This post may contain affiliate links. That means that if you click on a link and purchase something I recommend, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This helps keep my website up and running and is very appreciated. Thank you for your support!
In today’s post, I am going to be sharing 10 Pinterest mistakes you might be making that are sabotaging your blog’s growth, and how you can fix these mistakes. This is a long one, so grab a snack and something to sip on, and let’s get to it!
This post has been updated with the 2020 changes to Pinterest’s algorithm!
If you are a blogger, chances are you know about Pinterest or have heard about it.
But what exactly is it, and how do bloggers use it to generate traffic to their blogs?
Contrary to what I’ve heard many people refer to it, Pinterest isn’t a social media app. It isn’t used to chat with other people or a place where people can share their daily life.
Pinterest, in simple terms, is a visual search engine.
You search for something you are interested in, and the results come out in the form of pins, which are the vertical images you can click on that will take you to that specific post.
Why is this a good thing for bloggers?
Bloggers benefit from Pinterest because we can pin our posts to Pinterest and when somebody searches for, say, a healthy morning routine, all of the bloggers who have published a pin about a healthy morning routine have the potential to get their pin clicked on.
And that’s where your blog traffic comes from using Pinterest.
Psssst, if you’re interested in a free 7-day blogging course, leave your email below and you will receive your first lesson shortly!
Right now, 95% of my blog traffic comes from Pinterest referrals. This percentage has been going up ever since I started using Pinterest months ago.
If you are a blogger who is interested in using Pinterest to get more visitors to your blog, this is the post for you.
Pin for later! 🤗
I currently get 90,000 monthly blog views and most of it comes from Pinterest. You can find out all about how I drive traffic to my blog using Pinterest here.
10 Pinterest Mistakes That Sabotage Your Blog’s Growth
Your Pinterest profile isn’t optimized for best results
The way you set your profile on Pinterest is crucial to your success on the platform.
SWITCH YOUR ACCOUNT FROM PERSONAL TO BUSINESS
For starters, you want to have a business account set up, not a personal one. A business account will show you your Pinterest analytics which you can use to see which of your boards and pins are performing the best!
DISPLAY PICTURE
You also want to have a clear picture on your profile. People connect with people, so I’d recommend a headshot of some sort (even a selfie can work) so that those who click over to your profile get to know the face behind the pins.
YOUR FIRST BOARD
The next thing I recommend ALL bloggers to have as their first board on Pinterest is a board of ONLY YOUR pins. A whole board dedicated to just pins that link back to your blog.
This is because when other Pinterest users click on your profile, they have a clear visual of what you blog about and don’t have to go searching for your content elsewhere. If they feel like your pins are interesting, they’ll follow you straight away!
Your pins aren’t click-worthy
As much as it pains me to say this, some pins I come across on Pinterest just… don’t look good. The fonts don’t make sense, they don’t have any images, and the worst is when they’re not vertical pin.s
This, of course, is subjective, however, there are some things that make pins stand out from others and appeal to more people.
How to create perfect pins:
- Have a nice image that is not too crowded to distract from the fonts
- Have a readable heading and (if needed) a smaller, but also readable subheading
- Your pins should be long and vertical
You are not pinning enough OR are over-pinning
There is such a thing as pinning too much or not pinning enough on Pinterest.
I used to pin 100 pins a day when I first started getting serious about Pinterest and honestly, it wasn’t worth it.
Then, I lessened the number of pins that were going out daily to an average of 50 per day, until Pinterest made changes to its algorithm this just this year.
It is now preferred to be pinning 15-25 pins a day.
No more than that!
Consistency is everything with Pinterest. When you stop pinning daily, your stats will drop, so it’s a good idea to commit to a number of pins that is realistic for you.
I think between 15-25 pins a day is doable for most people, especially when using Tailwind.
I love using Tailwind for all my pin scheduling and could not be pinning 25 times a day without it. There’d be no way. You can try out a month of Tailwind for free by clicking here!
However, I do know that some bloggers choose to pin manually and get good results. I would probably not like that, because that does take more daily effort than if you were using a scheduler like Tailwind.
For example, I spent a Saturday a few weeks ago creating new pins and now I have 25 pins scheduled to go out every day for the next 3 weeks. Those few hours spent scheduling so many pins really pay off when I don’t have to work on manual pinning every day!
You can read more about how I use Tailwind to drive traffic to my blog in my ebook Pinterest Perfect!
Your pins all look the same
Remember when I talked about pins looking good being subjective?
For this reason, it’s good to experiment with different styles and pin layouts. You never know what might appeal to your audience, and you don’t know what kind of a pin will attract new readers to your blog!
I see a lot of bloggers sticking to one color theme and keeping the same fonts throughout their pins, but switching it up in terms of how their pins actually look.
You are not using relevant keywords
Keywords are everything when it comes to making it on Pinterest!
You might have heard about the importance of using relevant keywords on Pinterest, but are wondering HOW you actually FIND keywords that people might be searching for.
It’s really simple!
Say, for example, you wrote a post on your morning routine which you want to create a pin for. To find popular keywords for this post, head on over to Pinterest and type in “morning routine” in the search bar.
All the results that come up are what Pinterest users have been searching for related to morning routines! And just like that, you have your keywords for your pin! Add them into your pin titles as well as your descriptions and your pin will be visible to anyone who searches for these keywords!
