Pinterest is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your blog and website. You can make money from your blog using Pinterest. Pinterest is one of the best ways and place I use to grow my email list and blog traffic and so many other bloggers use Pinterest too. But there are so many misconceptions about this tool.
Most bloggers are hoping to write at least 100 blog post before collecting emails or maybe have a blog with at least 1000 page views a day. This is why my first blog failed too and I believe you are not making the same mistake?
It is easier to convert those in your email list and drive sales compared to your social media platform.
Table of Contents
Tools You Will Need To Grow Your Email List Using Pinterest
1. An email marketing Software:
You need an email marketing service software for collecting emails and probably one you can use to send out newsletters. I use Mailmunch to offer my freebies.
Mailchimp also allows you to have a list of 2000 subscribers for free. other affordable software includes Maillerlite (also have a free package), Convert Kit, Sumo etc.
2. Opt-in forms:
You need opt-in forms, landing pages which can be provided by your email marketing software or you can use Elementor for building custom landing pages.
3. Freebie/lead magnet:
This is something of value that you offer to your readers or subscribers in exchange for his or her email address.
A freebie or lead magnet is usually digital products, pdfs, ebooks, checklist or reduced price for accessing premium membership, products or courses.
4. Pinterest account:
Pinterest is a type of search engine in the form of a social platform used for driving tons of traffic and subscribers to your blog for free.
5. Canva:
Canva is a software for designing graphic templates, ebooks, Pinterest pins etc
Bloggers complain how stagnant their list have remained despite creating opt-in forms and placing it on their blog…
Reasons why no one is signing up to your email list and how to fix it:
1. You are not creating the right type of freebie:
To create a freebie, you need to understand the mission statement of your blog, you need to ask yourself this question who is my blog audience?
Your freebie should be related to your blogging niche (it should solve your audience problem). In my free ebook “The Kangaroo guide to picking a profitable niche” I explained steps to uncover your audience.
Pro tips: Your freebie should solve your audience problems.
Illustration: this blog is supposed to be a mixture of personal development and business blogging. Once, I created a lead magnet on self-love guide, it barely received subscribers.
That is because I have come to realize that my audience wants more content on blogging. Your freebie should be something that your audience truly needs.
2. Your opt-in forms are poorly placed:
one thing is to create a form, and another thing is to have people signup, I mean strategically placing these forms where your audience can see them.
Pro blogger Melyssa Griffin, in one of her webinars, advised that opt-in forms should be placed in 7-different places on your blog because people need to see something over and over again to take actions.
In this freebie “Strategic Methods for placing your opt-in forms“. I covered the best types of forms and where to place them for optimal conversions” Download it for free.
3. You are not offering something in return for their email address:
Does your opt-in form have something like “subscribe to our newsletter” then my friend that will never allow your list to grow.
Please offer something in return; it could be a checklist, cheat sheet, one page PDF or something valuable in return.
If you are concerned about how to make them, I have premade Lead magnet templates on the Shop, and they are affordable.
4. 4th Reason Why No one is signing up to your list-Your blog lacks traffic:
If you ask ten (10), different bloggers, what is their biggest blogging challenge? Especially new bloggers, at least five (5) will tell you traffic.
Statistics show that 80% of blog visitors will not return to your site after stumbling on it.
For you to retain the portion of the traffic you receive, you need to have an email list; not just having it but an email list where you relate with your audience.
You need to share your blog post, opt-in forms and lead magnets on your social media pages and Pinterest.
Pinterest could be used to drive tons of traffic to your blog with the right strategies.
Now we have addressed this, let’s go down to how to use Pinterest to grow your email list?
How to Set Up Your Pinterest Account to Grow Your Email List
1. Open a Pinterest account: if you do not have an account on Pinterest you should head on to Pinterest.com, sign up and fill in your details.
2. Switch Your account to a business account: To succeed or drive traffic directly from Pinterest to your blog, you need to stop being a hoarder.
Learn to be a Pinterest curator; curators produce contents on Pinterest in the form of Pins while, hoarders go about saving pins either to use as a mood board, source of inspiration and, every other thing people do on Pinterest.
When do you become are a Pinterest Curator?
When you claim your website on Pinterest, it means you are informing Pinterest that you are a content creator, they allow you to post pins that with a URL directed to your website or blog.
How to Get Started With Pinterest
1. Create your Boards on Pinterest: After creating your Pinterest account, create boards, you should have at least 15-25 Boards. You can start from somewhere.
2. How to know what type of boards to create and how to name your boards;
Example, you are a lifestyle blogger and, you create content basically on women lifestyle.
Let’s assume you want to name your boards.
a) Go on Pinterest, search women lifestyle, look at that bar above, those suggested keywords, create boards with that name.
Niche down properly
Add keywords and descriptions to your Boards Save them.
Pro tips: When you created your boards, you may not have enough pins to fill in, save 15-20 pins from other persons. Save pins with highest shares. Keep your board secret and keep filling them with pins. When it gets to at least 30. Make it visible.
3. Apply for Rich Pins:
Please go on Pinterest and confirm your website. It only takes a few minutes. Switch to a business account and, confirm you own the website or blog.
