In this world of new social media platforms popping up every month, things can get pretty overwhelming fast.

I started using social media to improve my blog’s outreach and increase traffic and here’s what I found.

My Facebook page has since grown to 1800+ followers. Timeline- 8 months.
My Instagram page is at 1400+ followers. Timeline- 2 years. (I merged my personal and business account)
My Pinterest page is at 1000+ followers. Timeline – 2 months.

Do I have to lay it out which social media channel is the fastest to build an audience?

Social media traffic accounts for about 70% of my blog’s traffic. The majority continues to be driven by Facebook, through my page and my private group.

In the two months of using Pinterest, my traffic has significantly grown, to outnumber a couple of other referral channels.

The thing I love about Pinterest is how easy it is to pull in consistent traffic if you follow the right strategy. But what I hate about this channel is, how much time it needs to re-pin new and old pins all the time. The returns are high but the effort is seriously high too.

By contrast, building an SEO strategy is a much more solid growth hack for me as it gives me credibility on Google which is the kind of traffic that spends maximum time on my website, clicks ads and converts really well into subscribers. You can read here about the free SEO tools I use to nail my search engine strategy.

I also think with ever changing social media algorithms your blog’s traffic strategy should not rely abnormally on only one source.

For the sake of this post, let’s talk about every blogger’s favourite social tool, Pinterest.

How did I grow from 0 to 1000 Pinterest followers, from 0 to over 50k views in 2 months with zero spend?

Here’s how-

I followed people that I knew were directly linked to my niche.

You could potentially sit all day and follow people left right and centre. That’s going to get people to follow you back, but what is not going to happen is that these people are going to be from all sorts of niches that don’t have anything to do with what you do.

How will you ever convince these people to come visit your blog, let alone convert them in any form?

The most important piece of this strategy that helped me gain maximum Pinterest Followers was simple=> Follow Relevant People.

This not only optimised my feed and help me see more of the content that I wanted to see, but also makes Pinterest (as a search engine) understand what I do and why I am doing it.

I would say the ratio of the people you follow and the ones that follow you back is about 2:1. So if you follow 2000 people, realistically about 1000 will follow you back. I reached my target at about 1500, so somewhere the other strategies started to pull weight and help me.

I automated the nightmare of manual pinning with Tailwind.

If you’re new to this Pinterest madness and cannot imagine sitting and pinning 15 times a day, which frankly speaking no one has the time to do.

You need to get on Tailwind now. Here’s why:

Me, a person who started using Pinterest 2 months ago, and has a sum total of 20 pins (I’m lazy, kill me), managed to get 371,310 impressions in just 14 days of using Tailwind with 20 owned pins.

What did I to get them?

I joined the tribes with the highest number of members. In the Pinterest followers or viewers game, always think big and think smart.

Step 1: Get to this section to “Find a Tribe”

Step 2: Search for the category closest to your niche. I searched for education and marketing respectively. And then zoomed in on “Bloggers”.

Step 3: Unfortunately you cannot sort tribes by number of members, but you can pretty much see which tribes have maximum numbers and are most relevant to the field you blog in. More tribe members= More Repins. Simple Math.

Tailwind is free until 5 tribes, don’t waste your time on tribes that are less than 500 members, especially not when you begin to grow your Pinterest followers or viewers.

I optimised my pinning schedule based on where my maximum audience was at. I live in Europe, but 80% of my Pinterest audience is in US & Canada. I shifted my time zone to match New York (where I have maximum viewers), and then selected ‘Optimized Intervals’ for my scheduled pins instead of randomly pinning.
I checked which pins were re-pinned the most and then auto re-scheduled them to make the most out of it. I mean, bet on your winning horse, eh?

I cannot say what exact % this tool has helped me to get more Pinterest followers, but what I can say is that it has definitely multiplied my reach significantly.

371, 310 impressions (14 days) = 26522 impressions/day

Effective time spent on Pinterest= 1 hour/week scheduling Tailwind.

The downside of this tool is that it limits you to 100 pins, which is pretty sad but you can upgrade to Tailwind Plus from $15 for a monthly plan and $10 for an annual plan.

However, what you should do is head over to Tailwind, grab the free plan, see the results for yourself and then upgrade only when you think it’s worth it.

I, for one totally think it’s critical to driving more Pinterest followers and viewers to your blog. With no boardbooster around, that’s all we got folks.

Grab Your Free Tailwind Trial Here

I started my own Pinterest Board

We all know that we should join group boards to help expand our audience. But who has the time to find 50 group boards that match your niche exactly and email every single one of them in the hope that they will respond.

I got into 10 group boards and then gave up. I’d rather spend that time on creating kickass content, and using Tailwind to directly join more tribes instead of spending my lunch break on contacting Pinterest Group Board owners who may or may not respond to me in 2018.

So, I went around and looked for the best group boards in my niche. I need to differentiate myself but still be found easily on search.

I started my own group called Millennial Lifestyle & Career Bloggers. Why? Because this niche was small enough to not get crowded by 500 other same named boards, and it still was big enough with 10-50k followers on each such group board.

Bingo! I started my own, and in the 7 days of having this board, I have gained 200 new Pinterest followers by doing nothing. It also connected me to some like-minded bloggers in the exact same or relevant niche and helps us to grow all together, which never hurt anyone.

Moral of the story: Why follow, when you can lead?

I tracked which pins had the highest impressions and then replicated the success

If I didn’t already say this, get a Pinterest business account and make Analytics your best friend.

Once you see which pins get the maximum saves and clicks, you have got to replicate them. Impressions do not matter if the pins are not getting saved or clicked. Because saves/clicks are a better measure for how likely the person is to end up on your blog, and hence contribute to referral traffic from Pinterest. AKA Conversions.

What do I mean by replicate the most successful pins? 1) Design at least 2-3 new covers with catchy head-lines for these top pins. 2)Re-pin these to your best performing boards (which again Tailwind will tell you) 3) Rinse and repeat.

By now, you’ve probably forgotten what I started out with, so here’s a quick recap:

Follow people that are relevant to your niche consistently.
Join Tailwind, find the best tribes, optimize your pins and automate your pinning weekly or monthly.
Start your own group board, but research and find a way to differentiate within your niche first.
Identify your best pins and repeat the success.

Easy peesy right?