How to Make Your WordPress Blog Pinterest Friendly

[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.0.48″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″ parallax=”off” parallax_method=”on”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.13.1″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” text_font_size=”18px” text_font=”||||||||”]Visit any forum or Facebook group and every blogger wants to know how they can get more traffic. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, Pinterest is the “hot traffic” source right now. If you’ve been wanting to jump on the bandwagon, follow along as I walk you through step-by-step on how to make your WordPress blog Pinterest friendly.

What is Pinterest?

You may have heard bloggers talk about how amazing Pinterest is for growing their blog. Many people think it’s a place where people share recipes and wedding pictures and holiday themed ideas.

While it is true that you can find tons of great recipes, the truth is that many savvy bloggers have found a way to build their blog traffic and branding using Pinterest. Here’s a great video that will help you learn more about what Pinterest is.

I’ve been using Pinterest for about 2 months. It’s been a learning curve, but I am just starting to see results. I wish someone would’ve told me about these 23 Pinterest tips for bloggers when I got started.

A word of advice, you can’t expect to see instant results. Just like blogging it takes time. So don’t expect to pin your content once and then see a flood of traffic.

It just doesn’t happen that way. Unfortunately, there’s a learning curve to using Pinterest or starting a blog. However, the great thing is that it’s NOT that difficult and it’s kind of fun.

While this post isn’t going to cover how to pin your images or how to join group boards, it is going to show you how to make your WordPress blog Pinterest friendly. This will make it easy for people to share your content, which hopefully, will start improving your traffic.

Should You Use Pinterest For Your Blog?

As a blogger there’s so much that needs to be done on a daily basis. You’ve got a to-do-list that is larger than life. Do you really have time to add another marketing method to your list?

The truth is that you can’t afford to ignore Pinterest. By now you know that it takes forever for SEO to kick in. Plus you don’t want to pour your heart and soul into SEO only to find out that Google has updated their algorithm again.

Social media is where it’s at, and Pinterest is the big player. If you don’t have a lot of time, just focus on 1-2 sites. Pinterest should be one of them because it’s the easiest to use and give you more bang for your buck.

You don’t have to be a graphic designer. In fact, most bloggers aren’t. Whether you’re trying to grow your business blog or affiliate marketing blog.

Pinterest can help you achieve your goals. You just have to be willing to give it some time and learn as much as you can along the way.

So now that you know why you should get started with Pinterest, let’s make it easy to get started with it on your blog.

Here’s What You’re Going to Learn

If you’re using a self-hosted WordPress blog, then getting your blog ready for Pinterest isn’t going to take much time. There’s a plugin that will help make the process easier.

Below you will find all the steps we’ll be discussing to get your blog ready. Depending on where you are with your WordPress blog, you can click on the link and you will be taken directly to that section.

• Enable rich pins using WordPress
• Social Media Plugins My Recommendations
• Make It Easy for Others to Share Your Images
• How to Add Alt Tags to Your WordPress Images
• How to Embed Pinterest Board On Your WordPress Blog
• Let People Know You’re Active On Pinterest

As you can see, there’s a lot to cover, so we need to get started. After you finish this blog post, you’ll have actionable steps you can use to start promoting your blog content on Pinterest.

How to Enable Rich Pins On My Blog

There are 2 ways to enable rich pins on your blog. If you’re using WordPress, then you can easily use a plugin that you probably already have installed on your blog.

Let’s cover the method of using the Yoast SEO plugin to enable rich pins on your WordPress blog.

Enabling Rich Pins on WordPress With Yoast SEO

Before you can enable rich pins on your WordPress blog you need to log into your Pinterest account. You’ll need to setup a business account to enable this feature.

If you’re already using Pinterest for personal purposes, read this article to convert your Pinterest account to a business account.

Once you’ve converted it to a business account, go to settings and scroll down until you see your website.

If your Pinterest account is brand new you will need to add your URL in the text box. Let me walk you through the process so you know exactly how to do this.

Enter your domain without the https or http.

Once you enter your domain a click on confirm website and a box like this will popup.

It clearly states that you need to paste this in the head section of your websites index.html file. WHAT, where’s the head section on a self-hosted WordPress blog?

If you’re using a regular HTML website this can easily be done. However, for those of us that are using WordPress. I’ve found it extremely easy to do this with the Yoast SEO plugin.

So follow along and let’s get the rich pins enabled on your blog in minutes instead of spending hours. Copy and paste your Pinterest confirmation code on a text pad or document of some type. You’ll need to be able to find it quickly.

