The Best Pinning Strategies to Grow Your Pinterest Account Now
New Features, New Strategies
Pinning your content to Pinterest is when the magic begins. Once you’ve laid down a great foundation to build upon, such as putting your keywords to good use, creating a business board, and several relevant brand-focused supporting boards, you’re ready to start pinning.
While some of what I teach when it comes to Pinterest marketing is evergreen, as the platform adjusts to user behavior, so will you. These adjustments are especially timely with the tremendous growth Pinterest has experienced in the last year or so.
Not only is the audience is expanding nationally and globally, but the way users engage with the platform itself is changing. People are coming to Pinterest to plan and get inspired to take action on those plans.
This trend of user behavior was made even more relevant in the wake of our daily lives being disrupted by the pandemic in 2020. So, how does all of this impact your bottom line strategy?
That’s what I’ll be discussing in this post, but first, I want to cover a few things that Pinterest has done on their end to optimize the pinner experience better.
A well-publicized algorithm shift at the beginning of 2020 and the introduction of ‘fresh pins’
The official site-wide roll-out of Story Pins
Controlled Distribution for Smart feeds
Emphasis on Creator’s and Creator Profiles with the Today tab
The official release of the Trends Tool
One of the reasons that I love Pinterest the most is because of its traffic driving capabilities. Because it functions as a search engine and less as a social networking site, its primary focus is to connect a pinner to the solution they were looking for when they came to the platform.
Much like Google, it acts as a gateway to other sites that have what you came looking for with your search query. Although this remains Pinterest’s main goal, it’s now considering other factors to serve the pinner better. A few of these to keep in mind are -
Relevancy and seasonality
Providing a place of positivity
Offering more inspiration
In a nutshell, this all means that the old strategy that worked on Pinterest for years is now seeing some pretty dramatic shifts. As platforms age, it becomes more sophisticated. To keep your marketing efforts working effectively, you will need to adjust your approach accordingly.
Understanding How These Changes Impact You As a Creator on Pinterest
John F Kennedy once said, “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.” - Marketing, in general, has fallen into this ideal way of thinking. In the case of Pinterest, it’s safe to say, “Ask not what a pinner (potential client) can do for you, but what you can do for a pinner.”
Over the last couple of years, every change to the platform has been in service of this value-add ideal. But what I appreciate most about Pinterest is the symbiotic relationship they have with their creators, who are essentially making the platform’s content.
Pinterest is very transparent about what works to get you, the maker marketer, the best results because those same actions also best serve the pinner. Everyone goes home happy. Pinners find what they came to Pinterest for; you get clicks to your website, while Pinterest gave an excellent user experience, which grows their audience.
Pinterest is continuously analyzing data to identify user behavior patterns and knows certain characteristics that the most engaged pins contain. For instance, they know that over 85% of users are accessing their platform via mobile. A pin with a 2:3 aspect ratio performs better in the mobile feed; therefore, the recommended pin size is 600 X 900.
Pinterest has also noticed that newer pins or ‘fresh pins’ get significantly more engagement than older pins circulating the platform. This discovery is precisely why they changed their algorithm early last year, along with the announcement alerting creators of this change. I created a graphic below that illustrates what Pinterest defines as a fresh pin. One thing to note here is that pins with the least amount of distribution don’t mean zero. This graph should give an indication of what you can do to extend the life of freshness in your pins.
Another notable shift to mention here is the recent emphasis on the creator as a personality that pinners will want to engage with, thereby keeping them on the platform for longer. This transfer of prioritization from content only to the content creator was made apparent with Story Pins’ introduction and the Today tab on mobile.
Both of these features behave to augment your brand presence on Pinterest. Story pins are a great way to showcase who you are as a brand and spotlight your creator profile by linking to your account with a follow button rather than a URL that takes users to your site.
The Today tab curates creator profiles across the Pinterest platform and regularly features different accounts for pinners to explore further. This new mobile component offers pinners seasonally relevant inspiration just like a magazine does for its readers, except it changes much more dynamically than only monthly.
Smart Ways to Adjust Your Pinning Strategy Now
I covered the what and the why; now, let’s go over the how, more specifically, how you can leverage these changes with your pinning strategy.
Here are some high-level recommendations to keep in mind as best practices.
The focus will be less on curation - Re-pinning other pins that are not your own to supporting boards on your profile used to be an acceptable way to grow your account. This is no longer the case. Shoot for more original content, rather than re-pinning other people’s content.
