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Pinterest, Pinterest, Pinterest. Why do you keep changing on us? You make it SO hard to love you, or in my case, to write courses and posts about how to use you.
Anyway, if you’re here, it’s because you’ve heard about the latest Pinterest changes and you’re beating your head against the wall trying to figure WTF is happening.
Well, me too.
We’re doing our best to stay on top of this constantly changing sea of confusion, doing things like reading through the Pinterest Best Practices list, watching Facebook Live interviews with Pinterest executives (like this one with Tailwind, if you’re curious) and taking furious notes.
Short of barging into Pinterest’s office and shouting questions at the receptionist until I get kicked out, that’s pretty much what I’ve got to go on right now. At least, until the Pinterest Creator’s Conference in June, which I will be attending with a very strongly worded list of questions, the first of which is just WHYYYYYYY?????????
Ahem.
- Anyway, fresh off the last Facebook Live (kudos to Mediavine for hooking this one up – there’s no public video to share, though, so you’ll just have to trust me), here’s the latest and greatest about all of the 2018 Pinterest changes – and WTF to do about them. Plus some stuff we all already knew, and some blessed relief that it won’t be changing anytime soon. PHEW!
Brand New Pinterest Features in 2018
First and foremost: you have a new profile! The new profile includes a flashy new cover image – check out all of that Pinny goodness. You can choose from a few different options for your cover image, such as your latest pins, recent pins from your site, or a specific board. To pick one, just click that little pencil button on desktop and you’ll see a few choices.
Which one should you choose? As of right now, I can’t say that there’s a specific benefit to any of the options – pick whatever makes the most sense for your business in terms of what seems to look best. Mine is just on my most recent pins because I think it’s prettiest. Real strategic.
The other big change in the new profile? Your follower number is gone and it’s been replaced with your “monthly viewers” metric. Wait, WHAT!?
Don’t panic! Your followers haven’t actually gone anywhere – they’re just hidden behind a brand new tab. Click on “Followers” to see them again!
Oh, and by the way, all of those tabs are new, too. Woah! That’s a lot of new stuff.
Browse through the boards to take a look – they’re fairly self explanatory. You’ll find that it’s super easy to change the order of your boards – you used to have to drag and drop all of them, which took forever, but now with the click of a button you can undo all of that hard work sort them in various ways. If you’ve ever used Pinterest on Mobile, this option might look familiar.
Here’s another big surprise: some of us have a whole new feed, the “Following” feed. You can access it by clicking the little people icon in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, and it will show you a chronological feed of everything being pinned by the accounts you’re following.
Here’s a fun way to spend a Friday night: head to your “Followers” feed and click refresh. And then click refresh again. And again. And again.
Woah! So fun! Endless hours of entertainment! … That’s what Pinterest is hoping we’re thinking, anyway.
In addition to some fun new features, Pinterest has been making big moves in the background with its algorithm. Here’s what we know.
Pinterest Algorithm Changes 2018
Even if you don’t use the Following tab, it’s going to become really important for the algorithm. Pinterest will be prioritizing content that people who are following you engage with. It’s almost as if your followers are like critics, who will then determine whether your pin gets shown in search results and on other people’s smart feed.
This makes me nervous for anyone that is using an account that transitioned over from one niche to another – or from a personal account to a business-targeted account. Do your followers like you?! These people are supposedly now in charge of your life content’s visibility on Pinterest, which is a mildly scary thought.
Here’s another big thing. In the Tailwind Facebook Live, one of the best practices recommended for Content Creators was to use up to 20 hashtags on new pins. Wow, that’s … that’s a LOT of hashtags. Are we veering into Instagram territory, here?
The first question I had after hearing this recommendation was, “is anyone actually USING hashtags to find content on Pinterest?”
I mean… raise your hand if you are. Or you know, drop me a comment below. But personally, I haven’t been – because the hashtag results seem to be CONSISTENTLY poor quality and pretty much irrelevant to what I’m searching for.
Well, my sassy question was answered in the Mediavine Facebook Live interview (bless them, they read it word for word to fully convey my sass). Here’s the thing: Hashtag search and searching using regular keywords are two VERY different things.
Hashtag feeds – what you get when you search using a hashtag on Pinterest – are chronological. Yes, like the new Following tab. They’re supposed to be showing the hottest, newest, freshest content in a particular category.
What that means is that hashtags are a way to find NEW content. That’s why it’s not useful to hashtag older pins. It also means that hashtags are less relevant for evergreen content. You want to rely heavily on hashtags primarily when your content is timely or seasonal, like for example, a pin about Halloween that you’re sharing in October, or a pin about the new Pinterest algorithm changes in 2018 (yep, we went meta).
Aside from showing you sexy new content, hashtag feeds are also supposed to help you soothe your ennui. Apparently hashtag search results are really meant for people that have already searched for something and didn’t find what they were looking for, or spent way too long scrolling through search results before sighing loudly and moaning something like “is there ANYTHING NEW under the sun?!!”
