Hey guys! Today’s post is actually a question that came in from a fellow entrepreneur where she asked, “Should you focus on Instagram or Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog?”
This is actually a good question because a lot of people don’t know which social media platforms they should start with. I know for me when I started, I was totally overwhelmed. I was just like, “Oh, there’s so many! Which one do I choose?!” So let’s get into the post and find out which platform helped grow my traffic!
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I found that you really had to narrow down and get really good at one platform first because a lot of bloggers and entrepreneurs try and do it all and wind up being really inconsistent.
I had to focus on one platform, and for me at the time it was Pinterest. I had been reading a lot about it and it seemed like a really viable platform to be able to not only get traffic to your blog, but to also get consistent traffic from. And the reason I say this is because a lot of platforms like Twitter and Instagram only really give you a boost in traffic for an hour after you’ve posted something, but months down the track you’re never going to see traffic from that post again.
Whereas Pinterest, you can actually have Pinned something two months ago and it’s still getting consistent traffic today. And that’s why I chose Pinterest. So let’s get into a few quick things that really helped me with Pinterest:
Joining Tailwind
I signed up to Tailwind and then I scheduled my Pins to go out over a day rather than all at once, (because you can’t really capitalize on the traffic if you’re just Pinning it once a time). The platform helps to spread them out over a day, and I was able to gather more traffic that way.
Recommended Reading: 5 Ways to Get More Traffic Through Pinterest
Joined Group Boards
The second thing I did was I joined Group Boards which you can go to PinGroupie.com and find a ton of group boards in your niche, but Pinning my pins and other people’s pins to this board actually drove a ton of traffic because there’s like thousands of people who are following these boards and contributing to these boards, so a lot of people go to them as a resource because they are just so much information there. So that’s the second thing I did.
Joined a Pinterest Course
The third thing I did was I actually joined a course, a Pinterest course called Pinterest to Profits (which is by my awesome friend, McKinzie). I knew a lot of basic Pinterest stuff but there was a lot of advanced strategies that I just hadn’t learned yet and that really helped to take my traffic to the next level.
And so what happened from the first month before I started using a Pinterest strategy was I was only getting around 300-400 people each month to my blog from Pinterest. This is before I had a strategy. And then the next month, once I implemented the strategy, I had over 2000 people who had come to my blog from Pinterest.
That was just from 30 days’ worth of implementing a strategy! So I was like, “Well, I think this is working.” So I carried on with it, and then over the months that number kept growing, and the thing I think that is the greatest thing of all from it is that you continue to see the results from one strategy that you implement months down the track.
And so that’s why I think all bloggers and business owners should start with Pinterest first because your output isn’t as intense as it would be with another platform. You are actually getting your values’ worth when you use this platform and implement a strategy because you do see results from it way way down the track.
And so going back to the original question on whether you should use Pinterest or Instagram: I do 100% believe that you should start with Pinterest. With Instagram, I actually haven’t learnt a whole ton about it yet. I decided deliberately not to use Instagram last year because I wanted to focus on the strategies that worked and I was getting results from. What I have learnt so far is that it’s a lot more effort for not as much results, but I still have a lot to learn about that, so you will definitely see another post about down the track.
Are you currently using Pinterest or Instagram to grow your website traffic?
