The Most Common Pinterest Mistakes You're Making!
Monday, September 28, 2020Pinterest can be a big headache for creators. There are so many algorithms and platform changes happening on what feels to be like a weekly basis. As someone active on the platform every single day, I have a good handle on what is and isn't working right now on Pinterest. So, here are 6 Most Common Pinterest Mistakes you could be making.
You Haven't Switched To A Pinterest Business Account
As a blogger, not having a Pinterest Business account is a huge Pinterest mistake! There is so much valuable information in having a business account. You're able to see valuable analytics, such as:
- Impressions on your pins
- Link clicks
- Your audience
- Engagement rate
- What your best-performing pins are
- You can run ads (pay to have your pin seen)
There's a lot of other valuable information as well that you absolutely need as a content creator on Pinterest!
Recommended: Pinterest 2020 algorithm Changes- Are you Prepared?
You're Pinning Too Much Of Other's Content
This might seem like a weird Pinterest mistake. Isn't the point of Pinterest to pin other's content? Not if you're a business account. Pinterest has come out and said if you have a business account, you want to be pinning mostly your own pins. Pinterest wants fresh content, not re-pinned content.
Think of it this way, if you have a business profile. Pinterest sees you as a “creator”. And creators create. They don’t share other people's content, they produce their own.
If it wasn't for creators like you and me, Pinterest wouldn't even have a website. Bloggers, business owners, Youtubers and more have created a good portion on the content that gets shared around on Pinterest for the average user to share and push out to other people.
Does this mean you can't pin other's content?
Not exactly. It's really a matter of personal choice. If you share ten of your own pins and decide to share two pins throughout the day, Pinterest isn't going to squash your reach. It's all about balance. If you're in group boards, or if you want to share others' content, I'd say do it at an 80-20 ratio, or if you can, a 90-10 ratio. This means, pin 80% of your own content, and only 20% of others content (or, using the other ratio, 90% your own and 10% others).
It is also good if you're just starting a new board and you don't have a lot of content pinned to it yet, then it'd be okay to pin 10-20 pins to the board so that Pinterest can quickly learn what it's about. In a perfect world, you'd pin 100% of your own content (which is what I personally do) but it is okay if you want to pin other's content.
One last thing to keep in mind with this point is if you do pin others content, is it can mess up your stats as well. Because you'll also be seeing the link clicks and impressions from other people pins, as well as your own. You can change what analytics you see in the back end of your business account, but it's just something to keep in mind!
You Don't Do Manual Pinning
This is something that I've heard for a long time, and I put off for a while because it seemed so time-consuming, I'm supposed to pin content every single day?! I'll be the first to tell you, it is time-consuming. However, check out the results I got when I went from exclusively using Pinterest from Tailwind and Switched to a combination of manual pinning and Tailwind.
I mean, the graph speaks for itself. You can see a very small bump right before the giant spike, and that is when I started to manually pin. It took about a week of small increases to see the crazy results, but they are undeniable. Manual pinning works. If you're not getting the results you want from Pinterest and you're not trying to manual pin, you have to at least give it a shot! I went from 20-30 views a day on my blog to commonly getting over 200 views in a day just from this method!
Why does manual pinning work so well?
Pinterest wants fresh content. They want people to spend time on their platform, and that goes for creators as well. I'll admit before I did this manual pinning strategy, I spent maybe 20 minutes a week on Pinterest to check my stats. All of my other time was spent on Tailwind scheduling pins. Pinterest does not want me to spend time on Tailwind, they want me to spend time on Pinterest! Plus, by me pinning daily, that is fresh content they can distribute to followers keeping them on the platform longer! It's a win-win!
You Aren't Using Keywords
The main thing to know about Pinterest is it is not a social media site, it's a search engine. Because of this, you need to add keywords to your strategy. Not doing this is one of the biggest Pinterest mistakes people make. There are a few important places you need to have keywords:
- Your name (optional but helpful) (EX: Sarah | Start a Blog Tips)
- Your profile description
- Board descriptions
- Every pin description
The way to get a ton of consistent traffic to your blog is by getting your pins ranked in search. People use Pinterest as a search engine, and look up problems they are having or a specific type of pin they want to find. Like if they were looking up "Chocolate chips cookie recipe".
These are all ranked pins in search. Pinterest determines these are the pins to rank based on a lot of factors (most of which they don't tell us) But, we can assume these pins:
- Got a lot of engagement when they were initially pinned
- Have content people actually want to read (Which means Pinterest knows how long people stay on the website before being bounced back to Pinterest. If people leave your site immediately, Pinterest will assume the content is not what the reader expected)
- Has good keywords in the pin description, board title, and the blog post itself (Yes- that DOES matter!)
Not Branding Your Pins
In the beginning, it’s okay to test out designs to see what your audience will be likely to click on. But, once you have an idea of what they like, you want to double down on that design. It's important to have certain colours or designs that you use, and a specific font. You want your pins to match your overall brand.
Plus, this will not only make your pin designing quicker since you’ll be using the same colours and fonts, but it will make your pins more noticeable to your audience. There are a few bloggers that I follow closely on Pinterest, and I can almost always pick out their pins in the feed quickly. And since I know and trust that bloggers content, I am more likely to click through to their blog post instead of someone else’s. You want to have the same effect on your audience.
You're Not using Pinterest Templates
I love using Pinterest templates for my pins! You create the design once, and then you can switch the text and photo out and use it over and over again. I use these every week in my pin creation. It looks a bit like this:
- Pick out 10-15 links I want to promote (Etsy, YouTube, blog, other affiliates etc.)
- Create 4-6 pin templates
- Rotate out those templates for each link (if I want to promote one post 4x in the next week, I use 4 templates etc.)
- Next week, create new templates!
I follow this process each week on Sunday and create 60-70 pins to manually pin throughout the week in no time! If you're not good at designing pins, or if you want to speed the process up, even more, you can buy Pinterest templates on Etsy from other creators!
And there you have it! 6 Pinterest Mistakes you could be making! Are making any of these mistakes on your Pinterest account? The good news is, even if you are, these things are not account-changing techniques. Just a few tweaks to your strategy could be giving you big results!
About the author:
Hi! My name is Sarah, and I’m the owner of the blog, Sarah Marie. My mission is to help women grow their blogs and businesses while striving for a better overall life. I talk about topics such as blogging, mindset and productivity on my blog. If you’d like to connect with me, you can find me on social sites here!
6 comments
Thanks for sharing, these are great tips, to up your pintrest game :)
ReplyDeleteNic | Nic's Adventures & Bakes
These are all absolutely essential Pinterest tips! Not branding my pins or using keywords was definitely something I did when I started out. The analytics available in the Business accounts are so useful!
ReplyDeleteEmily from https://emilyunderworld.co.uk x
Great post with really good information. I will be making sure not to make these mistakes.
ReplyDeleteThis was so helpful! Thanks, Sarah and Em! Xx
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to grow my Pinterest account and increase my blog views. I definitely need to try these tips, especially optimizing my boards and using keywords!
Bianca xx | missmonro.com
These are very helpful tips! I will certainly be putting them to use. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteThis is so insightful! I will definitely give these tips a try! Thanks for sharing☺️
ReplyDelete