How bloggers use Pinterest: an interview with Jana of Life Could be a Dream

After seeing so many pins to her site with high repins I knew I needed to interview her for the Interviews with Power Pinners series.

Life Could be a Dream and Pinterest

Pinterest Profile: https://www.pinterest.com/janatolman/
Boards: 28
Pins: 4,000+
Followers: 2500+

What is your Pinterest Success Story.

I have a handful of pins that bring me consistent traffic every week. I love that I’m able to have new people visiting my blog and commenting on posts I shared months or even years ago–and oftentimes, those people stick around, read a few more posts, and decide they want to follow along with me long term. 🙂

On average, what percentage of traffic to your blog comes from Pinterest.

Pinterest normally accounts for about 90% of my blog traffic–easily my top referrer. This past month, 86.26% of my traffic came from Pinterest.

Share one tip for bloggers wanting to be a successful pinner like you.

Since Pinterest is such a visual platform, you MUST make your content visually appealing. This means learning to take great photos and focusing on creating pin-worthy images. Once you have really gotten consistently great imagery on your blog for people to pin, then you can move on to the next step and really tackle the more fine-tuning bits of your Pinterest strategy and growing your following.

But seriously, start with great photos/images. If you don’t do that, Pinterest isn’t going to be a very useful tool for you.

Do you or have you ever promoted pins? Was it worth it?

At this point, I haven’t ever promoted a pin. I want to try it out in the future though! I’ve heard from some blog friends that it’s been fairly successful for them, so I think it might be worth a shot.

Do you change the descriptions of pins before you pin them?

It depends. I do if I want to make a note of something to remember when I come back to the pin later (like if it’s a recipe pin and I had an idea for putting my own spin on it), or if the description from the previous pinner isn’t at all relevant to me/doesn’t sound like something I would say.

On average, how many times do you pin a day?

Normally, I spend 10-15 minutes at the end of the day to pin content that isn’t mine. I think it’s important to focus on curating great content from lots of different sources so that your followers trust your pins. Then having your pins interspersed is more effective because they know the content you’re sharing is worth repinning and looking into. Probably 20% of my pins come from my site.

Do you use a scheduling tool?

I recently tried a free trial of Boardbooster and I thought it was great! I loved that I could have my pins going out at optimal times of the day and that I could set up Boardbooster to look for pins I would like for me and save them to a secret board that the service would then publish to my public boards after my approval (liking the pin). It was great to have content being pinned “by me” all through the day without me actually being tied to my phone or computer.

When you publish a new post on your blog, what is your Pinterest routine/strategy for that post?

I’ll pin it to a relevant board in the morning, and that’s about it! Honestly I don’t like pinning my posts to multiple boards or pinning it again and again, and again. I feel like that gets annoying for my followers. I find that focusing more on having well curated boards, having killer imagery, and really building trust with my followers is my best tool for having people repin my content, rather than constantly spamming them with content from my blog.

Do you mostly repin or do you pin from the actual website more?

It’s important to have a mix of both. I definitely like to pin directly from other websites, because if that pin happens to go viral and shows up in the Popular section of Pinterest, my profile is credited as being the original pinner. That’s AWESOME exposure!

What does your Pinterest day look like?

Honestly, it’s very laid back. Pinterest is something I try not to stress about a lot because I love it and I want it to continue to be fun for me instead of being a chore.

Every time I write a blog post, I create a “hero” image (something that visually describes what the post is about and entices people to click through) for it to go near the top of my post. Then when posts go live, I pin the image.

Other than that, I just pin throughout the day if I have time (like when I’m nursing my daughter), or for sure at the end of the day before bed. No stress. 🙂

Takeaways for your Pinterest strategy

Having pinnable pictures is a big deal. Not only do Jana’s own pins get repinned often, but her images that are pinned by other people also perform well. Having a pinnable image for every post and making it easy for readers to pin from your site is important for a successful Pinterest strategy.

Jana’s pinterest interview also shows us that both organic pins and repins are important for your blog. Make sure you are pinning directly from others’ sites and that you encourage your readers to pin directly from your site as well.

What did you learn from Jana’s Pinterest experiences?