I’m starting a new series of posts focusing on blogging and social media. Let me know what you’d like me to cover. Thanks ya’ll!

Pinterest drives most of my blog traffic. Which posts are the most popular? Those that feature engaging text and visually appealing graphics. My most popular Pinterest content centers on travel, recipes, and fashion. And, my most popular posts from 2013 also focused heavily on travel.

One of the keys to making Pinterest drive traffic to your blog is to create “Pinnable” graphics. Take a look at the images that populate your Pinterest feed. They generally have two qualities:

• Attractive Graphic or Photo
• Engaging Text

If you haven’t been using Pinterest to market your blog content, you need to start NOW.

A great place to start is, of course, with all new content. Think about bulleted lists or “headline” type text that will grab your reader’s attention. You can assess what content is being pinned from your blog by typing in http://www.pinterest.com/source/ and then inserting your blog name after the last back slash. For example, I can see my pinned content by typing http://www.pinterest.com/source/blondemomblog.com/ into my browser and the most pinned blog posts are recipes, printables, travel tips, and activities for kids.

Now that you know what content resonates best with Pinners, think about the potential Pinnable content on your blog from pre-Pinterest days. Don’t overlook going back through past content and making past images pinnable with engaging text.

For example, I love to blog about travel, family travel especially, and I had featured a great post from local Nashville frugal blogger Sami Cone about ways to save big on family fun at Disney.

Although the original photo of Sami and her family was fun and colorful:

I made it more “Pinnable” by adding a headline that popped using Picmonkey:

See what a difference this made? While I don’t consider myself a graphic designer or incredible photographer, it’s very easy to make simple graphics that pop. Don’t know where to start? Take a look at what pins are populating your Pinterest feed and you’ll start to notice a trend. The text is simple but colorful and the wording grabs your attention. The photographs are engaging and colorful.

A few more tips: If you have a popular post in your archives that does not feature a graphic or photograph, create one. As I mentioned earlier, I use Picmonkey to create graphics or text overlays for images. Also, if you don’t consider your content to be highly pinnable, start thinking that way. You can also host a guest blog series featuring a variety of topics that focus on “Pinnable” content and create a Pinterest board highlighting the series (similar to my 15 Minutes to Fabulous series Pinterest board.)

So, your mission, should you decide to take it, is to take a look at some of your past popular posts and think about how you can make them “Pinnable” with an engaging graphic.

Let me know if you try this on your blog! I’d love to hear how it works out for you.