Self-Help for your blog – YOU NEED this platform!

I don’t usually do posts like this but I couldn’t NOT, given the numbers I’m seeing right now on a site that was – at first – just for fun.

The site is Pinterest. And if you have a blog, YOU NEED IT!

Like everything else I do, I joined and unjoined at the beginning. It was a lot like my Comfort Book with pictures I loved about spirituality, light, cats, and laughter. Then I’d add a board about something like “1970s Remember When,” and then remove it because I didn’t find it as comforting as I thought I would. Add a board. Delete a board. Back and forth.

On January 1, 2019, I got serious. I started studying how it could benefit my blog… get the word out… and most of all, get eyeballs on my cherished space here.

In two years, I’ve learned A. LOT.

Let’s begin with this for the newbies to the platform: Pins are bookmarks that people use to save content they love on Pinterest. People can search for Pins, save the ones they like and click on a Pin to learn more. If you have a business account, you can create Pins that link back to your website to share your products and ideas with people on Pinterest. (Link: Pinterest)

All the pins are put on Boards that you name yourself, like… say… “Cats Meow”. LOL

Okay, there ya go!

As you can see above, I don’t have many followers (in the realm of being “viral”) but every single follower is POWERFUL, as evidenced by the monthly views. Take a look! 566k monthly views. Folks, that’s half a million “impressions” which equal sets-of-eyeballs looking at my pins and further, the links leading back to my blog!!

Let’s talk…

On the surface, it’s a site to share things. Are you a crafter? Wood carver? Artist? Just like pretty pictures? It was the place for you back in 2010, when it began. I got in on the fun, as I mentioned above, and “pinned” well over 10,000 pins when I backed out and started over.

In 2015, same verse, same as the first.

In 2019, I noticed people actually selling things on the platform, by wooing prospective customers with a beautiful photo and then sending them to their website to buy it. I reasoned that if they could do it, so could I… well, I mean, send prospective readers to my site. ‘Twas true…

And so, I began by changing from a personal account to a business account. I did this because it gave me numbers – analytics – on all sorts of things. More on that in a moment but I want to say that you can get all the information I’ll be sharing by starting here: Pinterest Help Center

I got this rolling just before the pandemic… and Pinterest got whippin’ busy over the last year-and-a-half, which means more viewers spending more time on the platform… and… I figured out what was working for my blog space and did more of it.

What was working? My blog posts about BOOKS.

What wasn’t working? Everything else.

So, one of the first things I did was to … what’s that buzz word?… curate … my entire Pinterest space. I only kept boards that were pertinent to my blog… as in Self-Help Books, Self Care, Mental Health, Quotes, Humor, etc. Then I created a board to house all my blog posts.

Next, I went to my WordPress blog space and set it up to automatically share to all my socials, including Pinterest. I chose the “All my blog posts” board and have every single post I write automatically share to that board. (WordPress Business link HERE for directions on how to do this and all sorts of other stuff.)

At the same time, for each of the books I wrote about, I also manually shared to the Self-Help Books board.

I had years of WordPress posts under my belt already and gave myself time to share everything. I still don’t have all my posts shared… it’s a big undertaking if you’re working backwards, as I did, which is why I say to do this *right at the beginning* if you can!

Then, all I had to do was keep doing what I loved (writing) and start watching numbers. Er, the analytics.

What you see below is how many impressions, saves, and clicks to my website (to read the post referenced) each pin has seen in the last 30 days.

As you can see, some of the books are yawners and some are rockin’ the house! How does this happen? Well, this is where Pinterest gets POWERFUL.

A book like Women Who Think Too Much, which was written in 2004 and I wrote about on February 15, 2019, resonates with people so much so that 176 people came to read the post in the last 30 days just because they saw it on Pinterest and it caught their interest.

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Every time someone saves it, their followers see it. Then, if one of their followers save it, their followers see it, and so on and so on. In this case, it’s been going on for two years!

Now, if you go over to my blog and check out “Visitors Are Reading These Posts Today”, you’ll see that my post yesterday is number 1 right now (Yay!) and any other posts being read today. Where is Women Who Think Too Much? Number 3!

So, for two years, this pin has been traveling around Pinterest, being saved on boards, and it’s STILL making an (excuse the pun) impression.

I’m not doing anything to make that happen, except the initial work!

Seriously guys, it’s WIN/WIN.

So, there ya go… just one little book that I wrote about brought me visitors to my site, possible likes on the post itself (if the person reading is a WordPress user), gave them a nudge to buy the book and/or most of all, hopefully HELPED someone!

That, my friends and readers, is actually what I’m here for!