Pinterest Strategy 101: How to Create a Pinterest Strategy

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Spend about 10 minutes in a group of bloggers or small business owners discussing social media strategy (it’s not as boring as it sounds, I promise) and you’ll probably hear quite a few folks RAVING about Pinterest. I’ll be one of them, because I credit Pinterest with driving the initial 20k monthly visitors to my blog that I needed to start earning actual money and turn blogging into a full time job.

Yes, Pinterest is an incredibly powerful social media platform with an incredible potential for driving traffic. But that doesn’t mean it’s right for every blog, brand, or business – and it doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to replicate someone else’s success just by doing exactly what THEY did. We here at Slaying Social will NEVER promise you anything like “become a full time blogger in a year, JUST LIKE ME” because it’s misleading and, quite frankly, irritatingly optimistic.

That said, before you dive head first into Pinterest to see whether the magical shiny promise of  traffic in droves holds true for you, you’ll want to create a Pinterest Strategy to drive your efforts. Because Pinterest takes a LOT of time. And time is money.

If you’re already using Pinterest but haven’t yet dialed in a strategy that works for you, consider this your wake-up call: it’s time to get intentional!

TELL US YOUR PINTEREST USERNAME! Drop your Pinterest handle in the comments below so we can connect with you and show you some love. After all, our goal is grow together. Bonus points if you tell us your biggest fears, struggles and concerns when it comes to Pinterest.

So break out the gel-pens and a notebook and let’s get to work creating a Pinterest strategy that fits your brand!

WHY do you need a Pinterest account?

Every social media platform appeals to different needs, and understanding why your audience is on Pinterest and what they’re using it for is crucial to your success on Pinterest.

For starters, here’s the #1 most important thing you need to know about Pinterest: it’s a visual search engine.

Unlike Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, on Pinterest there is no actual engagement with your audience. You won’t talk to them. You won’t really engage with your followers at all, in fact. Engagement on Pinterest is unique in  that it’s almost entirely devoid of actual interpersonal interaction. It’s like the perfect social media platform for socially awkward introverts! Soooo now you know why it’s my platform of choice.

You’ll never reach out and personally thank your follower for engaging with your content on Pinterest, like the other social media platforms. You’ll never be able to invite them to follow you, like on Facebook. You won’t be carving out time to engage with your followers, like you would on Instagram. And you won’t be privy to their personal thoughts and feelings, like you are on Twitter.

And yet, Pinterest is the #1 most effective social media platform for driving traffic to your blog, business, or brand.

So if your audience is on Pinterest, the only question on your mind should be whether or not you should be, too.

Do I Need a Pinterest Account?

When it comes to determining whether Pinterest is one of the platforms you should focus your preciously limited time and energy on, ask yourself these questions.

You need a Pinterest account if you create content that:

  1. Solves a problem your audience is seeking an answer to
  2. Provides useful information that your audience is looking for
  3. Inspires and delights your audience

If you can answer these questions with a resounding, YES! Then the next question to ask yourself is, will my content be successful on Pinterest?

Will My Content be Successful on Pinterest?

Of course, trial and error is the best method for evaluating the answer to that. But ain’t nobody got time for trial and error. Time is money, people! So here’s a shortcut.

Does your blog, brand, or business fall into any of the following categories?

  1. House & Home
  2. Crafts & DIY
  3. Travel & Destinations
  4. Food & Recipes
  5. Dieting & Fitness
  6. Fashion, Makeup, & Beauty

If so, you’ve got a great chance of success on Pinterest! Those 6 niches are by FAR the most popular on Pinterest.

If you fall outside of those niches, you might give Pinterest a try. But the best results will definitely come from creating content within those categories.

So, challenge yourself: is there a way to create content that could fall within the Pinterest-popularity bucket?

For example, if you make and sell jewelry on Etsy, you could create content that provides how-to instructions and tutorials for making jewelry (crafts & DIY). Within that useful content – which provides information AND delights and inspires your jewelry-loving crafty audience – you can include gorgeous pictures of your own jewelry (with links to your shop, of course) that will ultimately lead to brand awareness and, ideally, sales!

The last thing you want to do is put a picture of your product up on Pinterest and call it a day. Y’all: that’s an ad, not helpful content. It’s not going to do anything for you, and it’s wasting the incredible power of Pinterest by not taking advantage of its unique properties.

