10 Tips to Grow Your Pinterest Account!
Since Pinterest has been such a game-changer for growing my blog, I wanted to share some free tips with you to help you grow your Pinterest too! Sharing is caring right?! Below, I share 10 tips that have helped grow my Pinterest and Blog to almost 800% more page views month over month!
Disclaimer: This page contains affiliate links. I receive a small commission at no cost to you.
1. Pinterest Business Account
First, you will want to make sure to set up your Pinterest account as a business account. Not only does this give you helpful analytics, it also is a step in claiming your website and setting up rich pins. For a step-by-step guide, click here!
2. Create Boards in Your Niche
It is super important to create your boards around your niche. For example, if you are a travel page, you should not have boards on home decoration. Leave that to your own private Pinterest account, or make a private board for just your eyes!
Having specific boards tells Pinterest what your page is about. I would also recommend having some broad boards (ie. Europe) and then some more specific boards where you can contribute your own posts (ie. Italy) so you have multiple places to pin your pins.
Additionally, make a “Best of Board” where you showcase all your pins in one place!
3. Keywords
Fill your Bio, Pin titles, pin descriptions, and board descriptions with Keywords. Think of Pinterest as an SEO for your website. In your bio, you want to make sure to add keywords that help describe your brand.
This doesn’t mean to stuff a bunch of keywords, but to make them flow naturally.
In your board names, be specific. Although puns and cute saying look nice, such as “yummy in my tummy” for a food board, Pinterest won’t pick this up as well in their algorithm.
Instead, be specific: Cookie Recipes, Brownie Recipes, etc. This will help Pinterest put your pins in front of the right eyes!
Make board descriptions and categories. Your board description should use keywords with about 2-4 sentences/phrases. You will also see the category in the board setting. This is a dropdown that Pinterest lets you choose from.
4. Pin Fresh (NEW) Pins
In the past year, Pinterest has changed their strategy drastically. Last year pinning at least 30 pins throughout the day including yours and other pins were the way to go.
However, this is not the case anymore. Pinterest’s new best practices are all-around sharing “fresh” or new pins. This can be in video, story pins, and new pins for your blog posts.
It is now recommended to pin at least 1-4 fresh pins a day of your own content. Pinning other creators’ pins no longer adds much value, but of course, as a user, it’s ok to pin things that relate to you and your niche. You will also want to make sure you are pinning these pins to relevant boards with at least an 8-day interval.
For example, I may have a North Carolina Guide pin. I would first pin it to my North Carolina Board, then my USA Board, and then my Blog board, but not all at the same time. I am able to set an interval with Tailwind for the pin to go out to a new board every 8 days, or you can do this manually.
5. Scheduling Pins on Pinterest
To save yourself a lot of time, scheduling pins will be your best friend. There are two ways to do this. One is through the Pinterest scheduler.
A lot of content creators have switched to the Pinterest scheduler because it is a free tool to use. The only downside IMO is that it is less user-friendly and you can only schedule out 2 weeks’ worth of pins. Additionally, once you schedule it, there is no going back and editing so if you made an error or wanted to change something, you need to redo all of it.
Before Pinterest had its own scheduler, Tailwind was the way every content creator went. Tailwind (which is authorized by Pinterest) will allow you to batch your pins for months and choose the best times to share them with your audience.
Additionally, they now have tons of other tools within the platform including templates, communities, and more.
Tailwind also has an extension that lets you easily schedule your whole blog post for Pinterest. Did I mention, you will want to pin all the photos from your blog posts?
Just because it is not a text overlay image, doesn’t mean it won’t do well on Pinterest! This is when Tailwind becomes my best friend and allows me to customize the pin description.
I personally use both Tailwind and the Pinterest Scheduler. If you like to batch your content or don’t have a lot of time to work on Pinterest, I would definitely recommend trying Tailwind. You can start with a free trial on Tailwind by clicking here.
6. Design Verticle Pins
When making your pins, you will want to focus on making eye-catching verticle pins. Pinterest favors verticle pins over anything else.
They have changed the preferred sizes they would like you to pin over the years. Currently, they are recommending all pinners to create 1000×1500 size pins. This can be done right on Canva, which is where I create all my pins.
I always make several variations of images to pin. These variations include different copy and images. This helps increase reach and test which copy/images work better!
I will always put these at the bottom of each blog post with “pin it for later!” I then add all those images to my “Best of” board.
This doesn’t mean you can’t pin other size images. On my blog posts, my images are NOT 1000×1500 and they still do well.
7. Group Boards on Pinterest
Look for related Pinterest groups. Pinterest users have created groups where you can share your pins too! In the group description, the admin will usually have rules on how to get added to the board.
After, you can share your pins to a group of people that have the same interest as you and a more targeted following. Some people have found a lot of success growing their Pinterest with group boards, but now a lot of it has switched over to Tailwind Tribes.
8. Join Facebook Pinterest Groups
First, I can’t tell you how helpful some of these groups have been to me. You can learn so much just by asking questions! Who knows, you might have even come across this blog from a Facebook Group.
In the groups, many do Pin threads. This is where you get to add your Pin and everyone has to Pin each others. I used to do this in the past, but I no longer do and still do well on Pinterest. It is something you can try if your pin is not taking off, however, it is not Pinterest’s best practice.
9. Follow Some Large Accounts
Follow some big accounts in your category. Why re-invent the wheel? If you see they are doing very well, take note and see how you can change some of your strategies, Pinterest boards, or try to get added to some of the group Pinterest boards they are added to!
10. Do Story Pins
Pinterest recently released story pins and if you have them, I would highly recommend using them. While you can’t actually link to your blog posts, they do drive lots of traffic that turn into follows. Follows can then turn to more people viewing your pins and grow your Pinterest! They have also added the ability to link afflilate links.
11. Bonus Pinterest Tip
It has been a year since writing this post, and a lot has changed on Pinterest. Therefore, while updating this guide, I wanted to leave you with an additional tip for succeeding on Pinterest.
My additional tip for growing on Pinterest is making sure your blog posts have a Pinterest plugin that will pull an optimized pin description.
You ever notice you pin someone’s pin and the description says img123 or the alt text? Well, this is not what we want. There are a couple of different plug-ins you can use to make pins optimized on your blog.
I personally use Easy Social Share Buttons. This plug-in actually adds all my share buttons along with a ton of other things, but it is a pretty heavy plug-in.
Other plug-ins that are popular for adding Pinterest descriptions include Grow by Mediavine and Tasty Pins. By getting one of these, you will know that when users pin your post, they will be optimized for Pinterest.
12. Bonus Pinterest Tip
My last bonus Pinterest tip for you is to look at Pinterest Trends which is under the analytics tab. This will help you write optimized SEO keyword-rich pin titles and descriptions.
Growing on Pinterest Overview
I hope you found these 10+ tips on how to grow your Pinterest helpful! For more tips and guides on social media, make sure to subscribe and find more social media and blogging tips under the Blogging/social media tab!