Enabling Rich Pins In Minutes

Log into your WordPress dashboard and head on over to your Yoast SEO settings. If you haven’t installed the plugin on your blog, then now is the time to do it.

Scroll down till you see the this.

Go to social

Click on your Pinterest tab at the top and this is where you’re going to enter your Pinterest confirmation code to enable rich pins.

Save Changes
It may take a little while for Pinterest to enable rich pins. Give it some time and the next time you log into your Pinterest profile settings, you should see that your site has been confirmed.

Now you have rich pins enabled. Rich pins add your website name and blog post title to every single pin from your website. This is great because it helps build your brand recognition.

Once you’ve enabled rich pins on your WordPress blog, it’s time to start sharing your content.

Social Media Plugins My Recommendations

If you’re like most bloggers, then you’re trying to build your brand by using content marketing. You sit down and write amazing helpful content that solves people’s problems. It literally could take you hours to write one blog post.

Once you’re done writing it, you want people to share it. You want them to share it on all the social media sites in hopes of it driving traffic back to your blog. Heck you may even get lucky and have one of your blog posts go viral.

So now that you’ve written that awesome content, we want as many people as possible to share it. Your job is to make it as easy as possible for others to share your content.

This means that you need to add social share buttons that are easy to find. People are not going to go looking for your social share buttons.

Yours truly will not go out of her way to share people’s content. If the buttons are hard to find, the post won’t get shared. I don’t care how great it was.

The more people that share your content, the better chance you’ll have of people signing up for your email list, buying your products and services or taking that action you want them to take.

Below you will find 3 social sharing plugins that made the list. Yes there are all kinds of plugins available that you can use. It would be impossible to cover all the different plugins.

When it comes to your blog, you’ll just have to find the right one that works for your blog. Feel free to use the same one that Chantel uses for her blog.

Monarch Social Sharing Plugin

The Monarch Social Sharing plugin gets high reviews. It’s easy to set up and offers you all kinds of different settings. Here’s some  awesome documentation that will help you get it set up properly.

This plugin makes it easy for people to share your content. The best part is that you have the option to setup:

• Sidebar
• Inline
• Flyin
• Popup

If you haven’t started using a social media plugin check out the Monarch Social Sharing plugin to see if your social shares on our blog increases.

Free Simple Share Buttons Adder

You might be thinking what about a free social sharing plugin? Even if you don’t have a budget to invest in a social sharing plugin, you may want to consider the Simple Share Buttons Adder plugin.

Once you install the plugin you will then have the options to style and setup your social share buttons the way you want them.

The buttons can be inserted into your:

• Homepage
• Pages
• Posts
• Excerpts
• Categories/Archives

You can install it and play around with the different settings to get your buttons looking the way you want them to. Once you’re done setting up your social media links and styling the buttons, this is what it will look like on your page.

At the time of this writing this plugin was last updated 3 months ago and has over 100,000 downloads.

Social Warfare Is The Best In My Opinion

You’re a new blogger and the last thing you want to do is pay for a social media plugin. However, this plugin is awesome and needs to be shared.

You can check out a complete step-by-step tutorial of how to setup the Social Warfare plugin. This plugin gives you full control over what people are sharing from your blog.

This means that you can create a specific image you want your visitors to share on Pinterest. It takes a little more work because you have to create the image.

The great news is that only the image you want shared is actually being shared. At the time of this writing, the plugin costs $29 per year. It’s well worth the investment if you’re blogging to build a business.

Make It Easy For People to Share Your Images

If you’re like most bloggers who are trying to build a business, it takes you hours to write a new blog post. I know that it takes me several hours to write my posts.

This post took well over 10 hours to write and I wanted it to be perfect because it’s my first guest post. I wanted it to be awesome for Chantel Arnett’s blog.

If you’re writing amazing content, you want to spend time promoting your new blog post. This increases the chances of getting your epic post in front of other people and them taking the time to share your content.

WordPress makes it easy to have others share your content. Most people will tell you that the number of social shares is nothing more than a vanity number.

While that may be true, you can’t look at it from a numbers point of view. Do you spend time reading people’s content that does not have any shares? You might, but in the back of your head you’re thinking, “no one really finds this information helpful or interesting.

Look at social shares on your blog this way. The more re-pins and retweets means that your content is getting in front of new people that you may be able to help.

You want your content shared so you can get in front of more eyeballs. No let me say it again, you NEED your content to be shared.

What Does A Pinterest Friendly Blog Look Like?

You’ll be able to spot a Pinterest friendly blog when you see it. The blog will most likely have great looking pictures that are cohesive and look the same throughout their blog.

