11 Tips to Grow Your Pinterest Following (without using a scheduler)

Over the past few months I’ve heard over and over again that Pinterest is where bloggers and shops should be investing their time online. If you are reading this and wondering why, well let’s get started with that before I introduce my 8 Tips to Grow Your Pinterest Following.

When I meet bloggers lately, I ask them this question, “Where does the majority of your traffic come from?” Do you know what they say. Yup! You know it, Pinterest! Traffic for bloggers = more site views, revenue (though ads) and more exposure. Traffic for businesses = more sales, revenue and more exposure. When I think about it myself, I often find myself searching DIY’s, party ideas, motherhood tips and fashion ideas on Pinterest. Not Google. Pinterest.

Make sense? I hope so! Let’s get into the good stuff, tips to grow your Pinterest following.

I’ve recently just peaked 1,100 followers on Pinterest (I wrote this post a month ago and am now 1277), and though it’s not anything massive, I am still proud of the outcome. It has only been a few months since I started implementing the tips and strategies below. A few months, ten minutes a day and no money spent advertising (minus one ad that completely flopped, I didn’t set it up right and had zero engagement) and you will be well on your way to seeing Pinterest Growth.

11 Tips | How to Grow Your Pinterest Following Without Spending Money on a Scheduler

1. Change the way you think

People often refer to Pinterest as a social media site connected to their blog and business. If that’s your mind set then that’s the first thing you need to change. Pinterest is a search engine that people use to be inspired. Create content and label that content with searchable keywords.

2. Use alt attributes on all Images

When uploading images to your website or blog make sure that you are labelling the alt tags on your images with those searchable keywords. You know the phrase that comes up when you pin something from someone else’s site, that’s the alt tag. When other people pin your pins you want there to be an excellent description of that image.

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3. Portrait / Vertical High Quality Images Only

Just take a peak for your own feed. When you scroll down your home page do you see more vertical images or horizontal? Vertical right! It’s proven that vertical images are much more likely to be repinned by fellow pinners. The stand out from the rest and are more likely to get your attention.

This blog post contains affiliate links. Which means that with a purchase I make a percentage of the sale. With that said, I would never recommend something that I didn’t believe in.

4. Pin Daily

It takes dedication, you have you be spending time everyday pinning your own images as well as other people’s images. I read somewhere when finding tips to grow that 50 pins a day is a great place to start. Did your eyes just get really wide and you thought to yourself, ha! Good one that absurd?! That’s what happened to me when I read it, but I decided to go for it, I started lower with 20 and then started adding more sessions in throughout my day. So you could do like 20 in the morning and 20 at night to see how that works.

5. Create a Branded Board

Create a board for your own content. I’ve labelled mine after my blog and it is the first board when you land on my Pinterest home page. Everything from my blog goes to this board first so that I can keep track which pins do better then others and use it for repinning my own content, which leads to my next point.

6. Repin your own Pins

It’s ok to pin the same pin to the same board more then once, twice or even three times. My rule of thumb is that I always just try to pin a good handful of content in between each repeated repin per board.

7. Join Group Boards

I’ve found that these have been a huge help for some of my pins that have started picking up traction. Group boards generally have a large number of followers, are constantly getting new pins and are a great place to repin your pins to. This is where your own board comes in handy, at least once or twice a week I’ll head over to my blog board and pin out a group of pins to each of my group boards.

8. Name Your Boards Appropriately

Before I wanted to grow my Instagram my boards all had names like H A I R S T Y L E S  with spaces between each letter. Now remember, Pinterest is a search engine and if someone is searching for boards that have great hairstyle inspiration, my board would not come up in the search. It might look pretty, but it most definitely is not gaining me any new viewers.

9. Profile picture and little blurb

Be sure to have something that represents your brand or blog as the first thing people see when they hit your landing page. You want your branding to match your website and other social platforms. I would suggest if you are a business be sure to have your logo and if you are a blogger then likely people will recognize your face. Also make sure you have a clickable link to your website saved within your profile

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10. Set your Cover Images

Choose images that are all similar to each other and to your brand for the cover image of each board. Pinterest is a visual site and you want your gallery of boards to be as visually attractive and relatable to your brand as possible to be sure to attract your niche market.

11. Follow Accounts You Love

Find people that you follow on your other favourite social media sites and follow them on Pinterest as well. Most likely if you have a relationship on another platform you will gain a follow back on here as well. Follow those who you are generally interested in their content so that it makes your 50 pins a day easier to accomplish as your daily feed will be full of great content.

Bonus tip!

Grow your Instagram Through Your Pinterest

Pin images from your Instagram feed to your Pinterest and Ican almost guarantee you will see an increase in Instagram growth. Since the new year I started pinning from my Instagram feed and have noticed a steady increase in the number of profile views and followers my account receives weekly. Be sure to edit the description and pin to a relatable board.

I hope you’ve found these 11 Tips For Growing Your Pinterest to be beneficial. I’d love to hear any tips you may have used to grow your account that I didn’t mention in the comments below.

Oh! And while you are at it, check out my Pinterest Profile.