Using Social Media/Pinterest to Grow Your Blog & Brand

As difficult and stressful as life can be sometimes, I am so thankful for this thing called blogging and the blogging community of wonderful people that I have been blessed to have met through it.  One of the main reasons I was looking forward to speaking at the Haven blog conference was to be able to get to spend some face to face time with people I mainly keep up with through their blogs.

Although I wasn’t able to go, I followed along on Instagram (@honeywerehome) and today, you can read recaps of the conference at A Thoughtful Place, Hi Sugarplum, and Our Fifth House.  We are also sharing the highlights from our panel discussion: Using Social Media to Grow Your Blog and Brand.

My original goal for blogging was to share my passion for creating an inviting, comfortable, pretty, well-organized home and to get inspiration from other bloggers since I was a new SAHM to a then 4-month old baby.  This blog has grown steadily and organically in three years by being featured by other bloggers (thank you!), having original content, and through social media.  My second biggest blog referrer is Pinterest- I think because images from my blog are pinned and repinned (thank you!)and because I’m highly active on Pinterest (I genuinely love it)! Let your blog readers know you are on Pinterest too!

Below are my top 7 tips for growing your blog with Pinterest:  

  1. Make it easy for people to pin images directly from your blog by adding a “Pin It” button to your blog posts. I used a great, easy tutorial by Code It Pretty to create a simple button, but she has more advanced tutorials for a more customized button.  I like the button that I have that allows people to see how many times an image has been pinned. 
  2. Post high-quality content with pin-worthy images.  This is super important since Pinterest is a visual social media. Create a pinnable image in PicMonkey (or other photo-editing site) by adding text to describe or label the project, but don’t do on every photo- people prefer clean images. Not all of your readers are looking to pin, so don’t clutter up your post.
  3. Make sure your pins link back to your blog (test them out).  It’s annoying/frustrating to click on a pin that leads nowhere or not to the post the pin generated from (i.e. the home page).
  4. Tall, long images pin best (twice as tall as it is wide) and the best time to pin for repins is between 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. EST and 8:00 p.m. – 1:00 a.m. EST.
  5. Schedule your pins with Pingraphy or Ahalogy. You install a bookmarklet in your web browser’s bookmarks bar (just like the “Pin it” button). When you find an image you want to pin, you just click on the button to post to Pinterest or schedule. Pingraphy features a stats program that shows repins, likes, and follows.  It’s free for 30 days, then subscription based.
  6. If you’ve been blogging for awhile (pre-Pinterest) go back and create pinnable images for your old content.  Or repackage your old content  – maybe you’ve done a lot of projects with a particular product i.e. rub ‘n buff, spray paint, mod podge, etc. – create a new post rounding up those projects with a pinnable image to gain traffic from your old content. 
  7. Be nice and genuine.  Repin other bloggers’ good content and thank bloggers for pinning your good content. 

You can read Carmel, Cassie and Courtney’s tips for growing your blog too:

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Meet Megan

Hi! I’m Megan, mom to a thoughtful teenager and spunky young girl. We call Houston home and recently moved into our dream home. I traded my lawyer hat to become a full-time blogger in 2010. I love sharing my passion for affordable fashion, home decor, organization, & fitness to help inspire you to take care of you!

15 Comments

  1. Great tips, Megan! I just discovered Pingraphy the other day and love it! I had no idea that there were certain times of day that were better for pinning but it makes total sense. Thanks!

  2. Missed you at Haven, Megan! This was an awesome session (they did a great job in your absence!). Thanks bunches for the recap… I had no idea about Ahalolgy or Pingraphy before this Haven session!
    xo Heidi

  3. Thanks for posting these tips, and providing a hand out! I truly appreciated not having to scribble down everything y'all talked about!!

    I actually did a recap of things I learned in the Haven Conference classes/sessions (and provided links to each of your blogs). Just wanted to give you a heads up that the second set of links for Sugar Plum: "Facebook: Cassie {Hi Sugarplum}" brings you to A Thoughtful Place.

    Thanks again for inspiring and providing such a wealth of knowledge! Kudos to your team of lovely ladies!!

  4. Hi Megan – Thanks so much for writing about Pingraphy in the past. We're now called Viraltag and have added some great features for visual content marketing. We're also happy to tell you Viraltag is now running on Pinterest's API. With the new data we're building more functionality to make Viraltag an even more powerful platform for our users. If you have any questions feel free to reach out to me directly — Jilly Badanes, Director of Marketing @ Viraltag.

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