I’ve recently had a pin of mine on Pinterest go viral, which is amazing, it took me 1.5 years to finally create some content that was viral-worthy and my new Pinterest traffic stands at 1.3 Million. I mean it’s still pretty small on the grand scale of things, but it was still a goal I set myself to smash the 1 million mark and I did it!
As I haven’t written about social media in a while I thought I’d share my findings for any hungry bloggers out there waiting to succeed. First of all, if you haven’t read my previous posts on social media you might like them. I started my new Pinterest account 6 months ago for the new year and set myself a very ambitious 1 million in 6 months target.
It was my second account on Pinterest, my first account had been a personal account for nearly 11 years which I morphed into the Pinterest account I used for my blog, after a year I decided that I needed an account which solely focused on my blog. My only regret? That I didn’t do it sooner.
I briefly outlined my plan for my new Pinterest strategy in my post My New Pinterest Strategy and Party Frocks-which you can read by clicking here And I go a little more in-depth about it in my post-Pouty For Pisces Season And My Pinterest Strategy
In this, I covered my new plan for a brand new account to see if I could put together all of the things I had learned about Pinterest over the years and see dramatic results, and the answer is yes, I did. So here are 10 things that have helped me grow on Pinterest.
10 Ways to Grow Phenomenally on Pinterest
1. Don’t Promote Other People’s Content
Gone are the days of having to promote other people’s content on Pinterest. Pinterest now favours self-promotion as they are invested in watching businesses succeed. Whether it be the selling of products, driving traffic to your website or affiliate sales, Pinterest wants you to succeed. So ditch promoting other people’s stuff and work on those camera angles, focus on the sole promotion of your products- whatever they may be.
If you’re old school like me you might be thinking no way, and yeah I get that, I was the same. I still remember the 80%-20% ratio of promoting other people’s stuff, otherwise, you’ll get marked as spam. I was sceptical at first too, but I’ve been trying it for six months now and the good news is that it works and it’s way easier to promote content on Pinterest than it used to be. I post one pin of other people’s stuff literally once a week just because I like it and my account is running just fine. If you’re pinning other people’s content in 2022 you are missing out on website traffic.
2. You Need At Least 2 Business Accounts
If you have a personal account that’s fine, but honestly, if you’re a blogger and you’ve not got two business accounts on Pinterest you are really missing out. When I started my second account I noticed pretty quickly that my stats started jumping when I pinned content from my other account. I guess this is just common sense, it’s a bit like a springboard to start off you’re new account. But then I noticed the next jump up in traffic when I created group boards with my new account and my old one.
I noticed that even having a second account to interact with all the pins I was pinning started to encourage interaction and after a few months I started to get people commenting on my pins, which rarely happened in the past. I made sure to answer all the comments on my pins with both accounts, even if it was just a simple emoji- for comments in other languages that I didn’t understand. I would write something simple like “thanks, did you read my article, what did you think?” and I started to notice my website traffic increasing. I had been stuck in a rut for so long with Pinterest that I was shocked to notice a difference with my second account, it really gets things rolling.
3. Pinterest Pins are like planting seeds
So I came up with the analogy that Pinterest Pins are like planting seeds. That would be the best way I could describe it. I say this because I went through many stages with Pinterest. I loved it, then hated it, I got annoyed with it, I used hashtags, I ignored it, I loved it again, and then the algorithm changed, I understood it a little better, then I got bored with it… anyway my point is, I’ve worked with Pinterest for a long time and I know that there were times when I would pin stuff and not see any results and I’d think to myself I’m wasting my time.
This was good in a way because it made me experiment with a lot of designs, but I know that empty feeling of thinking nothing I’m doing seems to work- It can really start to affect your content. I started questioning my writing, my content and even my entire blog. But the reality is, is that actually, those Pins were like little seedlings and contrary to popular belief overnight success just doesn’t happen. You have to go through various stages, from germination to bud and finally bloom so don’t get disheartened if you think you’re pins aren’t doing anything, they are…
4. Challenge Mental Blocks
So I get that not everyone believes in the power of positive thinking, however, hear me out on this one. So at the beginning of this year, I mentioned earlier that I felt stuck in a rut. I wasn’t getting the website traffic I wanted, my social media accounts were stuck, and I was even frustrated about the money side of things. But at some point in February, I stopped. I sat down after filming a blog video diary (I film one every couple of months about interesting blog developments), and when watching it back, I realised that I was being so god-damn negative.
So at that point, I set myself some personal goals regarding my mindset. The truth is I was stuck in a rut, I was used to seeing no progression in my stats, I was used to not earning enough, and I was used to my Instagram follower account being stuck on the same number. I suddenly realized that if I don’t change my mindset fast, I am going to fail. So I started learning about mental blocks, and I wrote down all the mental blocks I had about my blog and do you know something, ever since I took the time to think about what was stopping me, everything started to change.