These mythical people, aside from being moaney and existentially adrift, are looking for the NEWEST and LATEST pins about a topic. They are willing to sacrifice relevance in their search results to see what’s new and fun and “IN.”
The big takeaway here is that stuffing your description with hashtags is only important if your content is non evergreen, holiday related or seasonal topics that will greatly benefit from the immediate engagement offered by the hashtag feed. The rest of us are just fine using a 2 or 3 hashtags.
OK, here’s a quick round-up of what’s most important, because you’re very busy and very important and bullet pointed things are easier to digest.
- The Follower tab is chronological. This is a big step away from the smart feed, which served up their best guess of the content you probably want to see. Apparently this is in response to perceived user demand. I guess a lot of Pinners were sitting home along on a Friday night like “ugh, my smart feed is so boring! Instead of seeing stuff I’ll probably like, I want to see all the weird recipes and craft ideas or whatever that my friends are pinning RIGHT THIS SECOND.” It’s like the EXACT opposite of what Instagram thought we wanted in 2017. Can we just – can we pick one, social media platforms? Smart algorithm or chronological, pick a lane. I guess in Pinterest’s case, we get both, so maybe that’s actually a win
- Your followers now own you. If your followers to ENGAGE with your pins within the first few days, then they will be rolled out to more users. If they don’t, get new followers who are better suited to what you’re pinning (or pin content that they will like more, either of those things).
- “Fresh” posts will get a little algorithm boost. That refers to new blog posts, a new pin for an old post, etc. Hashtags are handy for boosting non-evergreen content and seasonal pins, but the rest of us posting evergreen content (IE travel blogs) don’t need to rely heavily on them.
What’s Coming Next?
A lot of changes have already happened, but even more Pinterest changes are coming in 2018. Here’s what we know is coming, so that we can all be mentally prepared.
- Everyone will get the “Follower” tab within the next few months. So if you weren’t in the first wave and you’re looking at my photo above like, “Um, wtf?” Relax, you’ll be included in the fun very soon.
- You’ll see more “recommended profiles to follow” features coming soon. Honestly, I feel like there USED to be a lot of those in the front page/smart feed and suggested when we pinned stuff … so I feel like this is actually an older feature that they’re going to be bringing back, and maybe revamping? Anyway, this should help us all grow, in theory. In order to benefit from this feature, you’ll need to be a consistent pinner, you’ll need to have a business account, and you’ll need to have a “claimed” website. More on how to “claim” your website or check if you’ve already done that below in the actionable steps section.
- Your profile will be “Recommended” to new followers based on followers who are already engaging with you. This should, in theory, help you gain new and most importantly, relevant followers.
- Engagement will be even more crucial than ever this year. Remember that “engagement” means everything from close-ups to click throughs to saves, and even comments & photo replies. In the near future, even comments and “tries” may help boost a pin’s visibility. That all seems like it will be great for food and recipe blogs, but not terribly helpful for travel, so I’ll just be over here crying and trying to teach myself how to cook. Oh goodness, I’m really hoping that we don’t all have to join comment pods for Pinterest. Lord knows I have no desire to go back to them ever since leaving all of my Instagram pods (I’ve never felt so free)!
And … here’s some Very Bad News.
- Group Boards will be less important for engagement & distribution. This is big, because a lot of us really rely on Group Boards. Apparently, Pinterest followers prefer to see content from people they’ve chosen to follow. Pinterest recognizes that content creators have been “taking advantage” of this distribution method and will be de-prioritizing group board visibility. Ahhhh! Instead of relying on Group Boards, you’ll want to focus more on Pinterest SEO and optimizing your pins and content to appeal to your followers. Think of Group Boards as they were originally meant to be use: for small groups of collaborators, NOT as your distribution method. A way to take advantage of this might be to create group boards with similar overlapping niche content creators – like, your competitors and blogger BFF’s – to appeal to your core follower base.
- “Giraffe” pins WILL BE PENALIZED, especially on Mobile. A “giraffe” pin is LONGER than a 2:3 ratio or 1260px. These very tall pins will be shown less in the feed. Like, they’ll be cut off, AND ALSO suppressed in the feed on mobile. And the VAST majority of users are on Mobile. Ahhhh!!! You can look at your Google Analytics referrals from Pinterest to see how many of your users are viewing on Mobile, but as of right now, STOP making pins that are longer than 1260px and stick to a 2:3 ratio.
What’s NOT Changing?
Thank the freaking heavens, some things AREN’T changing. Here’s what we already know to be true which will STILL BE TRUE in 2018.
- “Monthly Views” captures true reach of your content on Pinterest. It refers to everyone who has seen something you pinned in the past 30 days. And it is NOT necessarily directly tied to your # of followers. Some of us experienced a big jump in this number recently, which I’m guessing was just a calculation tweak. Ultimately, the only metric that REALLY matters when it comes to Pinterest is the traffic you’re getting to your site. I’ve seen a lot of variations in follower count/monthly views/monthly traffic, and honestly there is no magic formula to determine how many monthly views you need to receive a certain number of referrals to your site – it totally depends on your content, and whether it’s clickable.
