There was a great quote by the Pinterest CEO that went something like this: Facebook is about the past (posting baby pics or wedding pics), Twitter is about the now (getting things in real-time) and Pinterest is about the future (like trips people want to go on or outfits they would like to buy). The word “dream” is often used in searches.
14. Pinterest is unlike other social media because it’s a powerful search engine, hence making it an extremely important tool in driving traffic.
15. It’s better to have a business account for your blog. It’s free and allows you to see important metrics on how well your pins are performing!

So there, I just saved you guys about 1 hour of learning with my cliff notes. I encourage you though to log on to your public library to see if they offer free lynda classes. I was amazed mine does and plan on taking A TON of classes about social media. Now, if you have a Pinterest account, I would love for you guys to do me a solid and click here to follow me on Pinterest. I’ll follow you back; pinkie swear. Happy Monday all!!!