Basic Blog Tips

Here is my contribution to the post:

Ileane Smith is the “accidental blogger”, or perhaps better known as the Podcasting Queen. She has so many titles, I cannot keep up. She loves to help people thrive online, whether it be blogging, podcasting or youtubing, and she loves to get visual on Pinterest. She was also thefirst guest of honor on the Mad Lemmings Podcast, sharing her wisdom with the world. The best place to find her is on Basic Blog TIps andPinterest.

Tools

I’m really excited to see all the traffic coming into my blog from Pinterest for a couple of reasons. One is that the traffic is very targeted and to top it off the bounce rate is extremely low. I want others to have the same experience so I’m offering a free Pinterest 101 guide. This is geared toward anyone who is setting up their very first Pinterest boards.

You can download the PDF here http://basicblogtips.com/pinterest101 (no optin required).

1. One of my favorite tools for promoting my blog posts on Pinterest is Viral Content Buzz. I love this network and because I’m active there, other users are reciprocating by Pinning my content as well.

Since VCB also allows you to share content on Twitter, Facebook and StumbleUpon it’s great for building social proof and getting unexpected bursts of traffic from any of those sites including Pinterest.

2. I also find the free online image editing tools Canva and PicMonkey to be super useful for creating images for Pinterest. I find it best to use them together since they both have unique features.

For example, Canva is great for grabbing pre-formatted layouts for your design, but PicMonkey fills the gap with their options for resizing and adding simple borders that can’t be achieved inside of Canva.

Tips

1. Here is a video I recorded that I call Pinterest Quick Tip: How To Check Your Pinterest Notifications. I recommend that your readers check it out to discover a handful of gems hidden behind the little red notifications button.

2. My other advice is to check your analytics and in order to do that, your site needs to be verified. It’s simple to do, and very similar to the process for verifying your site with Google Webmaster Tools by adding a snippet of code to your theme.

However, I wouldn’t rely on the basic stats from inside of Pinterest. Take it a step further and sign up for TailWind App so you can find out who is Pinning your content and which boards are more engaging. Here’s a TailWind App Tutorial.