- Content creators should continue to re-pin content from other pinners. Prioritize fresh content from your own website and then continue to re-pin from front page, etc. This has never not been important. Er… what I mean is, this is still important. You want to use Pinterest as a user would!
- Your Board order is not at all relevant to the algorithm. Even though you have several choices now and can order boards from A-Z or whatever you want, Pinterest doesn’t give a hoot HOW you organize your boards. However, board order is STILL very important as a visual appeal to signal people who come see your profile and make a snap decision as to whether or not they want to follow you. So no, you don’t get to excuse yourself from that Pinterest Profile Makeover you’ve been putting off.
- Live pinning vs. scheduling: automation does NOT hurt you. Pinterest wants you to spread out your pinning activity rather than seeing you spam them all at once. However, they want you to continue to log in and pin live once in a while (which I have always recommended even to advanced pinners – even a few manual pins a day will work). In the future, Pinterest will be rolling out ways to motivate live pinning vs. scheduling with new features, but automation still won’t be penalized. Note: this doesn’t mean it helps you grow, either. I still firmly believe that automation is a good strategy for maintenance, not growth.
- You won’t see a “boost” by turning off Rich Pins – unless you’re a food blogger. There’s been this rumor floating around that turning off Rich Pins is a secret, magical way to boost your Pinterest traffic. Here’s why this works for some people (especially food bloggers): ever searched for a recipe on Pinterest, seen in the Rich Pin description that it had saffron or smoked paprika or some other random, specific ingredient that you didn’t have on hand that day? You probably didn’t click through to read the rest of the recipe, did you? Turning off Rich Pins makes Pinners more likely to click through … to recipe posts. For the rest of us, including travel bloggers, that really doesn’t apply. Higher click-throughs come from ACTIONABLE pins – you still have to make your Pinners WANT to click through, like to answer some burning question (“what ARE the 10 most Instagrammable places in Cartagena? I MUST KNOW!!”).
- The # of followers that you have still doesn’t matter, and engagement is far more important than followers. This is what I’ve said many times before, like when I said that followers don’t matter and when I theorized in 2017 that getting rid of re-pin counts and replacing them with engagement meant that engagement was the new metric to pay attention to. What I’m getting at here is that I WAS RIGHT! Kudos, me.
- You want a variety of engagement. You want your followers to engage with your content in the “following” tab. You want other people to discover content and pin it from your site. You want to pin your own content. All of it. Everything. Do it all! The more variety of engagement you’re getting, the better. This is not a new thing, it’s just really important.
Other Important Things to Note
Here’s some more important stuff to know about Pinterest in 2018. Look, not everything fits neatly into a category here. We’re doing our best.
About Automation/Scheduling Tools…
- The time of day when you pin is not the be-all-end-all for engagement. Although it does help to pin during “peak” times, even if you post when your followers are asleep, they will see your pins the next morning. This was confirmed in both interviews, with Tailwind and with Mediavine. Interestingly, this means that scheduling using time slots via Automation tools like Boardbooster and Tailwind doesn’t exactly give you an edge.
- BoardBooster & Tailwind pins are NOT penalized in the algorithm. However, Pinterest does want you to log in regularly, click on stuff, and shoot off a few manual pins. I do this while waiting in line, in traffic, in the bathroom, etc.
About Spam/Stolen Pins ….
- What is Pinterest doing about stolen pins/spam? Pinterest didn’t give us any specifics, but they’re definitely working on stuff to combat spam that’s still under development. What they were able to tell us is that they will be “aggressively investing in domain quality,” which means inspecting whether the landing page lives up to the promise of the pin. This would cut down on changed/stolen pins which lead to different URLs than they should. Some things that they’ll look at include whether your landing pages load QUICKLY – so get that page speed under control, y’all – and whether the landing page is relevant, not spammy, and contains similar images to the pin image.
- Contact specific copyright help team when you find a stolen pin that belongs to YOU. That means keep reporting your stolen content with this form. And if you really want to be extra, a best practice is to contact Pinterest to let them know, too, especially if you found an entire spam website stealing a bunch of pins.
- You can FLAG a pin that you identify as stolen, even if it isn’t yours. Click the 3 little dots, click “Report”, and then choose the option “this image doesn’t appear on this site.” Apparently that option will get the best/fastest results without risking impacting re-pins that haven’t’ been stolen.
- Can we report entire profiles? Yes – click the three little dots next to the Follow button and then click “Report” to report a spam profile. Pinterest is also developing new reporting tools to combat spammers.