Important Caveat: Most Pinterest users are in the USA. So if your audience is mostly outside of the USA, your chances of success on Pinterest will be negatively impacted.

STRATEGIC TAKEAWAY

Decide whether it makes sense for your brand to have a presence on Pinterest. If you’re not sure, evaluate whether there’s a way to create content that could fall within the Pinterest-popularity bucket to boost your chances of success. If not, scratch Pinterest off your list, click that “x” in the upper right hand corner, and go pour yourself a glass of wine.

If you’ve determined that a Pinterest account is right for your brand, let’s continue!

 

WHO will you be targeting with your Pinterest account?

Yes, duh, you’ll be targeting your audience. 

But how will you increase that audience, to get your brand and your content in front of even MORE people? That’s the million dollar question.

Identify Your Niche Audience

You want to identify a niche audience that perfectly encapsulates these 2 things:

  1. Your current audience, who adores you
  2. An audience that hasn’t discovered you just yet, but is gonna LOVE you when they do!

The goal, of course, is to find your current audience on Pinterest and continue doing all of the things they already love you for, while also getting your content in front of your awesome NEW audience and bringing them over to the other side to hang out with your current audience.

It’s sort of like making new friends in your early 20’s. You love your friends, but you also want to meet a bunch of NEW friends that think you’re rad, so you can invite them ALL over for really epic parties.  Except the parties are like … profitable business ventures or viral blog posts, or whatever. Also I’m in my late 20’s, so I’ve pretty much forgotten what it’s like to have friends that do things like stay out past 8pm, because we all have to work early and watching Netflix at home always sounds easier than socializing. #Millennials, amirite?

So, what does appealing to both your current & future audience look like from a practical perspective? Well, let me give you an example from my travel blog, Practical Wanderlust. (See what I did there with the practical? …Get it?? ….  Look, sorry guys, sometimes my jokes are obvious and terrible. You can’t win ‘em all.)

My current audience for Practical Wanderlust is a female age 25-34 living in the USA who loves to travel, so long as it’s on a budget. (Psst: if I just described you, you should probably go check out my blog. Always hustlin’, y’all!) She reads my blog because she’s interested in practical travel advice for specific geographic locations that she wants to travel within: the United States, South America, and Europe. I haven’t been anywhere else, so that’s all my current audience is visiting me for.

My future audience is also a female millennial living in the USA who loves to travel on a budget. But she’s not planning any trips to the USA, South America, or Europe. Maybe she’s more into Southeast Asia this year instead. Maybe she’s still figuring out her next big trip and doesn’t have a location nailed down yet. What’s she looking at on Pinterest? What appeals to her? 

My job is to position my account to appeal to her by sharing relevant content, even though I may not have the posts she’s looking for on MY blog.

Who is Your Future Audience?

Let’s step into a time machine and go meet your future audience. Ask yourself these questions:

  • What are they interested in?
  • What are they researching?
  • What motivates them?
  • Where do they draw their inspiration, as it relates to your blog, brand, or business?

STRATEGIC TAKEAWAY

Think critically about how you can position your Pinterest account to serve up content that inspires, informs, and delights an audience that hasn’t yet discovered YOUR blog, brand, or business … yet.

Once you’ve met your future audience, let’s step back out of the Tardis and start brainstorming how to find your future audience to make sure the fabric of the space-time continuum doesn’t tear, or something.

 
So how do you get your content in front of your future audience? The answer lies in your brand positioning and shared content.

HOW will you represent your brand on Pinterest?

When you create your Pinterest account, you’ll want to serve your audience – both current and future – only content that is relevant to their interests and to your brand.

What this means is that your personal Pinterest account is not going to cut it.

Sure, maybe your reader is just as interested in Vintage Donut Posters as you are, but unless your brand/business/blog is DIRECTLY RELATED to Vintage Donut Posters in some way (like, are you a donut shop? Or maybe a donut poster artist?)  then just because you both share that interest is not enough to qualify for inclusion on your Pinterest account.

Think critically about how you can position your Pinterest account to serve up content that inspires, informs, and delights an audience that hasn’t yet discovered YOUR blog, brand, or business … yet.

You want to cover all the relevant angles that your current & future audience are interested in when it comes to your niche.

