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Pinterest is a confusing platform for a lot of bloggers, and I get a lot of Pinterest questions about it! It’s important to know what you’re doing when it comes to Pinterest because it is a great platform to get a lot of blog traffic from!
If you’re a beginner at Pinterest and you don’t understand how to grow your blog with it, here are the top 8 Pinterest questions I get from beginner bloggers, and the answers to them!
Table of Contents
1. HOW MANY TIMES A DAY SHOULD YOU PIN WITH A NEW ACCOUNT?
The number one Pinterest question I get is about the number of times you should pin. When you’re starting a new Pinterest account, or if you’re using an old Pinterest account but you don’t pin consistently make sure you start out slow. You don’t want to be pinning a ton of times a day in the beginning.
You want to start out pinning 2-3 times a day, with 5 being the max if you can handle it. And here’s why;
- PINTEREST HAS A TERRIBLE SPAM FILTER
Pinterest has a pretty terrible spam filter and a lot of genuine bloggers accidentally get marked as spam! Meaning that they’ll see a drastic drop in views. And the process for getting your account back is long and frustrating.
I wouldn’t worry too much about getting marked as spam, because there is a good chance it won’t happen. But just in case, you want to be careful!
- YOU DON’T WANT TO BURN YOURSELF OUT
Another reason is, you don’t want to start out pinning a bunch and eventually get tired of pinning. Pinterest takes a lot of time to take off and get used to.
There is a lot of keyword research involved, you need to gain followers and make sure that you’re creating high-quality Pinterest pins that your audience actually wants to click on!
So start out slow and get yourself into the habit of creating pins before you increase!
2. WHEN SHOULD YOU START PINNING FOR A NEW BLOG?
You should start pinning immediately. I know a lot of bloggers worry that their blog “isn’t ready” or they “don’t have enough content”– that’s okay! Pins stay on Pinterest for a long time. My most popular pins are things I posted over a year ago.
So start pinning as soon as you can! Even if it’s only one post.
Not only will pinning as early as possible help you get into the habit of creating pins, but you’ll get more practice in that way as well! You need to understand what designs work for your audience, what titles they are drawn to, and get the hang of keywords to look out for and description writing.
There’s a lot that goes into a good pin, so it’s better to practice sooner!
- WHAT IF YOU ONLY HAVE A FEW POSTS?
Let’s say you’re not only new to Pinterest, but you’re also new to blogging and you don’t have enough links to pin 2-3 times a day. What do you do?
You don’t want to be pinning that same link 2-3 times a day every day, because you will likely get marked as spam.
So, if you only have one post, try pinning once every 3-4 days to start out. Then you can increase the amount you pin as you get a variety of links to share. If you have 10+ posts, that should be enough to increase to 2-3 times a day!
If you’re having trouble coming up with a pinning strategy that works well for you, this Pinterest e-course is what really helped me get the hang of Pinterest! It’s the perfect course for beginners and goes over everything you need to know about creating viral pins and getting together a Pinterest strategy that works for you!
3. WHEN IS THE BEST TIME TO PIN FOR YOUR ACCOUNT?
This is one of the harder Pinterest questions to answer because it varies from account to account, and even day-to-day. I typically notice that pins seem to do better later at night, but this may be different for you. So I can’t give you a specific answer to this but I can show you how to find the best times to pin for your account!
Log into your Google Analytics and scroll down to the bottom of the page. You should see a box that says “Users by time of day”
This tells you the times that your site is most active with users. You can see from the last 30 days, or you can change the timeframe as well.
These are the stats I would look at to determine when would be best to pin. Because if you’re getting any traffic from Pinterest, the time that your site is most active will likely be the time that people are active on your pins by comparison!
- WHAT IF YOU DON’T HAVE ENOUGH TRAFFIC TO SEE TIMES?
If you don’t have enough traffic onto your site for this to be a beneficial thing for you to look at, here’s what I recommend instead.
Try pinning at random times to start out. So for example, on Monday pin at 11am, 1pm and 4pm.
On Tuesday pin at 2pm, 5pm and 7pm.
Stagger times like this so you are pinning throughout the day for the entire week. Once you start to get a decent amount of traffic, go back and check that graph to see what the best times are.
If there is enough traffic to show anything, start buckling down at those times to hopefully see an increase in traffic!
Did you get to this point in the post and go “Nope! This is too much work for me!” ? If you really want to use Pinterest to promote your blog posts, but you don’t have the time or the willpower to do it yourself, let me do it for you!
I have a Pinterest Management service where I do all this work for you! Creating pins, keyword researching, and coming up with a strategy that is best for you! Check out more info here!
4. HOW MANY TIMES SHOULD YOU PIN A BLOG POST?
You should be pinning a blog post for as long as it is relevant. Don’t only share your new content, make sure you’re sharing your old content as well!
You spent so much time creating the content on your blog, make sure you are circulating it around as well as the new content you create!