Easy Steps
i. Log in to your WordPress dashboard
ii. Install Yoast Seo plugin if you do not have it installed already on your WordPress blog.
iii. Activate the Yoast Seo plugin
iv. Got to Seo> Social>Facebook
v. Make sure Open Graph Metadata is enabled
Step no. 2
Copy any URL from your blog.
Validate your Rich pin by pasting the copied URL and click on validate.
Viola! Congratulations! You have rich pins.
Pinterest will then validate your Rich Pins. This process only needs to be completed once, transforming all your website’s pins into Article Pins.
Every time a Pin with your Url is on Pinterest, extra information will pull up ensuring your pins are consistently labelled and engaging, leading to more clicks and traffic to your website.
Now we are done with setting up Pinterest, let’s grow your email list.
Opt-in Form Methods for Growing Your List With Pinterest
One of the easiest ways to grow your list using Pinterest is creating forms, landing pages and content upgrades.
In case you need help deciding what type of opt-in form to create and how to go about it.
In this Freebie, I covered the different types of opt-in forms, strategies and methods to place them for better conversion, the kinds of freebies you should create to fit your audience needs.
Option One:
For this purpose, you could create a landing page containing your freebie, using a custom page builder such as Elemntor page builder, after which you can create a pin with the URL of your landing page.
Example; This freebie on “How to pick a blogging niche,“. I went ahead to create a landing page using Elementor a free plugin, view the landing page here.
I created this pin, posted it on Pinterest directing users to that landing page. To access that freebies, one has to signup, consenting that he or she would love to get emails from me.
It’s a win-win situation, they get their freebie, and I grow my email list.
Option 2:
Another way to create a landing page if you do not want to go through the hassles of building one using the Elementor page builder or other page builders to grow your email list using Pinterest.
You can create custom landing pages from your email marketing software. The most popular email marketing software that offers landing pages includes Convert Kit, Mailchimp and Mailmuch. I used Mailmunch to create a free landing page, to deliver this freebie “Strategic Methods of placing freebies that convert”.
Adding Your freebie in a post as a content Upgrade: A content upgrade is a freebie or something of value that you offer in a blog post. A content upgrade is usually valuable and should be related to the blog post. It could be a PDF, checklist, cheatsheet, ebook, reduced price for a product.
Example:
This post is all about growing your email list, and I have a content upgrade which is about strategic methods for placing your opt-in forms for email list growth. The content upgrade and the blog post are related.
Learn the strategies I covered for placing forms that convert. Your content upgrade can be a cheat sheet, a little ebook, workbook, or something of value relating to the blog post. Offer your content freebie as a content upgrade in a blog post.
Example;
You created a blog post on “5 ways to grow your traffic” you could offer a freebie on “6 strategies to grow your traffic”.
It could be something of value; it may be a PDF that is not free but for a reduced price.
I covered all types of opt-in forms and freebie, how to place them strategically in this freebie.
Now we are done creating our opt-in forms and Landing Pages, Let’s connect them to our boards on Pinterest.
Best Tips: Recently, Pinterest updated its algorithm. Pinterest will be giving more attention to Fresh pins, which means Pinterest wants you to create new pins. This policy may be good news or a piece of bad news, especially If you do not have a backup plan on how to get new pins.
When Pinterest mean new pins, they are not asking that you write a new blog post every day, you can post the same URL, they want new images and pin designs.
Well, I took a break from my Pinterest account for about a month, look at one of the Pins I posted a few days ago, it gained over 1000 impressions within 1 hour and, it was from a post I wrote in December.
Create 3-4 Fresh pins for your freebies and post them on your relevant and engaging boards on Pinterest. You can use Canva or photoshop to design your pins.
SPECIAL OFFER: Be productive and purchase the bundle, you get 2-lead magnets with sales pages, a media kit for making money and a Pinterest bundle for growing your list. If you purchase this bundle for just $25 you will get access to a Pinterest Pin bundle and 3-other templates for a fee of $25
Tools You Can Use To Create Your Freebie
The most versatile tool used by bloggers across the world for creating their freebie is Canva.
Canva is a DIY designing tool, it has both basic (Free) and premium plans.
SPECIAL OFFER: if you want to focus on just creating your content while looking out for other better ways to grow your blog. I have a special offer you; In the FOB Template shop, I sell beautiful, stunning and easily customizable templates for your ebook, lead magnets and media kit.
If you use this secret link, you will get access to 4 beautiful templates (2-Ebook/Lead magnet Templates and 1 Media Kit and Pinterest Templates) for just $25 instead of $93. You can either choose to design your freebie using Canva from scratch or purchase a premade template and save yourself the stress.
Finally, you need to be patient with your journey, focus more on driving traffic from Pinterest to your blog and trust your process.
- Create freebies/ landing pages.
- Create pins and pin them to relevant boards
- Schedule your pins on Pinterest using Tailwind
This is one of the many methods I used to grow my list. What is your best method for growing your email list?
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This is extremely helpful being a new blogger and struggling with my email list
Hey LI, I am glad you found it helpful, growing an email list can be super frustrating when one is not getting it right