5. Believe That Your Content Could Go Viral
This brings me to my next point, do you believe that you can create viral content? I remember at the very beginning of my blog journey I watched a Youtube video on how to increase blog stats and this woman on there talked about how she’d created a viral pin and I thought to myself, simple, I can do that. But then after like a year and still no bountiful reward of a viral pin or two, I started to doubt whether it was really possible.
It wasn’t until I worked out that my mindset had changed to something negative with regards to Pinterest and I took the time to address it and challenge this thought process, that I finally saw a change in my stats… And hey, presto! I officially have a viral pin or two that are finally giving me the results I wanted. My point is that it makes sense, the more content you put out there, eventually, something will go viral, it just takes a heck of a lot of patience and persistence. Everything you put out there is viral-worthy, you just have to try a little harder every time you create content.
6. Pinterest Takes Practice
You have to agree that Pinterest can be a little daunting. I mean there are apps out there like Tailwind that can certainly help to speed things up for you. For example, they release pins during the day when your followers are most engaged to ensure a higher engagement with each post, and really the price for this service is minimal. All you have to do is upload pins in the morning and they do the rest. Perfect for busy schedules and you can use free Canva templates to save on costs to design your pins.
However, it’s worth pointing out that like with everything, Pinning on Pinterest takes practice. It’s going to take a while to find your style, what your followers engage with, also non-followers (don’t forget followers aren’t really that important on Pinterest). You can monitor what’s working via your Pinterest stats. Rome wasn’t built in a day, so what makes you think that your Pins will get instant clicks. My advice, experiment with as many styles as you can until you find something that works- and then improve on that style as much as you can.
7. Learn How To Read Your Stats
So social media stats are so important, especially for online businesses. You need to have basic knowledge of how to read stats. What’s important here is Audience Engagement, Your Top pins and Audience Interests. All the metrics are available to you so that you can tailor your content for a higher engagement, but these are not going to help you if you don’t understand them. So go back to school and educate yourself on how to read stats and what information is important to pull from them.
I can’t stress this enough, you won’t see results if you don’t utilise the tools that you are given. Every audience is going to be different and no matter how many videos you watch on YouTube or articles you read online, none of the techniques you implement is going to give you maximum results, because they aren’t tailored to your own audience.
8. You Don’t Need To Spend Money To Make It On Pinterest
So because of my budget, I’ve spent minimal amounts on advertising across my social media platforms. I’ve grown most of my social media accounts organically, bar Facebook because it is literally impossible to grow on there without spending something. I’ve covered Facebook techniques for social media growth in my post 5 Changes Happening To Facebook Right Now, but even still, I’m talking minimal budgets of under £300 per year.
The truth is the best social media platform to spend money on advertising is Pinterest. This is because even two years after paying for advertising you will still see results. I know this because I paid for advertising only in the first two months of my blog journey, Sep and Oct 2020 and my ads are still performing now. Advertising on Pinterest is more of a future investment. Having said that, you don’t have to pay for advertising to make it on Pinterest. Most of my best-performing pins are organic.
9. Organic Pins take longer to perform but have better results
So I guess this one is just common sense, but organic pins are obviously more labour intensive. Paying for advertising just kind of speeds up the process and can drive a little more traffic to your site. However, what I love about Pinterest is that it’s the only Social Media platform that’s also a search engine and so it’s always gonna be possible to make it on there by spending virtually nothing.
I’m also gonna say that seeing one of my organic pins going viral was the most satisfying thing, ever. In all honesty, I feel like I’ve been ripped off a lot over the last 18 months paying for advertising on social media platforms, apart from Pinterest. My advice to anyone new on the blogging scene, invest all of your advertising budget, into Pinterest for the best results, but, don’t be afraid to put work into organic pinning. If you have a minimal budget you can still get the same results as others, it just takes a little longer but you also learn faster.
10. Use Keywords Everywhere
What really stepped up my Pinterest game was using keywords, everywhere. I used them in my board names, my board name description, my pin description, video alt text, blog posts- every damn thing, even the image text itself. This was when I started to notice a consistent increase in my traffic, my engagement, image clicks even my followers increase. If you’re not using keywords you’re missing out.
If you’re looking for a tool for keyword research let me recommend Sprout Social. Not only will Keyword research increase your chances of using the correct words to be found online through organic search but it will give you tools to drive stats where it’s online or via social media. When I really researched Keywords, my stats started to boom- and honestly, I think I’m just beginning!
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I hope you enjoyed my post today and found it helpful, let me know in the comments below. Give your Gal a share too.
Soph.
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