- Make sure that the description of your pins is very similiar to the title of the post that it links to. Pinterest is examining whether blog titles match the keywords and description on your pin, to help combat spam. So it’s important that these two are pretty similar or contain similar keywords. You also want the image of your pin to look like what’s on the page – it doesn’t have to be the EXACT image, but it should be relevant. I assume this is being determined by robots, so … make it robot-nizable. Get it? Like recognizable. Get it?!?!!? #dadjokes
About Pinterest SEO…
- Pinterest board titles, keywords, and descriptions all affect the pins in your boards. These keywords trickle down to the pins in that board to help Pinterest determine what a pin is about and when to serve it up in search results. So again – get on that Pinterest Profile Makeover!
- Pinterest prioritizes pins that you pin from your website which link to your website. I mean like, YOUR pins, the ones you made by hand, which link to your site. Pinterest recognizes these pins as coming from you, and they do get a boost in the feed. They can also tell when it’s an existing post or an older post, and brand new posts are prioritized in Pinterest – especially in the new Following feed.
- The “first 5 pins per day” rule refers to what shows up in the Following tab. There’s been a lot of speculation around this, and I want to clarify. Here’s the deal: if you pin in giant chunks – like, frankly, most regular Pinners do – Pinterest doesn’t want to spam someone’s Following tab with all 100 of your obsessive pins about Cauliflower Recipes or whatever. So they cap you at 5. After 5 of your pins, someone else’s pins will show up, and so on. Then a little later, maybe 5 more of your pins will show up. Now, should we be ensuring that the first 5 pins we share each day – starting at midnight UTC, or 8pm EST, or 5pm PST – are from our website, or would THAT look even more spammy? Great question. I’ll be testing a few things out and seeing what happens.
- Clarification, 6/1/18: According to Pinterest, the “5 pins per day” rule no longer applies to a specific time of day and has been removed from their Best Practices page. Think of it more like a guideline for spreading out your pins vs. batch posting. Whenever you take a break after pinning a bunch, such as to sleep, the next 5 pins are considered your “first 5 pins of the day.” But don’t worry much about it – the real priority is just spreading your pins out and pinning regularly throughout the day, and pinning every day.
What Should You Do? Actionable Steps for 2018
There is so much happening and it’s all so overwhelming! Thankfully for you, we’ve fought our way through the overwhelm to come up with a few practical, actionable steps (which is what we’re all about here at Slaying Social). Here’s what you should be doing about these changes.
- If you don’t already have a business account, get one ASAP. Just click here to convert your existing Pinterest account into a business account. This will be crucial moving forward for content creators.
- Claim your website, or verify that you’ve already done so. Here’s how to claim your website. To check if your website has already been verified, navigate to your Pinterest Analytics and select “Website” (or click here). If you see some analytics from your domain, you’re good!
- Remake pins that are larger than 2:3 or longer than 1200px. This sucks. Like, MOST of my pins are 1400px tall. Sigh. The good news is that re-designing and re-launching a new pin should give you a little boost for that post. This is something you should be doing regularly anyway. My advice is to prioritize your most popular content FIRST, especially any long pins that have gone viral and are still driving traffic. Remake those ASAP!
- Lean into what your followers are looking for, what they’re engaging with, and pin & create content surrounding those topics MORE to drive engagement. Pin for your PINTEREST AUDIENCE – not yourself. Use secret boards for personal content (this has always been true). Remember, your followers now significantly determine the success of your pins, so understanding what they like is more important than ever.
- Pin consistently! Pinterest REALLY wants you to pin daily, consistently. As always, I recommend pinning for 1 hour a day when you’re in a growth phase. There is no such thing as pinning too much, so go crazy … just do it regularly, every day. I personally pin around 100+ times per day.
- Stop keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffed pins will be suppressed in the feed. Instead of throwing a zillion keywords into your description, write a description with a few primary keywords that are tied together with actual sentences – exactly like what you’d use for a Google description. The best descriptions have a relevant description, a few great keywords, and a few relevant hashtags.
- If you changed your niche or built your business account on top of a personal account, your followers may be hurting you rather than helping you. You may want to start your account from scratch – or better yet, pump out relevant content like crazy and work hella hard on attracting new, more-relevant followers.
- When you pin a brand new pin from your site, pin it to the most relevant board FIRST. Most of us jump straight to pinning to our “Best Of” blog board, and then re-pin from there. Apparently, that’s not doing us any favors. A pin carries with it all of the information from the first board it’s pinned to, including the related content in that board, keywords in the board title and description, etc. I’ve been preaching for a long time that if you write about a niche on your website, you should have a board for that niche – so pin to your niche board FIRST, then you can re-pin to your blog board later.
PHEW. That was a lot, y’all. Are you ready to curl up in a ball and cry, or just me? Anyone?
Here’s the good news: I AM working on a Pinterest course. … 4 of them, actually, split up so they’re actually affordable for regular people (cuz we love y’all). But now that everything is changing, I’m going to take some more time to make sure my content is up to date.