On the Slaying Social Pinterest account, we're covering more than just Social Media marketing tips. We also have boards for monetization, blogging, SEO, email marketing, and Entrepreneurship. Heck, we even have a board on Motivation. Will we ever write about these topics? Unlikely. But they're relevant to our audience, so they're important for our Pinterest account!
On the Slaying Social Pinterest account, we’re covering more than just Social Media marketing tips. We also have boards for monetization, blogging, SEO, email marketing, and Entrepreneurship. Heck, we even have a board on Motivation. Will we ever write about these topics? Unlikely. But they’re relevant to our audience, so they’re important for our Pinterest account!

Let’s think back to my future audience, who isn’t planning a trip to a destination I’ve written about but still fits within my target demographic.  What’s she currently interested in, as it relates to my travel blog?

She might be interested in tips for saving money to travel, cheap travel destination inspiration, or maybe just some vicarious travel inspiration to inspire her while she’s surfing Pinterest behind her desk.

Even though my current audience is only interested in a few locations that I’ve personally written about, my future audience is interested in other locations that I don’t actually have any content about on my blog. So, even though I’ve only personally written about Europe, the USA, and South America, you’ll find content on my Pinterest account about Asia, Oceania, Africa – EVERYWHERE.

Why? Because it’s all related to travel. And I want to position myself as an expert content curator for all things travel – or to be more specific, in my case, budget couple’s travel.

So how should you represent your brand on Pinterest? 

STRATEGIC TAKEAWAY

Your Pinterest account should position you as an expert in your field, sharing and cultivating high quality, informative, and inspirational content about your niche.

You want your Pinterest account to be a one-stop shop for your target audience.

The more time they spend pouring through your account re-pinning all of your stuff, the more Pinterest will give you that all-important “You’re Pretty Cool” ranking in their algorithm – and that matters a LOT.

What level of cool should you aspire for? We’d aim for like, “Shiba Inu in Hawaiian shirt” level:

 

WHAT kind of content will you share on Pinterest?

You know you need to position yourself as an expert content curator  in your field, assembling a massive collection of relevant high-quality content that appeals to your current and future audience. But what does that actually look like?

Think of each board on Pinterest like a big, beautiful bulletin board. Your job is to pick a theme, and then find beautiful pictures and useful articles to tear out of glossy magazines and “pin” them to the board, until you’ve got it all filled up with content. Once you’ve got some gorgeous photos and interesting articles on your bulletin board, passerby who are interested in your theme will stop and engage with your board: they’ll read your articles, look at your photos, maybe tear off a couple of things to reference later, and generally peruse your bulletin board like a work of interactive art at the MoMa. It’s basically every College RA’s dream when they’re tasked with creating the precious hallway Bulletin Board.

So, how do you decide on your “theme?” What kind of content should you fill up your bulletin boards with?

Here’s a quick exercise.

A Quick Exercise

Write down the 5 most important topics that your content/product is all about.

  • If you’re a travel blogger, what 5 places, types of travel, or travel-related topics do you cover most frequently?
  • If you’re a local bakery, what are your 5 most popular categories of baked goods?
  • If you sell products, what are your 5 core product categories?

Get the idea? Whatever top 5 most important topic describes your niche, write them down.

Guess what? You just wrote down 5 Pinterest Boards that you need to have on your Pinterest account. You’ll fill those boards with relevant content, all aimed at informing, inspiring, and delighting your audience (current, past, present, future, multiverse – all of them).

Do you have those boards created already? If not, go create them.

What that super quick and easy exercise does is force you to think critically about what  kind of content you can cultivate that is relevant to your blog, brand, or business. Pinterest involves a lot of sharing other people’s stuff – it’s critical to success on Pinterest – but you don’t want to share willy-nilly.

STRATEGIC TAKEAWAY

You want to share high quality content that is directly relevant to your niche and informs, inspires, and delights your audience.

What that looks like specifically will vary from niche to niche – so I suggest finding a few successful competitors and scoping their accounts to see what’s working for them.

HOW will you optimize your content for Pinterest?

We’ve talked a lot about cultivating content on Pinterest. And about 50% of that content will be from OTHER people – linking to their sites, not yours.

Providing that content will inspire, delight, and inform your reader – but it won’t get you traffic to your site. (At least, not directly. It DOES benefit you, and here’s how.)

So, let’s talk about YOUR content. Like, the stuff that links directly to your site.

Here’s the thing: chances are, not all of your content is suited for Pinterest.