As you can see Chantel’s images are pin ready and are coherent with the rest of her blog. She’s take the time to add her URL to her images and is consistent with the font and colors.

Don’t you love reading interview success stories? I do, in fact I was blown away by the interview with Michele Schroeder-Gardner that I had to share it. The best part is that Chantel makes it easy for people to share it.

If you haven’t read that post, you may want to after reading this post. The interview will make you want to keep pushing towards your blogging goals. After your done reading it, don’t forget to give it some love and share it.

Your blog doesn’t have to look like Chantel’s. However, you do want to create images for every blog post.

How to Add Alt Tags to Your WordPress Images

Now that you know what a Pinterest friendly blog looks like, it’s time to start creating the images. If you’re using the Social Warfare plugin, it will tell you the dimensions each image should be.

Once you’ve created that awesome re-pinnable image it’s time to add alt tags and descriptions to your pin. You never want to let people pin your images without a description.

Do not believe that people will take the time to add a description. It’s not going to happen. If your pin doesn’t have a description, no one is going to re-pin it.

People don’t have time to create your descriptions. So take the time to do it correctly from the beginning to ensure you’re getting the pins and re-pins.

Adding alt tags and descriptions to your WordPress images is NOT difficult. You’ll upload your images to your WordPress blog, don’t forget to optimize them.

As you can see WordPress will ask you to input your alt tags for the image as well as the description. If you’re using this plugin, it will have a place for you to write your Pinterest description.

Now that you’ve written a description and added the alt tag your image is now ready for others to start sharing.

How to Embed Pinterest Board On Your WordPress Blog

Now that you’ve got a great social sharing plugin and have created awesome images, it’s time to add a Pinterest image to your blog.

This isn’t required, but I have found that it is a great way to let my readers know that I’ve joined Pinterest. Even if you don’t decide to embed Pinterest on your blog, you’ll at least know how to do it.

Step 1: Log into your Pinterest account and choose the board you want to create the widget for.

Step 2: Click on the dots and then Click on make a widget.

Step 3: This opens up the Pinterest widget builder page. Choose how you want your widget to display on your WordPress blog. Don’t worry, you can always delete it from your blog if you don’t like the way it looks.

Step 4: Grab the code that is provided for the widget.

Step 5: Log back into your WordPress blog and go to Appearance > Widgets Drag and drop a text widget to your widgets.

Save your changes and now your Pinterest widget is on your sidebar.

If you’d rather have your profile on your posts and pages, you can do that as well. You just have to play around with the different types of widgets you want to create on the widget builder.

How to Add a Pin It Button To Images

You’ve seen those pin it buttons on sites blogs you visit. They have a pin it button that makes it very easy for you to share. You might be wondering which plugin does that?

If you’re using the Social Warfare plugin, you won’t have to worry about using a different plugin. It takes care of everything and makes it easy to share your images and content to different social sites.

If you’re not ready to invest in your blog yet, then this plugin comes highly recommended.  I’ve personally never used it, but it has a lot of great reviews.

You can set the plugin up to:

• Choose your pin description
• Assign which pictures show the pin it button (all images or post images)
• Where do you want the “Pin it” button to show? (home page, all posts, specific categories, specific pages)
• Allows you to set up your own Pinterest design button

You may have to play around with it to get it to work the way you want. However, once you set it up once, you won’t have to worry about it again.

Let People Know You’re Active On Pinterest

Great you’ve decided to join the Pinterest bandwagon to start building your blog traffic. Now it’s time to let people know that you’ve created your boards on Pinterest.

If you already have a following on Facebook and Twitter, let your followers know about your new Pinterest account. No one is going to know you’re on Pinterest unless you shout it to the world.

Here’s What to do Next..

Before you publish your next blog post, follow the steps above and get your WordPress blog ready. Learn as much as you can about making the most of Pinterest. Don’t forget to visit Chantel’s Pinterest tips for bloggers.

You don’t want to focus 100% on using Pinterest for your main traffic source. You never want to have all your traffic coming from one source.

However, there’s nothing wrong with using it to help you build traction for your new blog. Now that you know how to make your blog Pinterest friendly, there’s no stopping you now.

Take this afternoon and convert your personal account into a business account. Choose a social sharing plugin for your blog so people can share your content. Then start letting people know you’re on Pinterest.

It’s never too late to jump on the Pinterest bandwagon. If you do it today, who knows what your business will look like 2-3 months from now.

Don’t forget to write a lot of content, so people can share. If you’re already using Pinterest, maybe you have some tips that I missed? Let me know what plugin you use for blog. What tips do you have for creating images for your blog posts?

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