If you want to be in the know and get a heads up the minute that our courses drop, sign up for our mailing list using the form below. We’ll send you a few of our favorite Pinterest tips, plus you’ll get access to our massive resource library, which is stuffed with freebies, Pin templates, worksheets, and other nerdy goodies.
Do you have any questions, frustrations, or confusion that I can either help with, or just like … cry with you about? Drop us a comment below!
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Oh hey, pssst: did you find this post about Pinterest helpful? Why not do it some poetic justice and share it on Pinterest?
Aaaahhhhhh. I’m such a Pinterest novice and now I feel like I’m even further behind! Thank you for breaking everything down so it’s easy to understand though. Gonna bookmark and really dig into this once my head stops spinning…
I agree , plus i can’t find my boards , it is showing new things only and one I didn’t put there .
” If it ain’t broke don’t fix it ! “
Great post Lia 🙂 Since the tailwind video came out I feel like it has actually generated even more confusion and rumors than before! I love your breakdown and cutting to the chase on what we actually NEED to do. Always love to read your posts!
Super helpful post! I’ve been hearing all sorts of things about these changes, so it’s great to get an overview all in one place! I’ve definitely been “keyword stuffing” my pins, so I’ll be interested in seeing if there’s a difference in using a description instead.
Thanks for this!!! It’s a lot, but very much appreciate you rounding it up for us 🙂
Thank you. I haven’t had a chance to listen to the Tailwind piece yet (other than the last 20 minutes, which was pretty frightening), so appreciate an easy to read piece with so much good (if sometimes depressing) info.
Very interesting. I watched the Facebook Live video and I’ve been waiting for a good roundup post with the changes . I’ve been testing the “first five” part this week using my personal Pinterest account to see what’s showing up from my blog account. I’ve been pinning five of my own a bit after midnight UTC and then checking on them the next day with my other account. In 4 days of testing, I have yet to see any of the pins I’ve pinned during the post-midnight time slot show up in my feed on my other account. I’ve seen plenty of pins (3-5 in a row typically) saying they were shared by my blog account, but they’ve always been the most recent ones I’ve shared from pin threads. So now I’m trying to figure out if that really matters in the end.
So thankful for this conversation! When you say pin after midnight UTC, do you mean you pin 5 different pins 5 times each on different boards (making 25 pins total)? or just 5 pins and that’s it? Thanks!
5 pins total. However, I just added in a clarification after speaking with Pinterest. They’ve removed this guideline from their “Best Practices” and aren’t encouraging us to worry too much about it.
Thank you SO MUCH for all this info! All these changes are killing me, and this post is so helpful!
I would have taken this article more seriously if you didn’t have the annoying.gifs – It is hard to take any business topic seriously when they are littered within an article
Duly noted! We try not to take ourselves too seriously around here. There are a lot of other awesome resources out there that are created in more of a suit-wearing, GIF-free business-ey style that might be a better fit for you!
I like the gifs, they provide some relief from the serious stuff.
An extremely useful post. Thank you Lia!!
Thanks, Jill! We think so too 🙂
Keep the gifs.
We plan on it! Hehe. Thanks Chris!
agree about the gifs. very annoying! and I find the interpretation of these videos a little off. This is how bogus rumors get started
Sorry you feel that way! As for our interpretation, we actually did run this article by Pinterest and got some feedback from them. They’ve given us their official stamp of approval and verified that all of the information we’ve presented here is accurate and up to date! That is, until it changes again 😉
The section about live pinning vs. manual might need to be corrected. This is what Pinterest stated — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPZZXif1m_Q&feature=youtu.be&t=25m21s
Hey Kate, thanks for the call-out! We actually did get some feedback from Pinterest already about this post, and they’ve given us the approval on everything you see here as accurate and up-to-date. Although it’s clear that Pinterest doesn’t PENALIZE schedulers, they do prefer manual pinning – and although this is speculation on my part, my testing has confirmed that manual pinning is still a better growth strategy vs. automation. I treat automation as a maintenance strategy rather than a growth strategy – it’s great in a pinch or when you don’t have time to manually pin, but it’s not going to grow your account as effectively as logging in and using Pinterest live.
BEST blog post I’ve read about Pinterest in forever, funny and SUPER helpful + got the Pinterest stamp of approval? Thank you ladies!
You’re so sweet, Deborah! Hope it’s helpful!
Something changed with the app home feed yesterday and now it is terrible, but I have all my settings as described in this blog post. What gives?
Honestly it’s so hard to tell because Pinterest rolls out updates to some users occasionally that others don’t get, sometimes things change and then go back, and sometimes there are just bugs. So the best answer I can give you is … wait and see? And hope? And maybe pray?
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR BREAKING IT ALL DOWN! I am currently on BoardBooster and only pin about 20 pins automatically from there per day… When you say they are penalizing people for more than 50 pins a day, does that refer only to re-pinning our own pins or sharing others pins only? Thanks for clarifying! I am slow when it comes to Pinterest and I have yet to make it work well for me!
