6 Essential Pinterest Integration Tips for Bloggers

The internet has fallen in love with Pinterest, and what’s not to love? This fast-growing online destination offers a smorgasbord of images to appease the visually-crazed, and is just social enough to make it a great networking tool. Thanks to the combination of these two elements, Pinterest has become an object of interest to bloggers far and wide.

Even if you don’t have a presence on Pinterest, there is a great chance that your audience does. This means you at least need to give it consideration. For those who are ready to go, the following tips will explain how you can effectively integrate Pinterest with your blogging efforts.

1. Add a “Pin It” Button to Your Blog Posts

If you follow trends across the social web at all, you knew it wouldn’t be long before Pinterest came out with a button that connects it to the rest of the world. With the Pin It button, you can provide an easy way for people to share your content on their Pinteret boards. Luckily, adding this button to your post is a simple process.

• Login to your Pinterest account.
• Grab the button code from the “Goodies” section.
• Add the code to the HTML area of your blog post and you’re done!

2. Make Your Posts Pinterst-Friendly

You’ll see a few videos here and there, but the main activity on Pinterest is sharing images. This is why I highly recommend including images in most, if not all of your posts. If you include at least one image, then readers can pin your entire blog post to a board. You definitely want this type of exposure, so when you go to crank out that next post, don’t forget to complement it with a high quality image or two.

3. Use a Pinterest Plugin

If WordPress is your blogging platform of choice, then you may want to consider using a plugin to support your integration efforts. There are quite a few to choose from, with Pinterest Plugin, Pinterest Galleries, and Pinterst Follow Button being some of the most popular options. While there are no official plugins available for Blogger, there are tools you can use to add Pin It and Follow buttons to your blog.

4. Add Boards to Your Blog

Most bloggers focus on getting their blog posts on Pinterest, but you can also reverse this and add boards to your blog. There are a couple of ways to do this. You can use a plugin like Pinterest RSS Widget, or code the functionality into your theme, which of course, requires some programming knowledge. You could also use a service like IFTTT, a tool that automates the process for blogs using Pinterest-inspired themes. Keep in mind that the aforementioned methods are all specific to WordPress.

5. Network with Fellow Pinners

Pinterest may not be the conventional social network, but it falls in the same category as the rest of them nonetheless. You can juice this site for its rich networking capabilities by connecting with other users. Comment on their pins. Like them. Repin them. This is the same approach you want to take when marketing on any social network. Spread the love, steer clear of the spammy advertising tactics, and rubbing shoulders with the Pinterest faithful could send some nice traffic to your blog.

6. Track Your Efforts

So you’ve made the move to integrate Pinterest with your blogging efforts. How’s everything going? Hopefully you have a good tracking system that will allow you to find out. When combing over your reports, you mainly want to find out who is coming in from Pinterest, and what they are doing once they reach your blog. Whether it’s JetPack for WordPress or the Blogger-friendly Google Analytics, there are several tools that can provide these insights.

Market in the Moment

How long will the Pinterest craze last? It’s hard to say. A site that is popular one year could be on its way out the door the next. What’s important for now is understanding that the hype behind this thing is very real. Consumers are all in and some of the brands that hopped on the bandwagon early are seeing good results. If you start working on integrating Pinterest with your blog now, you will be in line to see some gains regardless of what happens in the future.

How are you mixing Pinterest with your efforts? Anything that might work for the rest of us?
Share the knowledge in a comment?