Above, I listed the most popular niche categories on Pinterest. But even within those categories, all content is not created equally. Some stuff just won’t work on Pinterest.

How to create a winning Pinterest strategy that increases pageviews and explodes your blog traffic like crazy! #Pinterest
There IS a surprising number of boards about “Great Mustaches” though, so who knows.

Stuff that just won’t work on Pinterest

Here are a few examples of things that are unlikely to do well on Pinterest that I’ve found through my own trial & error (so much error):

  • Think pieces. People go to Pinterest for information and inspiration, not to hear your thoughts about stuff. Save the think pieces for Facebook, where people actually do want to hear your thoughts and feelings.
  • Personal stories. Don’t take it personally. My subscribers LOVE to hear about my personal stories. Pinterest, on the other hand, could not care less about the time I had to get rescued off of a waterfall in Colombia, or the time my grandfather tried to fake his own death during my honeymoon. Does that mean I’ve stopped writing ridiculous stories about my life? Nope. I just don’t bother trying to promote them on Pinterest!
  • Non-evergreen content. Content on Pinterest lives forever, so a pin about a 1-time event or something with an expiration date has a low chance of success on Pinterest.
  • Stuff that’s gross. Gross thing aren’t inspiring – even if they’re informative. If you do have “gross” content that’s actually useful and informative, definitely do NOT use a gross picture – here’s how to pick a good image to use on Pinterest.

A lot of things are subjective on Pinterest. But trust me – some things just don’t work on the platform.

That said, sometimes it’s possible to re-frame your content on Pinterest to optimize it better.

For example: I mentioned that I had a blog post including a story about the time my grandfather tried to fake his own death while I was on my honeymoon. The blog post is a honeymoon wrap-up: it’s about what we did on our year-long honeymoon. (Spoilers: there was a lot of taking care of my grandfather on his fake deathbed.)

On Facebook, that was the major selling point of my post. People clicked through, fully prepared to spend 30 minutes reading all about how incredibly ridiculous my family is.

On Pinterest, I didn’t even reference my grandfather’s antics on my pin. Why? Because nobody on Pinterest is looking for information on how to deal with ridiculous 93 year old Jewish WWII vets, and they don’t care about my weird family stories.

What they are on Pinterest for is travel inspiration and information.  

So I titled my pin using a different angle: “What happened on our year-long honeymoon & how much did we spend?” Boom: inspiration and information. It was still an accurate description of my post, but optimized for Pinterest rather than Facebook. Now, my Pin has a much higher chance of success on Pinterest.

STRATEGIC TAKEAWAY

Challenge yourself to think critically about what content you have that will and won’t work on Pinterest, and ask yourself whether you can spin your content in a way that caters to what Pinterest does best: informs and inspires.

WHERE will you share your content?

We talked a lot about your boards, which should be a representation of the most important topics that are directly related to your blog, brand, or business.

But your own boards and profile are only part of a winning Pinterest strategy. For the best success on Pinterest, you also need to get your stuff seen, shared, and engaged with by as many other people as possible. Here’s a refresher on what to do on Pinterest and why engagement is crucial to Pinterest success.

STRATEGIC TAKEAWAY

Giving the Pinterest content that links back to your site a little engagement boost will help its chances of success significantly. Evaluate which method will work best to get your content shared by other people on Pinterest.

There are several ways to get your stuff shared by other people, and honestly, I don’t think any of them are “right” or “wrong.” Each niche is different. I’d recommend trying them all and seeing what works for you.

Ways to Get Your Content Shared on Pinterest

Here are my favorite strategies for getting others to share your content:

  • Pinning your content to group boards on Pinterest
  • Participating in Facebook Re-Pin share threads within your niche
  • Sharing your content on relevant Tailwind Tribes

When it comes to your Pinterest strategy, you’ll want to think critically about whichever method works best for you.

For example: if you’re pinning your content to group boards, strategize about where you’ll find those group boards: which pinners can you creep on to stalk all of their group boards to see if you can get added? Yes, creepin’ is totally strategic. Getting added to group boards is the hard part!

Think about what niche topics you want to join group boards about (niche group boards are 100x more effective than vague group boards that aren’t niche specific). Analyze the size of your group boards to ensure you have a mix of high and low volume group boards.