You generally want to create evergreen content, meaning that it’s as relevant today as it was a year ago. That’s the type of content that does well on Pinterest, because of how long pins will circulate around the platform. I am still pinning posts that I wrote two years ago because they are still some of my most popular!
So, you can pin a link as many times onto Pinterest as you want, but try to separate them out by a day or two to avoid getting hit by their spam filter!
5. HOW MANY TIMES SHOULD YOU RE-PIN THE SAME PIN?
This is a different question from the last one. You know you can pin the same link as many times as you want, provided that you spread out the timing by a day or two. But how many times should you pin the same pin?
I only pin each one only once. This is because Pinterest is all about fresh content and pins. What used to work is you could take a pin and pin it to 5-6 different boards, using tailwind. This doesn’t work as well anymore.
Once you put a pin out, it gets the highest priority, meaning sent out to the most people. Every time you pin that same pin again, say using tailwind to pin to other boards, it gets less and less reach.
- WHAT COUNTS AS A FRESH PIN?
Fresh pins are what you need to create for the best Pinterest reach, but what counts as a “fresh pin” ? You need to have
- A new title
- Different colors
- Different design
- Different photo
- New description
This doesn’t mean that you need to create drastically different pins each time you create pins. As long as it looks a little different so that Pinterest will recognize it as a different pin, it’s good enough. Like the two images below, these are two pins I did for a Pinterest client.
The text is the exact same, but the design is different so Pinterest will see them as 2 different pins.
6. SHOULD YOU RE-PIN CONTENT FROM OTHERS?
The answer to this Pinterest question may surprise you. I personally do not re-pin anyone else’s content onto my Pinterest. And here’s why
- RE-PINNING OTHERS CONTENT DOESN’T HELP YOUR ACCOUNT
Pinning other’s content doesn’t help your account at all. You’re sending clicks to other bloggers’ posts, so it doesn’t benefit you!
It also messes up your stats. If you’re pinning others’ content. Pinterest will recognize the impressions and link clicks for those pins as well, which messes up your stats.
So if you’re repinning others’ content, the monthly views that you always see at the top of your account include impressions from other bloggers’ pins that you’ve pinned!
Same as when you log in to see your stats. You’ll see the engagements and link clicks for other bloggers pins as well.
Unless you go over to the side and specifically click on seeing just the pins that lead to your link.
If you still want to pin others’ content, you can. It doesn’t hurt your account really, but it can make your stats more confusing and it doesn’t help your account! Personally, I think it is more benifical to spend your time creating content for your own blog!
7. ARE PINTEREST GROUP BOARDS WORTH IT ANYMORE?
In short, no. They aren’t.
Pinterest group boards used to be an effective way to get traffic to your blog, but they aren’t anymore. Pinterest nerfed the reach group boards when people started using them in a way they didn’t intend for them to be used.
They were meant for collaboration not “Pin to this board, re-pin my pins, and I’ll repin your pins too” as bloggers do now.
On top of the reach being significantly diminished from Pinterest itself, a lot of the group boards themselves just aren’t helpful.
Many people don’t follow the rules of a ground board. The point of them originally was if you pin onto the group board, you have to also re-pin other content. Everyone else would do the same, and your pin would go out to more people.
Not only is re-pinning others content not useful anymore, but most people just link drop and leave, defeating the whole purpose of the group board.
Plus, most group boards aren’t keyword researched enough. You want your boards to have a keyword researched title and description, not a “bloggers helping bloggers” board title, and where the description is the rules of the board. That is not helping your pin go anywhere!
8. SHOULD YOU STILL BE USING TAILWIND VS. MANUAL PINNING?
I don’t use tailwind anymore to pin. I just use the Pinterest scheduler. Tailwind used to be a great way to schedule your pins. But, while it’s still an approved partner of Pinterest, your pins will not do as well if they are pinned from Tailwind.
I’m assuming that Pinterest realized they were driving a lot of traffic away from their site by allowing bloggers to use tailwind. Before this, I would never go onto Pinterest. I had no reason to!
I would schedule my pins from Tailwind and be done with it. Tailwind is also not as useful anymore because re-pinning your pins aren’t as successful anymore either.
You’re better off going into Pinterest and using their Pinterest scheduler instead.
If you are still working a 9-5 and don’t have time time to manually pin, you could always hire someone to do it for you! If you’re in the position to hire a Pinterest Manager, check out my Pinterest Management services right here! Or you can email me at any time for details at sarah@sarahmaire.blog !
CONCLUSION
Pinterest isn’t an easy platform to get the hang of, but once you do, it is so worth it! In order to get the most from Pinterest, you need to make sure you have a good Pinterest Marketing strategy in place!
Make sure you are doing keyword research, filling out your board descriptions, and testing out tons of pin designs! Even though it takes a while for Pinterest traffic to take off, once it does the traffic will just grow from there!
These 8 Pinterest questions are the ones I get the most often from bloggers. If you have any other questions that I didn’t answer, feel free to leave them down below and I may write another blog post on it!
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