Running a blog can feel like you’re just spinning your wheels sometimes. You put all this effort writing articles that no one seems to read, spend all this time promoting content that no one sees, all the while reading about other people’s success stories that just end up leaving a bad taste in your mouth. Well my friends, we can shout “BEEN THERE, DONE THAT” in perfect unison with you.

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After starting our blog almost a year ago, we’ve had a consistent 2-3k visitors per month with a few odd spikes up to about 8k. We tried all the strategies for pinterest, instagram and email marketing and while we didn’t have a huge amount of time to commit to social media, it was enough time to feel like we were wasting our days to no avail. I’m telling you friends, we did what the “experts” told us to do. We were applying to all the group boards on pinterest, pinning 10-15x/day, liking relevant instagram posts and friending people in our “niche.” We ran in the “expert strategy lane” with the best of them. And it didn’t work. Well, not the way we wanted it to anyway. And the worst part? The very little time we had as new and pregnant full-time working moms felt totally and completely wasted.

Then in March 2019 everything changed … by accident. It wasn’t that we actively decided to switch up our strategy – we just had to. We were burned out writing content that no one read, we were nearing close to some big transitions in our lives, namely birthing additional children, and our attention was focused elsewhere. Something had to change. Throughout the entire month of March we were only able to generate 2 new articles, and we only had the bandwidth to focus on Pinterest for social media engagement. That’s all we could put on our plate.

Then one day we got an email updating us on some changes to pinterest recommendations through the course we had initially taken – Pinterest Traffic Avalanche. New content was now considered new images on new boards, even if the same link was used. And from there everything just kind of fell into place.

Here was the super simple strategy that got us tripled traffic to our blog in March 2019.

1. Create new pins for our most popular posts.

Because of the new recommendation we received through Pinterest Traffic Avalanche, we went back and created new images for our most popular pins. This was because Pinterest would now be reading “New Content” as NEW IMAGES pinned to NEW BOARDS. So we refreshed some of our popular previously published articles and created new pin images for them. We targeted about 4-5 new pins per post, depending on just how popular each one was. Then we scheduled these to be pinned to each of our relevant boards at varied intervals to fill our pinning schedule. Our pinning schedule ranges per day but averages about 15-20 pins per day. With the high volume of pinning required to accomplish consistent traffic on pinterest, it basically makes Tailwind a non-negotiable for all bloggers wanting to capitalize on that. We used the tailwind interval schedule feature to make this process as efficient as possible. Each new pin was scheduled to post on an interval somewhere between 4-6 days.

2. Fill the rest of our pinning schedule with high-quality popular posts from others in our niche.

The rest of our pinning schedule was filled up with high-quality popular posts for others in our niche. Ironically, this part of the process was actually more time consuming than what was related to our own content. I actually have a recurring to-do list item in my to-do list app EVERY SINGLE DAY to make sure my tailwind schedule was completely full for the following day. The Tailwind app for the iPhone made this so much easier, as I could just scroll through pinterest while my little was occupied and schedule a few pins here and there. But it’s definitely a commitment regardless.

I personally believe this daily scheduling tactic played a huge part in the increased pinterest engagement we received. I know a lot of bloggers who plan out their content once a week or once a month and while I’m sure that’s also effective, I have a feeling there’s something about pinning what’s popular that same day (or within a few days) that increases your board scores and ultimately gets YOUR STUFF shown more.

To explain this a little further, the higher your board ranks on pinterest, the more your stuff on that board is going to get shown to your followers and those looking at related content. And your board rankings take into account all that is posted to that board, not just your own personal stuff. So don’t be afraid to post popular articles from other bloggers! When we rise, we rise as one!

Final Recommendations

Now, I know we mentioned the lackluster expert strategies and struggles with replicating another’s success, but that does not mean ignore them. You will never know what works or doesn’t work until you try it all and it all looks different for each blogger. We can only recommend what has worked for us. And I know for a fact that we’d be nowhere near where we are today if we didn’t invest in the resources we did.

Pinterest Traffic Avalanche

This course was a game-changer for us. And it will be for you too – especially if you don’t have a ton of base knowledge about the platform. It takes you through everything you need to do…Set up a business account. Organize your boards and create your pins like a professional. Strategize and schedule your content…and the best part? You’ll continue to get updates for life. When pinterest updates algorithms (the most frustrating thing ever) and new strategies or “best practices” are revealed, you’ll be in the know. All of this is infinitely valuable. You could waste a ton of time doing things the “old way,” not having all the up-to-date information. When you build your own personal strategy, don’t you want to have all the right information at your fingertips?

Tailwind

This is kind of a no-brainer at this point. You’d have to be on pinterest all day every day in order to keep up the kind of pinning that consistent traffic through pinterest requires. And beyond this, Tailwind analyzes your profile, recommends the right times for you to pin based on engagement and provides full-on analytics you simply can’t get anywhere else. It tracks all of your boards, all of your pins and gives you access to Tailwind Tribes which is a huge bonus if you’re having trouble getting on group boards, which can really skyrocket your traffic.