Like I said: there is no 1 “best” way to get your content shared by others on Pinterest, and your mileage will vary depending on your niche. Like, for the Slaying Social Pinterest account, I’m having a lot of success using Tailwind Tribes to share our content. But on my travel blog Pinterest, Facebook Re-Pin threads are crucial to my strategy.

So figure out which method works for you. But know this: getting your content shared by others is absolutely critical to getting your Pinterest account in the fast lane to traffic city! Ugh, I just made MYSELF cringe. What was that, a Cars quote?!

 

HOW Will You Grow on Pinterest?

As far as I’m concerned, my success on Pinterest is measured by 1 thing: traffic to my site.

But before the traffic starts pouring in, there are a few other analytics that will help you monitor and analyze your growth on Pinterest along the way.

One of those metrics is Exposure. Pinterest shows you a “Monthly Views” number which is mostly useful as a benchmark for watching yourself improve. If your monthly views on Pinterest go down, pin more! If they go up, great job – keep doing whatever you’re doing!

 

Exposure at work: see that 1.1? That's 1.1 MILLION, the number of monthly views our profile & our content is currently getting monthly on Pinterest. Does that translate into traffic growth for my blog? You bet it does!
Exposure at work: see that 1.1? That’s 1.1 MILLION, the number of monthly views our profile & our content is currently getting monthly on Pinterest. Does that translate into traffic growth for my blog? You bet it does!

Another metric you can use to evaluate your growth is your follower count. I’ve got an entire post about followers on Pinterest (& why they don’t really matter), but you should definitely keep an eye on this metric if it’s stagnating or slipping backwards. Once you hit 1k followers, it should climb pretty steadily on its own.

Goal Setting Homework

Here’s a little homework for you: make a task list of what needs to be done on Pinterest on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

Then, get out a little sticky note, and write a goal at the top.

Next, write a step you’ll take to achieve that goal underneath. And stick your goal & task somewhere super obvious (I like to put mine ON my computer monitor, where they bother, distract, and inspire me all at the same time).

Here’s an example:

GOAL: Get to 1k followers

WEEKLY TASK: Follow at least 100 Pinterest

Target your goals, set a list of steps you’ll commit to in order to achieve those goals, WRITE THEM DOWN, stick your list somewhere obvious  where you can’t ignore it, and track your progress for a month.

Then after a month, evaluate: what worked? What didn’t work? How much growth did you see? Did you utilize your time effectively? What can be improved?

Then, set yourself a new goal, STICK IT SOMEWHERE OBVIOUS, and continue plugging away.

This is how I’ve been running my Pinterest for over a year now.  When I first started my account, my initial goal was to double my followers and traffic each month until I got to a number I was happy with.

4 months later, I hit that number, and my goals changed. My new goal was to maintain my traffic rather than build it, while also spending LESS time on Pinterest every month. When I got down to an hour per week, my goals changed yet again.

Each month I set new goals and evaluate what my task list will be that month to achieve those goals, with brighter and more irritatingly placed post-it notes.

STRATEGIC TAKEAWAY

Whether you focus on monthly views, traffic to your site, followers, or re-pins, make a concious effort to set a goal and track your progress at least once a month. If you’re not growing, it’s time to do some tweaking to your strategy.


By now, you should have a notebook full of scribbles, an idea of your target audience on Pinterest, some boards to create, a few ideas for creating or tweaking your content to optimize it for Pinterest, and a bunch of irritating sticky notes with your goals and the steps you’ll take to achieve them (or maybe a list, if you’re organized like that).

We’d love to hear from you: what’s your biggest challenge when it comes to creating your Pinterest strategy? Leave us a comment below!

Hey! If you found this post useful, would you mind sharing it on Pinterest? Thanks!
How to create a winning Pinterest strategy that increases pageviews and explodes your traffic like crazy! #Pinterest | Social Media Strategy | Social Media Marketing | Entrepreneurship Tips | Business Tools

44 thoughts on “Pinterest Strategy 101: How to Create a Pinterest Strategy”

  1. I really had a hard time understanding Pinterest and how to use it to increase my blog traffic. You just answered all my questions about this platform in this post. I remember trying it out and focusing on it a few months back, but I didn’t see any results. It wasn’t clear to me then, how everything works. After reading this post, I decided to try it again. Armed with the knowledge that you just share, I feel optimistic about it this time. 🙂

    Reply
  2. Pinterest has been my biggest platform to learn about right behind SEO for my blog and reading these tips has really given me a plan to grow my monthly over coming months.