They are NOT penalizing people for more than 50 pins per day. There is no limit on how much you can pin per day. You just want to make sure it’s spread out during the day and not all in one clump, and a mix of your pins + others is best (there is no “ideal” ratio of yours:others).
I have tried a number of Pinterest automation tools for a year, and undoubtedly, PinPinterest com is the best one out there. Once I started exploring it, I discovered that it has sophisticated artificial intelligence which keeps irrelevant contents and pins at an arm’s length, which is something I have never seen in any other tool before. This is the reason I recommend this tool to everyone. If you are looking to generate legit traffic and take your Pinterest account to new heights, this tool is the ultimate weapon.
Sooo much good content! Thank you for the advice and good read. Putting many of these suggestions in place and filing the rest for the future and for reference. Awesome to find so much great info in one place. Thanks!
Happy we can help!
So is the option to repin (or save) our own pins gone now? Only option is to promote? So are we creating a new pin for each new board we will pin to? (I’m kind of getting back into the Pinterest game after being absent for a while, so maybe this is old?)
This is a new thing as of this week and I’m not entirely sure if it’s a bug, a feature, or what – some people have it, some don’t, and it’s not quite clear yet what’s going on. But I am in communication with the folks at Pinterest and I’m checking with them to see what’s up, so I should have some answers soon!
I need a genuene answer please. I am new to pinterest and I am accessing it from desktop. I heard about group boards but do not have any idea about how to post on those group board. Please help me posting some contents i have some greate blogs. Thanks in advance
You’ll be able to re-pin into group boards once you’ve been accepted into them. They will appear just like your own boards when you go to pin any pin on Pinterest. But first, someone has to invite you into a board! That’s the tricky part and there’s really no easy way to go about it other than asking the board owners.
Great article! I’m just a bit confused about one thing. I think that Pinterest said that new pins are given priority/more boost than old pins. And also that the more time the pin is pinned directly from the website it somehow increases the validity of this website and it helps its pins to rank better. Is that true?
And if it is, are we better then pinning pins directly from the website instead of repinning from our own Pinterest blog boards?
I know that board groups are not so important anymore but if I want to keep repinning from my website I need to pin the pins that already exist in my boards to the group boards to not to end up with duplicate pins in my own boards.
Would you be able to comment on that?
Thanks!
Hey Aga, brand new pins are given a little bit of a boost the first time they’re pinned, but you don’t need to pin from your website every single time. I don’t think it matters after the 1st time a pin appears on Pinterest. As for duplicate pins, you juts want to make sure that someone scrolling through your boards doesn’t see a bunch of duplicate pins. I hope that answers your questions!
Thanks Lia Garcia, but if I pin a pin from my website (even though this pin already exists in my board on Pinterest), doesn’t that create effectively new pin in the eyes of Pinterest? And what about the enhancement of the website if many pins are pinned from there? I know some pinning groups on fb already incorporated threads that pin directly from the website, not from the board. Thanks!
Aga, I believe Pinterest “said” that group boards are still important.
Lia, on the Pinterest FB video I watched, they said that the first 5 pins are the most important after 8:00. Does that mean I shouldn’t schedule pins before 8:00? Or does that only apply to followers (and not group boards)?
Regarding Tailwind, is there any way to prevent drafts from automatically filling in on the schedule? I see the Fill in Time Slots button, but I can’t tell whether it is highlighted or not. Thanks!
They came out recently saying that the first 5 pins thing isn’t applicable anymore. What they actually want you to do is space your pins out – if you pin a whole bunch of things at once, they’ll start being surpressed after 5 or so at once to avoid looking spammy. Wait a little while between batches of pins if you want them to get the most traction.
As for tailwind, I think they just fill in drafts automatically as a preview, and I don’t know any way of changing that. Maybe ask them or request the option to change it? The good news is they’re not actually scheduled!
I haven’t been on Pinterest in awhile and just realized that they have made some changes. At first I didn’t realize that I wasn’t seeing the pins from the peeps I follow. Well, I finally figured that out and now know that I have to click on “Following” to see those pins. OK, got it finally. But what I really want to know is what in the heck am I seeing on the home page? Are they ads? Things Pinterest thinks I want to see? Just where are those pins coming from? Just curious. And I don’t like it!!!!
Yep, those are things Pinterest thinks you want to see based on your activity on Pinterest. It’s called the “smart feed.” Mine is pretty spot-on because I’m really active on Pinterest, so maybe yours just needs some more information to better serve you relevant content!
The “Smart feed” just recently removed the labels from the pins coming from the boards I follow. It is also overrun by endless pins from …I don’t know where they get their info from but it is certainly not the pins I have saved nor the boards I follow. Two weeks ago, I hid literally hundreds of unwanted off target “suggested” pins with barely any pins from the boards I follow showing. i am not a business, just a user and nearly every change for the last few months has created less and less engagement from me and more and more bad experience.
Pinterest is not going to be a place I visit but once in a while or maybe never if the current trends continue.
