Most bloggers know that Facebook and Twitter are important for getting traffic to your posts. But did you know that the number of blog visitors finding their way from Pinterest is growing? As of September 3rd, Pinterest was the fourth largest social network, with over 85 million monthly visitors.

Many authors are using Pinterest to drive traffic to their site. This is not the best strategy for all authors; last week, we talked about how to decide if Pinterest is right for you. If you’ve decided Pinterest is the way to go, today’s post is about the next step.

We’re going to give you a few steps to make your blog Pinterest worthy.

1. Pick a relevant picture

Find a picture that is relevant to your post. The more direct its relevancy, the better. For example, if you’re sharing a recipe, use a picture of the finished food. If you’re talking about how to repair your car, use a picture of a car.

If you’re writing about something more abstract, such as living simply, find a picture that has the same feeling as what you’re writing about. A picture of a volcano doesn’t make sense if your topic is finding peace.

Not sure where to find a picture? Check out our post on finding free and legal photos for your blog.

Tweetables:

Is your blog Pinterest worthy? Click to Tweet!
How to make sure your blog is pinnable. Click to Tweet!
Pinterest has 85 million visitors a month. Here’s how to bring some of them to your blog. Click to Tweet!
@AuthorMedia shows bloggers how to make their blogs Pinterest ready in a few simple steps. Click to Tweet!

2. Clear text

You want to make sure that when the picture gets pinned, people will be able to read and understand what it says. Your text should either be the title of your post, an inspiring quote, or something else that makes the subject of your post clear.

If you’re using a title, choose a clear title, such as “9 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Became A Mom” or “How to Make Amazing Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies.” Don’t make people guess what your post is about when they see your picture on Pinterest.

If you’re using a quote, choose one that will resonate regardless of whether people make it back to your blog or not–that way, your picture is more likely to get repinned. If you choose a quote that doesn’t make sense out of context, your picture isn’t likely to get pinned very often.

When adding text to your picture, make sure that it is clear and readable when pin-sized (check out our cheat sheet to Pinterest image sizes to find out how big your pins should be). Choose a color that stands out, and a font that’s easy to read. You can add text to pictures via photo editing software like Photoshop if you have it. Otherwise, there are free programs online that do the same thing, such as Fotor or Picfont.

Here’s an example photo I made for this post:

3. One “pinable” picture per post

Research shows that the more choices a person has, the less likely they are to make a choice in the end. If you give your readers too many pictures to pin in a single post, they’re less likely to pin any of them at all. Give them one good “pinable” image per post and make it easy for them to decide.

4. “Pin It” button on the post

The more work your readers have to do in order to pin your post, the less likely they are to do the work. Make it easy for them by adding a “pin it” button to each individual post. You can do this in two ways: One, you can generate the code for a “Pin It” button using the “Make Pin It Button” tool at the bottom of this page, then paste the code into the html for your post. We recommend this option for those who don’t have a lot of “pinable” content on their blogs, but have a handful of posts that they think would do well on Pinterest.

The second, less time-consuming option is to automatically add a Pinterest button to every post using a plugin such as Pinterest “Pin It” Button Lite. You add the picture, and the plugin does all the work.

Do you use Pinterest? What tips or advice do you have? Leave your thoughts and questions in the comments!