    Reply
  3. I’ve been so bummed with some of the changes on Pinterest. Why can’t I see how many pins a pin has anymore?… My own or other people’s pins. I see the stats feature, but I don’t think that tracks all repins. It’s an important detail to become “Shiba Inu in a Hawaiian shirt” cool… ya feel me?
    Anyway, I’VE BEEN LOVING the new site. YOU TWO ARE HILARIOUS!

    Reply
  4. THANK you for this! Pinterest is kinda scary, but i am slowly and steadily trying to up my game! One thing I dont UNDERSTAND is how and where to check repins for a pin? They somehow don’t seem to appear ANYMORE..Is it just ME?
    Btw, my PINTERESt handle is @trailingabroad =)

    Reply
    • Hey Meghna, we followed you from the Slaying Social account! It’s definitely not you – they’ve taken re-pins away from the front page and search pages, along with descriptions 🙁 I’m not thrilled with it, but it is what it is and you just have to roll with the punches.

      The good news is you can still check your pin activity by adding /activity/saved onto the end of your pin’s URL. Like this: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/622059767252988405/activity/saved/

      It’s extremely clunky and inconvenient, but at least it’s still there 😛

      Reply
  5. Really great post. I’ve Been Trying to figure ouT how to Make pinterest work For me. I blog about Food, travel and lifestyle so it’s difficult to get a niChe following. Hopefully That will change soon! I’m @reallifewIthlou on pinterest.

    Reply
  6. Lia, love your work! This post was really helpful. I feel like I’ve just been floundering on Pinterest, and well, all of the social sites. I know how I like to use them for personal gain but I’ve been hitting a fear roadblock for my Blog and Podcast. When I see how much work people are putting into each platform I get freaked out and back off. I think I should try, really try, to optimize one at a time. And focus more on less…. I start second guessing myself and reorganizing boards instead of doing something more productive.
    So much to learn! Off to start with baby steps..
    Oh and my handle is @kissthatworld

    Reply
    • Followed you! I LOVE your niche – it applies perfectly to the lifestyle we’re trying to cultivate right now. You’ve got an AWESOME start to your Pinterest account, and I’m so excited to see more! It looks like the next step for you is figuring out what strategy you’ll use to get pins that link to your site more engagement & exposure: joining group boards, tailwind tribes, FB re-pin threads, etc. Keep working at it!!

      Reply
    • Those are definitely the 2 heavy hitters when it comes to driving traffic. It’s a LOT of work, but it’s SO worth it. On my travel blog, SEO & Pinterest combined make up about 80% of my total traffic! That’s HUGE. BTW, followed you from the Slaying Social account. I love how zen your pins made me feel *breathes deeply* 😀

      Reply
      • Thanks for the info. I’m struggling to understand tailwind.. and is it true that if you pin a pin multiple times your views go down?? My handle is @1sassyboss

        Reply
  7. Okay, biggest challenge… I suck at all things social media (all things internet, really)! Especially Pinterest – I have a whopping 1 follower (you read that right). I’m also not great at design, in terms of both designing individual pins for my blog posts and designing my pinterest account/boards. I get inspiration from other accounts that produce great post pins, display eye-catching board cover pins, and curate beautiful content, but I have trouble replicating it. I’m very new to this (think newborn babe, new), so should probably cut myself some slack, but I also wanna kick-start my social sharing ASAP since my goal is to monetize my blog… also ASAP. Hoping your monthly goal-setting strategy above will help me feel less overwhelmed!

    Reply
    • Hey Mary Beth! The good news is, you now have 3 followers 🙂 followed you from Slaying Social & Practical Wanderlust, my travel blog. It looks like you have an awesome framework – you just have to dive in! You’ve got a ton of great and exciting boards set up (I’m particularly excited about “Hilarious Travels!”) and the next step is just to fill them all up with content! Make it a priority to stuff those empty boards full with at least 20-50 pins each. It’s actually kinda fun!

      Reply
  8. Every post on this blog is gold! Thank you so much for this. I will be setting my Pinterest goals today. Followed you guys on Pinterest @violawang5. My blog is called The Blessing Bucket <3 On to the next Pinterest article!