Maybe you can find a way to articulate user disappointment because they have really hidden the ways to truly contact them.
I definitely share some of your frustrations! The good news is they are constantly changing (and changing BACK again) so keep providing your input and hopefully they will listen and implement some more changes 🙂
This was such an amazing and helpful post! I’ve been blogging for over 2 years now, but just really started Pinterest as a tool to increase traffic, so I’ve been reading everything I could find on “How to Pinterest.” This post was by far one of the best and most helpful guides I’ve read. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge!
Awww, thank you so much Liana! Glad the post is helpful for you!
Well, I am totally in the dark…I can’t even find the things I have pinned…
I can’t either! When I search “my Pins” only a small fraction of the pins show using my keywords. It is replaced by “recommended for you.” What the fuck Pinterest, now we can’t even search and find all the pins on our OWN boards? I carefully placed certain keywords so I could search my own pins, and now that doesn’t work. I’m pissed.
I’ve noticed this too! Not sure why it doesn’t work, but it’s REALLY irritating …
My traffic from Pinterest is down more than 50% year over year. It finally seems to have bottomed out and stagnated. I’m beginning to think it’s just not coming back around no matter what I do/change. Pinteres doesn’t really seem the same anymore. I can’t say exactly what it is that changed in particular.. Perhaps a culmination of poor changes.. but I really don’t have fun with it anymore and it certainly isn’t motivating watching your traffic in steep/steady decline after years of dedication and work. I’m at a loss. Great read!
Great post, just seeing it. If Thank you!I can’t believe that the horribleness keeps rolling on. The updates the past few days are even more abysmal. Feels like the day before Flickr died, all over again.
Oh Pinterest, just when I thought I was getting to know you, the real you, I find I know you not at all…
I’ll definitely be referring back to this article as it is so informative!
Hahahah this is exactly how we feel!
Is there ANY way to stop the “inspired” pins? I only want to see the people I follow & could care less about what Pinterest THINKS I might be interested in. There’s more inspired pins than anything else & I hate it! Thanks.
Hey Kimmy, you can go into your “Following” tab (upper right corner, labelled “Following”) to see only pins from the people you follow! This is a brand new feature Pinterest rolled out exactly for folks like you who are sick of the “inspired by” pins. (Meanwhile I’m the exact opposite, I LOVE the “inspired by pins” on my biz account. Not so much on my personal account, though!) It’s great that now we can both view what we prefer toview 🙂
Great post! I have a question. Does Pinterest penalize you for pinning too often? Sometimes I’ll just be pinning away and not have any idea how many pins I’ve done for the day. Any idea if there is a maximum that you should pin per day? What about in the beginning? I have heard to fill boards to at least 50 pins in the beginning. Is this ok to do at one time or should they be spread out?
Thanks!
You won’t be PENALIZED, and there’s no maximum per DAY. However, Pinterest wants you to spread your pinning out per day, so if you’re logging in and pinning 100 all at once, not every pin will be given equal weight in the algorithm – at a certain point, they’ll be less effective. It’s better to log in and pin SOME per day even if it’s not all at once, but better still to spread your pinning out to a few times a day. I like to use the Pinterest App and pin a few while I’m in line, in the bathroom, etc.
As for when you’re first starting out, yes, you want to have at least 20-50 pins in your boards. Otherwise they look empty and sad 😛 That’s fine to do all at once!
What a fantastic article, Lia! I have noticed most of the thins you’re describing here myself (group boards becoming less relevant and that manually pinning is key for growth.) Another thing I’ve noticed is that Pinterest is clearly pushing us to pay for promoted pins. That “Promote” button poppin’ up everywhere? I just worry that Pinterest follows Facebook and that at some point you’ll have to pay to be seen at all. What are your thoughts on this?
And by the way, I find the gifs hilarious – the subject matter is dreary enough – and I’ll be subscribing so I get more of great content like this!
From my interactions with the Pinterest team and the impression I got at the Pinterest Conference, they’re aware that content creators are crucially important to the user experience on Pinterest. So I doubt that content creators will be forced into “pay to play.” Brands, though, likely will be, and they have the budget for it too. My $20 per month isn’t going to keep the lights on even if I did pay for promoted ads 😛 But tbh I see the future of Pinterest promoted pins as shoppable pins, which are already being rolled out and tested. There is huge potential there and I think that’s a big part of their strategy moving forward.
Hmmm…I don’t like the Pinterest multi diagonal cover pic style… anyone know how to just have a single choice pic? not tiled, not diagonal… just one large pic? I haven’t found anything via Google to suggest it’s possible.
Unfortunately that’s not an option with Pinterest’s current layout. You could try writing them and letting them know of your request!
I hate the new Pinterest updates! I’m dyslexic and that explore option was awesome for me. It hasn’t simplified anything. Why is it so hard for sites to keep things going without so many changes. Ugh…great article though. At least you broke it down. Still not a fan of the new updates.
