Pinterest Growth, Test 4 simple steps today!

What is Pinterest Growth and how do I achieve it?

A few years ago, when I learned that Pinterest could make a difference in my marketing, I decided to give it some attention and start using my Pinterest account with a business focus.  I changed my personal Pinterest account to a business account AND I implemented some optimization tips that I learned from blogs and YouTube. This slight change of my lens enabled some significant change and I was able to see some growth. Engagement and traffic to my site grew in ways it hadn’t since I first launched.

Oh no, COVID-19!

2020 comes roaring in and I am feeling good about Pinterest. I’ve seen enough movement that I am ready to take it up a notch, ready to add some goals that are focused on Pinterest traffic and growth.

Q1 was off to a great start! I made a plan, I was sticking to it and I was seeing results. March rolls around, COVID hits and I lose momentum. I was no longer consistently working my plan! I was disinfecting surfaces all day.

Now, we’ve hit  August and COVID is still a thing and I am still disinfecting surfaces! I’m still seeing some Pinterest growth, but it is much smaller than before, and it seems to be directly related to my lack of engagement and activity on the platform.

Enough…

I’ve been stuck in this cycle for too long and I need to make a change and here we are.  Let’s tackle this Pinterest growth!

There is some good news because I am still  seeing traffic from Pinterest and I am still “pinning” most days, but I need to re-strategize and step things up.

I’m making some changes and I am taking you with me so we can do this thing together. I’m Re-Optimizing my Pinterest accounts (yes, I have more than one) and I am starting a new account so we should see some useful data.

Ok, ok, let’s get to the Pinterest Growth Tips!

The Pinterest Academy indicates that there are 4 pillars to developing successful content and a great Pin strategy:

• Create Regularly
• Optimize for Discovery
• Organize your boards
• Know your audience.

We will be implementing 4 things that are based on those four pillars and we will be doing 3 sets of 30-day check-ins to monitor progress and growth.

1. Create multiple pins for your posts

Whether it’s a blog post, a product page or your sales funnel landing page. Your “post” deserves lots of attention and creating multiple pins can help get the party started.

My businesses are primarily product based so my focus is always trying to get people to my shop or to a specific product page. I usually have the same products on multiple boards BUT I was re-pinning the SAME pin to multiple boards.

You can imagine, the same graphic, the same description and the same title so guess what? It hasn’t had the impact I thought it would. Surprise, surprise! I was basically spamming Pinterest.

Time to change things up a bit! I’m creating multiple pins to the same products but with some differences. I just launched some new sticker sheets in my stationery shop, and I want to get people clicking. I created 5 pins, each one with a different graphic (Pinterest applicable sizes) and I will post them individually on different boards with a different title, description and I’m even mixing up my hashtag game.

The differences with the pins should reach more people, appeal to a broader audience and increase clicks to the designated page. If you have a blog, I can see this really helping to refresh clicks to evergreen content and even older posts. Drop a comment below to let me know what kind of site you have and how you think this tip can help your clicks.

2. Pin Daily

This step is definitely is a do-over. I was pinning daily for months and had seen quite a bit of traction with the consistency but I lost the momentum and I am seeing the loss in numbers. 

Daily pins may seem like a daunting task but there are tools that can help to make things easier. One of the most popular and what seems to be a standard is Tailwind and from what I have read it seems to be quite a useful tool.  Pinterest itself also offers the option to schedule pins and it seems to be quite a simple task but I haven’t tried it yet so let’s wait for the final verdict on that.

My current practice is, I pin myself as a little ritual with my coffee in the morning. I’m in no way recommending the “pin yourself” strategy unless you have the time and if you have the time, share some!

The real change here will be that I am going to start scheduling out my pins a week in advance and I am aiming for 15 pins/day, 10 fresh pins and 5 re-pins.

I’m hoping the dedicated time to scheduling out Pins as I do for Social Media, will help me maintain my consistency. After all, we’re going to be checking in at 30, 60, and 90 days to see our growth!

3. Increase my Fresh pins!

What is a Fresh Pin you ask?

Fresh Pins are defined by Pinterest as images or videos that they haven’t seen before. There are a few ways that you can create Fresh Pins as noted by Tailwind and Marketing Artfully.

1. You can create new images for links that you previously pinned
2. Creating multiple images (with significant differences) that can be used for one link
3. A new image/pin based on an old pin that is doing well

The Pin needs to be new to Pinterest and the Pinterest audience. Based on what I have read any combination of duplicate image and/or title or description wouldn’t be considered “Fresh”. Ultimately, increasing your original pins vs. re-pinning other pins (yours or others).

For me, this change means significantly changing the ratio of pins I create vs. the pins I curate. This also means more time spent on creating pins and “pinning”, more time planning and being strategic which should be one of my goals anyway.

4. Organize your Boards

The Pinterest Academy recommends that you think about why people are on Pinterest and how are they using it. I’m using those questions as my guiding principles in creating new boards and retiring some of the boards I have.

Board names, descriptions and categories impact how your pins show up in search results.

I am creating boards that would appeal to my ideal audience. One of my brands, Annierocket, is a Home Goods brand where I sell Art Prints and other functional or décor items for the home.

I’m going to be creating boards that are associated with decorating ideas for specific rooms in the home. My ideal customer is looking for items to decorate their home and I’m looking to point them in the direction of my items.

Looking at this with the lens of what does my customer want and how are they using Pinterest has really given me some new ideas on how to use my boards. I want to pin things that are relevant, things they can relate to and may want to buy. I’ll be retiring A LOT of my current boards because they weren’t created strategically and though they get decent engagement, I know there is an opportunity for more Pinterest growth!

How will I know if this is working?

I’ll measure it!  I need to review the data to see the growth.  Pinterest has analytics built right in that I can review. We’re checking back in here at 30, 60, and 90 days because I want to give these steps a fair shot and from what I have seen Pinterest is a long game type of platform. The work you are doing now will reap rewards in 3-6 months, in some cases even a year. I have pins that I posted from 3 years ago that are getting re-pinned 100 times a day and sending almost as much traffic/pin to my site.

For me, Pinterest has been a good option as a marketing tool. If I am consistent and stay up to date with any changes in the “rules” it could add quite a bit of value and increase traffic to my websites. This really isn’t about whether or not Pinterest works, it is about maximizing the potential.

Join me!

If you want to join me, drop a comment below and let’s do this! I will be making the changes on August 23, 2020. Even if you don’t join, don’t forget to check in with me at the 30, 60 and 90 day mark.

Remember we are in this together! I am no expert and I am learning more, daily. I do a lot of research and I always get information from some great sources like the ones below that I read and referred to, in the post.