    Reply
  9. Heya Lia, I’m a bit confused about facebook repin shares and would love your advice!
    So you mention here about using FB repin threads to launch a pin. Seems like a good idea to get traction especially as most of my personal boards only have about 350 followers and my group boards are quite frankly rubbish!
    However, doesn’t this go against the idea of only pinning quality pins that are relevant? I’ve done a few repin threads recently and half the pins were really bad. Also, some weren’t really relevant to me (eg they were family friendly travel and I’m all about young professional travel.) I’m planning on carrying on with repin threads for another week or two then try to compare it in Pinterest analytics but it’s tricky as I’ve made lots of other changes recently such as SEO/branding etc. so hard to know cause and effect!
    I mentioned repin threads in the pinchat facebook group and it was like I’d mentioned the devil! But then I know plenty of great Pinterest experts that DO use them such as yourself. I’m really confused by all the conflicting advice and wondered if you could clarify this point? Thanks a million!

    Reply
    • Hey Leanne! Personally, I prefer to put my irrelevant & low quality pins in other group boards rather than on my own boards. The reason is that going in a group board benefits the creator of the pin by exposing them to potentially interested followers. I’m in a family travel group board, for example, for exactly this reason – those followers are far more likely than my followers to find that pin useful or relevant to them! Some of the FB re-pin thread groups don’t allow this, though, so be careful and DON’T do that when you’re participating in those threads!

      Reply
  10. Ah ok this sounds like a better option for me! I’ll check the rules if the threads I’m in! So just to clarify if I repin someone else’s pin which doesn’t do very well but pin it into a group board, it won’t affect my algorithm at all because it’s not on my personal board?
    Thanks so much for answering this. I’ve been debating the point with myself and anyone who’ll listen for the past few weeks!

    Reply
  11. Hi! Jotted down some points and set up my initial boards and populated some pins. I am making my own tomorrow. As a travel blog with a heavy lean on photography itd be a shame not to utilise all those lovely images! Also as a travel blogger I sneaked a peek at your Pinterest for some inspiration.
    My main concern is how to get exposure, do I need to get tailwind? Do I follow all the travel junkies on Pinterest? How do I even find group boards? Should I switch to a business profile? In other words I feel like nothing I’d done so far has paid off (well curated Instagram account with my own original photos, facebook, Twitter and its all crickets everywhere ).
    My Pinterest is RutaEmilija (https://www.pinterest.ie/rutaemilija/)

    Reply
    • Hi Ruta! Since you’re just starting off, focus on just learning how to use Pinterest and engage with it in an organic way. What I mean by that is, do what any new user would do: follow relevant content (other travel blogs and pinners, plus relevant boards), pin relevant content to your boards, click on stuff, look at stuff, just spend at least 1 hour per day engaging with Pinterest. You’ll get exposure once you’ve created your own pins and have begun to circulate them. You’ll stumble upon group boards as you sift through other people’s accounts (there are tons on mine, for example). Some of them will have instructions for how to get added in the description. Others won’t. You can also use this Boardbooster feature to find them: https://boardbooster.com/best-group-boards

      You definitely do NOT need Tailwind right now. Manual pinning is your best bet. Join some Facebook re-pin threads once you’ve got your own pins created and start getting those circulated. Oh and one last thing: YES, you definitely need a business profile! You’ll need to turn Rich Pins on for your blog ASAP.

      Reply
  12. Heya Lia, had a bit of a drop in pinterest traffic recently so Im re-reading your posts to see if I get any inspiration to make changes! But I got to wondering, how much do duplicate pins within your boards have an impact? I have a shocking picture memory so Im quite sure Ive probably repinned things over and over! I know there is an option on boardbooster to clean your boards but it charges 1 cent per pin and i have 30K pins so that equates to $300! Is it worth doing at least to my own boards? (about 10k pins are on my own boards) Would love to know your thoughts!

    Reply
    • It’s not a huge issue unless you truly have a massive quantity of duplicate pins – and that’s a bad user experience more than an algorithm issue. I repin my own pins into my own boards alllllll the time and I’m sure I have zillions of duplicates. As long as you can’t tell that by scrolling for a minute or two, it should be fine!

      Reply
  13. Hi ,

    I love your blog. You girls really know your stuff. My Pinterest handle is MONIKA PAEZ FITNESS. My biggest struggle is what to post and re-post. I also m not sure if I’m arranging my pins correctly.

    Reply
  14. Hi I am Karim, this is my Pinterest profile : https://www.pinterest.com/bedsisland/.