Boom!!! My head just exploded! Thank you so much for such a good piece of advice!
Hey, that’s what we’re here for!
I’m just a user of Pinterest and I hate these changes. I can’t find how to search a ‘category’ which I use to enjoy browsing. My feed now consists of things that are all the same, yes i like a lot of similar looking thing but the preferences are so swayed to my style I feel like I will have to start a new account to get access to pins and ideas that are new which to me is one of the purposes of a pin-board. These changes may make it easier for businesses to promote their styles but from a innovation n ideas perspective eg cut out clips from magazine n put on a pin board virtually I actually find it restricting – maybe I’m just too old school
Have you tried the “topics” tab? That should be full of suggestions for stuff that other people are looking at and it can be really fun to browse through them! Also, the more you search for and look at other stuff, the more that still will start showing up on your feed. I agree that a really homogenous feed gets old on a personal account :-/
Thanks for a great article on Pinterest changes! Can I ask you a couple of things: 1. When I go to the people I follow – the list – I can’t click on them and get to their page? I have to copy and paste their name into the search bar on Pinterest? And, not everyone has “latest pins” on their page. There isn’t always an overview on everyone’s page? Thanks for your awesome info!! 🙂
Hmmm that’s weird – I just tested out going to my “Following” tab on Pinterest and I was able to click on their name to get to their page.
Also, you’ll find everyone’s latest pins under the “Pins” tab on their profile.
Hope that helps!
I keep reading about 5 pins are the most important – is it the first 5 pins or the last 5 pins you pin in a session that makes it out to your followers?
That was actually only a thing for like 10 minutes and then Pinterest was like “JK never mind, forget we said that.” So don’t worry about the first 5 pins 🙂 At a certain point if you’re sitting down and pinning like 100x in one sessions chances are Pinterest will probably not push out the rest of those pins to everyone to avoid flooding your followers’ feed, so the first SEVERAL pins are probably getting more exposure, but it’s not like a hard and fast “5 pins and you’re out” kinda rule.
Are they going to put a stop to pins disappearing from the boards?
Hey Rose, that sounds like something you’ll want to contact Pinterest about – I haven’t heard anything about it!
I have noticed that I can’t “save” things from certain places anymore. Like Bed, Bath & Beyond or Wayfair. Is that a new change as well??? And why, if it is ? Thanks.
Have they made changes to hash tagging a new post recently? The option to change your text below your image (on my laptop) doesn’t come up anymore enabling me to view hash tag popularity. Is it just hit and miss now? My hashtags show but I’m just guessing at their popularity.
Thanks
When I open up a pin off a board of mine …or anywhere there is a slice out of the pin missing …so not a complete picture of what I pinned…why is this happening?
Thanks a lot for updates lia. Now i got all the updates and i am doing all changes so that my pinterest is also going to grow. You are absolutely impressive. Keep rocking
Very informative, and a relief to know that I could do something about my unusually low pinterest traffic. I have many pins longer than 1200 px. This post just thought me how important it is to keep updated. Thank you for doing the work it took to do just that.
Has the feed layout changed also? For the following tab? For few days I cannot see the the feed properly like before, image next to image (lots of small images). I just see 1 big image (full screen) and have to scroll to see the next and so on. Sooooo annoying. Main feed is still the same old style which is so much better.
Lia, thanks a lot about these updates and changes. I will use them wisely.
Also, (and sorry for double posting) you guys seems to be publishing about 1 new article a month.
So if you advise to pin 100 times a day, are any those 100 pins your own? Or do repin the most current pin many times, and/or repin your older pins?
I guess my question is what is the ratio between your own content and other bloggers’ content in those 100 daily pins?
I’m confused sorry
There’s no “perfect” ratio, but personally I pin about 80% other people’s content and 20% my own.
Thanks for the info Lia! I don’t use Pitnerest to follow people or view gifs or anything but getting ideas ideas to build. Pinterest used to allow you to click on a picture and it would enlarge that picture. This was extremely helpful to me as I could see many details to help me with projects. Now clicking on pics just takes me to a host of other pics or boards. I get it. Pinterest wants you to stay as long as possible; however, is there a way to view the pic I clicked on in the larger format? Really appreciate all the time and effort you’ve put into this to keep up on the changes!
Hmm usually when I click on it, I see the full sized image. Sometimes the image is smaller than I’d like, so I go to the actual site that hosts it. Maybe try that?
Your post is excellent and informative. your post also inspires us to be connected with pinterest.
I personally really don’t understand what they’ve done to the ‘Tried it’ feature. I got to do it once and it’s never given me the option to add a photo/note ever again since.
Completly confused ….I will just leave my Pinterest account to do whatever it is doing…its to complicated now…its lost my vote…so disapointed..
Honestly speaking, I just like your ideas. Thank you for sharing this information and keep posting.
Awesome and so comprehensive guide! Lots of points I noticed for myself and gonna use it for our company blog. Thanks!