I think how to grow your Pinterest account is a hugely searched term for bloggers and business owners alike. It’s a hugely frustrating thing to try to do but with a few easy steps, it is definitely something that is achievable for us all.
I’ll be honest and say that Pinterest is a platform that I keep falling in and out of love with on a pretty regular basis if I’m honest. Sometimes I’ll be there looking for something specific and pinning away to my geeky heart’s content. Whilst other times I don’t open the app for days, sometimes even weeks, and don’t even ask me the last time I pinned one of my own posts. However, if you put in the work, are consistent in your approach, and follow my steps you’ll be able to see a level of growth in your Pinterest account.
Ever looked at the Pinterest analytics dashboard and got a bit confused by all the terms on there and everything that goes into calculating your monthly views figures? All three of the following: audience, engagement, and impressions all go into creating that elusive monthly views number. although it’s an impressive number to be able to quote I pay more attentuon to the engagments as that includes link clicks and repins in its calculation.
- Audience – The number of people who have viewed or engaged with all of the pins you’ve saved. This includes pins that other people have saved from the site you have claimed on Pinterest. Obviously includes views and saves of other people’s pins that are saved to your boards.
- Engagements – This is the total of interactions with your pins. People clicking through to your site, viewing a close up of your pin, and repinning your pin.
- Impressions – This the total number of times your pin has been shown in feeds/searches. This is an important one if you’re using the right keywords for your pins to ve seen.
- Monthly Views – This the total number of times your pin has been ‘seen’. This can include someone else’s pin which you’ve saved to your boards. while this number can be impressive it’s not a genuine indicator of how your account is performing. The best idea is to track all the metrics and look for an increase in your engagements as this means your content is being seen, read, and potentially shared by others.
When others write posts on how to grow your Pinterest they tend to focus on the monthly viewers figure as it’s the one that’s easiest to grow but as I mentioned above it doesn’t give the best representation of your account. There are some simple steps to follow which will mean you see growth in your impressions, audience, and engagement figures.
Pins
There’s quite a lot that goes into a successful pin. It’s not just about the imagery – although that does help. A pin also needs an engaging caption with keywords and you can now also add hashtags to Pinterest too.
The design of the pin is hugely important and if you’re sharing the same link regularly you want to create what Pinterest refers to as fresh pins for your content. Basically this is a new design of the pin and can include a new picture, new fonts, or just a whole new layout. I use Canva to create my pins as I can save them as templates and create 10-12 new pins for my posts relatively quickly. If you’re not familiar with Canva then my post with ideas on how to use it may be of help to you.
One of the things I love about Canva is with a Pro plan (£10.99 per month but free 30 day trial for new customers) you can upload fonts to be able to personalise the pins you create. I’ve also found a site where you can download freebies fonts and then upload them into Canva to use for your pins. Below are a few examples of pins I’ve created that have performed well on Pinterest. In order to create fresh pins I’ll make varirations of these designs for each post and schedule them on differnet days.
I’ve also started using stock images for my pins which helps as I can tie them in with the image used on the blog post. As much as I love taking my own photos styled imagery of offices etc is not my style and I’ve found some great freebies online. The use of these images and more custom fonts make the pins stand out as opposed to using templates which have not been customised.
Scheduling
I find scheduling my pins helps a lot with my account growth. A lot of my audience seems to be American as my notifications always go off during the night. Because of this I schedule one pin every hour between 1 am and 5 am Monday to Friday. The best bit is you don’t need Tailwind to be able to do this. The free scheduler within Pinterest allows you to have 30 pins scheduled at any one time which is great if you like working in batches. I’ll sit down and schedule a load of pins and then it’s done for a few days.
When scheduling I share to a mix of my boards and group boards as this helps with having your pins seen by different people. Finding group boards to join is easy with a search on Pinterest but be careful as some have more rules than others.
Captions & Keywords
Captions with your Pinterest pin can make all the difference. The caption tells the viewer what the post is about and this gives them the opportunity to decide if it’s content they wish to save or view. Within the caption it’s also worth using keywords which relate not only to the content of the post but what other people will be searching for. When posting about blog related content I try and word my captions with how I would search for the same content if I was on the platform. By thinking this way it makes the captions much easier to write.
The short version!
- Scheduled fresh pins with engaging captions and a call to action (either in the caption or on the pin)
- Repin content to your boards that align with the boards content
- You can pin the same content – just make new pins for each post.
- Make sure your captions and any other descriptors use relevant keywords and terms others may be searching for – think about how you search using Pinterest.
- Consistency is key. Once you have a schedule in place try and stick to it. Even spending one day a week creating and scheduling pins can make all the diference in the long run.
Pin this for later
Well there you have it, my easy method to grow your Pinterest. while I do state it is easy it can be time-consuming but by creating some Canva templates and having a spreadsheet or database for some of the content you can be working on more content to be shred on Pinterest.