Focus on creating new content for your own brand instead - By making fresh pins of product and writing current blog posts.
Consider auditing your boards - Traditionally, creating new boards consistently was also an acceptable way to grow your account. However, with the focus shifting more towards the creator, having fewer boards that are more brand-focused is currently the best strategy. *Disclaimer - Once you delete a board, you will lose all the followers to that particular board. When in doubt, just move it to secret.
Use Story Pins to grow your account - Since the inception of Pinterest, your number of followers was barely more than a vanity metric with little importance, but that too is changing. Pinterest validated that the number of followers does matter now during my last creators’ office hour call. Again, much of this new school of thought is due to the recent emphasis on you, the creator, and driving pinners to your profile.
5. Experiment with video pins - Last summer Pinterest made another algorithm change to give video and story pins more favored circulation across the platform called ‘controlled distribution.’ Basically, this automatically injects 10% of your smart feeds’ content with video and story pins. Content that is usually only populated with pins similar to pins you’ve engaged with in the past - so, whether or not you clicked on a story or video pin before, Pinterest will show content in these formats. The bottom line for you is that video pins are getting way more impressions than static images. Download Pinterest’s’ guide on video best practices below and start thinking about how you can leverage this format with your brand.
6. Quality over quantity - Pinterest is seriously cracking down on any behavior that can be interpreted as spammy because it doesn’t create a great user experience. If you’re pinning 50 times a day, you’re in danger of having your account suspended. Tailwind has an ‘All Clear’ feature that will alert you if you’ve exceeded the recommended pinning frequency.
7. Create ‘savable’ content - Any actionable or informative content checks this box, such as how to layer necklaces. An example of content that is not a good fit for Pinterest might be a video pin showcasing your product’s unboxing experience. Instead, use that kind of content for Instagram.
8. Make sure you’re pinning to the most relevant boards - Saving your pins to multiple boards is a fair way to test different keyword attachments to increase their chances for the Pinterest algorithm to pick them up in a search query. In fact, I recommend it, just make sure that the first board you pin to is highly relevant to that pins’ content.
9. Consistency is key - This is an evergreen tactic that will always bolster your marketing efforts on Pinterest. Avoid dumping a bunch of pins and then ghosting from the platform. A slow drip of new pins over time is much more effective. This is why I recommend using a scheduling platform like Tailwind that allows you to batch your work, so you’re not on Pinterest every day.
10. Fresh content is King - If you do anything, do this. Creating fresh content is the best way to optimize your Pinterest marketing right now. Don’t worry; this doesn’t mean that you need to write a new blog post or create a new product every day to make fresh pins. You can create fresh content around a product or blog post pin that you already published to Pinterest by re-framing the context of your text overlay.
The below formula can help get your creative juices flowing with the copy for your own pins. Think of different hooks that could appeal to various search intents. Try to write copy that speaks to those diverse desires. This strategy can expand your potential reach by connecting with a broader audience.
11. Create seasonal and relevant content - I mentioned above that pinners are coming to Pinterest to plan. Whether it’s compiling gift ideas for the holidays, planning a graduation party, looking for outfits for a girls’ night out, the list of things you can plan for is endless. Creating content that meets the pinners where they are in their planning process is an excellent way for your brand to get in front of them. Find out what type of searches will be trending on the platform and when by using the Trends Tool. I recommend pre-planning your content and dropping your pins on the platform 45 days before the search surge. Download the 2021 Pinterest Trends Report below to get high-level insight on monthly trends.
12. Create content that has positivity and inspiration in mind - Pinterest is a place for positivity and inspiration. Pinners come to the platform to create the life they love. These values are essential to keep your content aligned with Pinterest, and they are explicit about this policy in their community guidelines. To avoid your account from getting suspended, make sure you’re familiar with the rules of engagement.
“We don’t sell a product that will keep people addicted.”
This quote completely embodies the spirit of Pinterest and should guide your content creation in every aspect.
Conclusion
The best marketers stay agile because they understand that the platforms they use are incredibly dynamic. As people become more sophisticated in using online platforms, the platforms themselves need to become more sophisticated. This constant state of flux leaves us marketers, the ones that need to adjust with them.
This can be frustrating, but there are foundational themes that will always do an adequate job at double-checking your work regardless of the changing digital marketing tides.
Create value for the user
Create generous work
Inspire your audience
Present in an actionable way
If you have these things top-of-mind when you create your content, then it will be easy to adapt to new strategies and tactics because the core of what you create will be right on target. 🤓📌