    My biggest fear about Pinterest, or any other marketing strategy actually, is to invest time and effort and not getting a positive ROI back from it.

    My biggest struggle with Pinterest is to find a continuous stream of stock photos to create pins for my boards.

    I am just starting out my blogging journey, and it’s solely for money actually :D, so there are so many things to do and I don’t exactly know what should I focus on. I think this feeling will be gone with time and experience but I hope it doesn’t take long.

    Reply
    • Hey Karim, I’m gonna be brutally honest with you … blogging is a terrible way to make money. You’ll be pouring hours and hours of your time into it and it will likely take months or years for you to earn even a little bit of cash from it. The only thing that will keep you going through those money-less months and years is passion, and if you’re not passionate about blogging in ADDITION to money, chances are you’re gonna burn out pretty quickly. Sure, it’s POSSIBLE to earn a living off of blogging, and some people even earn a decent living (myself included). But I don’t know any successful bloggers who aren’t incredibly passionate about what they blog about and who don’t eat, sleep, and breathe blogging. It’s pretty similar to acting, writing, or becoming a musician in the sense that earning money this way is incredibly hard and if your heart isn’t in it, you’re unlikely to get there without burning out first. Do it because you love it and enjoy it, AND because you want to earn money off of doing what you love and enjoy! Sorry if that came off harsh but in my opinion, without love and passion and enjoyment, there’s really not much reason to jump into something like blogging that will eat up all of your time and energy before you see a dime back from it.

      Reply
  15. Hi, my hatchling blog’s Pinterest is https://www.pinterest.com/fingertiptravel/

    Just to clarify, it’s a travel blog that is new, not a blog on hatchlings, which would also be cool! 🙂

    Thank you so much for all these Pinterest articles, the fact that people use Pinterest for more than figuring out their next haircut blew my mind!

    I think I’m still confused about a couple of things:

    1. Is tailwind and boardbooster the same thing?
    2. How do i get onto group boards? Should I grow my account first? Do I need a certain number of pins that are my own?
    3. Do you post only your own pins on group boards or do you want to post a variety?
    4. How long do you wait to pin or repin your own pins onto different boards/pin them again? Especially on group boards (once i get in one lol), do they want fresh content? I don’t want to annoy ppl by re-pinning the same pins too often?

    OK that’s enough questions
    Thanks so much for all of your informative articles!

    ~Masha

    Reply
  16. Hi Lia! I have spent my Canadian Thanksgiving morning reading all your Pinterest articles (don’t worry, I remembered to put the turkey in the oven) and I think I have a big decision to make! I started my Pinterest account BEFORE I became a keto food blogger and I have over 200 boards of mostly personal interest stuff along with my keto boards. Important stuff like Rock painting and birdhouses and my obsession with Sherlock Holmes and The Walking Dead. I am thinking I need to start a new Pinterest account for my niche. I have 700K monthly viewers and about 8000 followers. I’m a little scared to start over but I am inspired by how you were able to build your views so fast! What would you do in my situation, would you start over with your main niche?? This is my Pinterest account: https://www.pinterest.ca/breezeanita/

    Reply
  17. Thank you for all the tips! I’ve been working on my Pinterest account for a while now, and I very quickly saw how useful a tool it is! I want to get better at it and push into the “M” impressions echelon. This gives me some good inspiration to move forward!

    I run a travel and photography blog, and I sell photo products through an Etsy store. I’d love to get more sales through Pinterest, but I can’t even seem to get any impressions, let alone clicks or sales. I know there are folks out there who do this successfully, but perhaps it just isn’t the best platform for that.

    I’m also working to simply get more visitors to my website. I love the tip on optimizing the pin text – even if that doesn’t match the article title.

    Here’s my Pinterest profile: https://www.pinterest.com/bigtinyworldtravel/
    I would love any feedback you have – good or bad. Thanks!

    Reply
  18. This is one of my favourite articles on Pinterest strategy. Thank you for this helpful summary. If you have time for a question… 🙂 When I pin someone else’s pin, should I re-write the pin description to better suit my content and purpose? Does the pin carry the original description, or a new description if I change it?

    Reply
    • If you change it, it will show your description on the pin you saved (which will carry on for anyone’s pins who repin yours). It’s not something I recommend doing only because it takes a lot of time and isn’t necessary, but if you want to do it, it’s certainly not going to hurt your reach or anything like that!

      Reply

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