How To Turn Your Blog Into A Social Online Magazine Using Pinterest Boards

So I started using Pinterest a few weeks ago to share articles I write at Tablet Crunch, my blog that’s all about tablet computers.  And to honest, I only started trying Pinterest when I saw that the Twitter Facebook Social Share plugin was updated and allowed you to add a Pinterest sharing button.

I never even considered Pinterest, or thought of Pinterest as a platform to actually share my content.

But let me tell you, it’s becoming one of the best decisions I’ve made with my blog!

Turn your blog into an online magazine with Pinterest

After about a week or so of sending my content from Tablet Crunch to Pinterest, I started to notice something pretty cool happening – my analytics was showing Pinterest as a growing platform for referral traffic.

What??? Pinterest is actually sending traffic to my blog???

Absolutely.

But what I discovered was that not only was Pinterest sending an increasing volume of traffic to my blog, but the Tablet Crunch Pinterest Board was starting to shape up into a sort of social online magazine for my blog!

Wow – that just sounds cool doesn’t?  Turning you blog into a social online magazine…  I love it!

Here’s a screen shot of what I saw that shocked me and made me instantly realize that Pinterest was actually morphing Tablet Crunch’s content into a social online magazine:

This picture doesn’t really do it’s justice, so check out the Tablet Crunch Pinterest Board here to get the live look and feel – it’s much better than the pic, trust me.

As you can see, the Pinterest Board takes all of the articles I submit, renders the image from the blog post, and then I add the title to the post and any other supporting content (keeping it short and sweet, Twitter like…) and then submit it.

I don’t have any solid numbers or data at this point other than to tell you that the number of people who re-pin my blog posts, and follow the Tablet Crunch Pinterest Board is increasing rapidly.  Best of all, Pinterest is sending an increasing amount of traffic to my blog posts from the articles I share on Pinterest – and of course, it’s these shared articles that collectively make up the Tablet Crunch Pinterest Board.

How To Turn Your Blog Into A Social Online Magazine Using Pinterest

The steps are really easy, especially if you have a WordPress self hosted blog.

1)  Download the Twitter Facebook Social Share plugin

I use the Twitter Facebook Social Share plugin on Tablet Crunch which automatically can add a “Pinterest button” to each article.  This allows you to, with one click, quickly and easily add your blog content to Pinterest.

What you want to make sure though, is that you have a high quality and compelling image that accompanies your blog post.  For those of you who write blog posts without any images you are out of luck.  Pinterest is a place where you pin images and share your thoughts on those images.  So if you want to build a social online magazine for your blog on Pinterest, you have to add images to your blog posts.

Capture traffic & build backlinks

Along with each image, you’ll want to include a link back to your article.  The way I achieve this easily is with the URL shortener tool Bit.ly.

I then add a modified title to the Pinterest post and paste the shortened URL to my article at the end.  For example, here’s the last Pinterest update I posted about an hour ago:

Leaked iPad 3 parts from China caught on video – see it here > bit.ly/z15nXa

Here’s a link to the Pinterest post and of course you can see the post on the homepage of the Tablet Crunch Pinterest Board.

If you don’t have a WordPress blog (which I strongly recommend, so call me at 706-363-0335 and I can help you out with that), then you’ll have to go to Pinterest and post your articles manually.  Which, from the results I’ve seen, would be well worth your time.

What do you think?

What ways are you using Pinterest for your blog or your business?