You are deleting pins
Please, please don’t do this!
No matter how bad you think some of your pins look or how different your pin style is now, don’t delete your older pins.
Pins have the ability to go viral months after they were first uploaded onto Pinterest, so you could be deleting a pin that would have brought your blog massive traffic months from now!
You are not pinning your own content constantly
I totally believe that you should be re-pinning others’ content every day.
However, it is also super important to pin mostly your own content! I like to follow the 20-80% rule- 20% of the pins that I schedule are other bloggers’ pins, and 80% of the pins I have going out every day are my own pins.
You want to schedule more of your pins to go out than anybody else’s because otherwise, your pins won’t reach as many people as possible, and that’s the whole point of you using Pinterest, isn’t it?
Definitely repin other bloggers’ content, but also make sure to give your own pins as much exposure as you can.
You don’t have enough of the “same” boards
This one may be a little confusing but I’ll try my best to break it down, and if you have any further questions on this please let me know in the comments!
Alright. So, your boards on Pinterest matter a LOT, and how many boards you have also matters.
Here’s why:
Let’s say your niche is blogging. If you have one or two boards dedicated to pins on blogging, you won’t be able to get much reach with your pins. You want to create MORE of the SAME types of boards.
These could include: Blogging, Blogging 101, Blogging Tips, Blogging For Beginners, Blogging Tools, Blogging Secrets, How To Blog... you get the idea.
Once you have your blogging boards ready, (optimized with keyword-rich descriptions, of course) you are ready to start pinning the SAME pin to each of these boards.
More boards that your pin is pinned to = more exposure for your pin.
You don’t join group boards
Group boards aren’t dead, contrary to what is being said out there sometimes.
The key is finding engaged and monitored group boards!
Group boards are a great way to get more exposure to your pins! I’ve been very lucky to find group boards that are monitored and that ensure people are following the rules and re-pinning as much of other bloggers’ pins as their own pins.
You aren’t using Tailwind Tribes
A feature that I slept on for a long time on Tailwind is Tailwind Tribes. I don’t sleep on it anymore!
Similar to group boards on Pinterest, Tailwind Tribes are groups (usually niche groups) that you can upload your pins to and, in return, re-pin other bloggers’ pins.
I like Tailwind Tribes a LOT more than Pinterest group boards because Tribes are monitored very closely, and if people don’t follow the rules and re-pin others’ pins, they get kicked out of the tribe.
The key with Tribes is to find ones that are active! Another cool thing about Tribes is that a LOT of HUGE bloggers are also on there, and there is always a chance that they will add one of your pins to their Tailwind queue, which will later publish to their huge audience!
Here are some of my favorite Tribes which I upload my pins to all the time:
*Bonus tip according to the changes Pinterest has made in 2020!
You are not creating fresh pins
Pinterest is now pushing out pins that are considered “fresh” further than they would old pins.
What does this mean? Make new pins daily. Yup.
A few new pins a day is going to set you apart from the competition and show Pinterest that your content is fresh and exciting. In turn, Pinterest will reward you by pushing out the pins you are creating daily to be viewed by more people.
Some tips on fresh pins copied straight from Tailwind’s CEO:
“Fresh” content refers to a new Pin image and URL combination Pinterest hasn’t seen before. You can create several images that link to the same blog post, page, or product listing, and each of those would be fresh when saved to Pinterest for the first time.
Use new images and text combinations every time you make a new pin for the same post. Keep it fresh!
Phew! Told you this was going to be a long one! If you enjoyed this post and found it helpful, I’d love it if you pinned it so that these tips would get to more bloggers!
And don’t forget to check out how I’m getting 90,000 monthly blog views with the help of Pinterest!
Related:
Income Report For May
That’s really a great and helpful post. I have actually jotted down these points in my diary and went back to check my Pinterest and I could easily saw where I went wrong. Thank you so much for this much needed guidance x
Awesome info, thank you!
Thanks for this, got some helpful ideas in addition to what I’ve been doing.
💕
This is really useful, thank you! Is there a maximum amount of boards that someone should have? I seem to have loads because of multiple niches…
Not necessarily! If you’re a lifestyle blogger you’re going to have more boards than other niches and that’s completely fine!
Great post! However, I don’t think it’s beneficial for new bloggers to pin at the 80:20 rate right from the beginning. That would lead to many repeated pins and Pinterest can recognize that as spam. Thank you for sharing this, it’s really valuable!
You think that would be the case even when making new pins each week for the same posts? I’ve done that from the beginning and haven’t had any problems thankfully. I did, however, pin way less than I do now and that’s what I recommend for new bloggers to do.
Thank you for this! Such a helpful post! I’m getting used to using hash tags and key words on Pinterest now! x
This is seriously useful and easy to understand
I’m about a month into pinterest and had decent growing results so far but hit a wall and I’m so fortunate I stumbled upon this
Thanks for sharing!
Soo much info!!! Love it!! Thanks for the tips!!
Wow! This is the most indepth and informative post on Pinterest I’ve read. I feel like I’ve learned so much in the last five minutes, haha! I love Pinterest but usually use it just for the pretty pictures, I really need to get myself together and start utilising it for my blog. Thank you so much for your tips!
That’s so nice to hear! I hoped that it would be informative so thank you so much!
I really need to up my Pinterest game! I read so much stuff about it but this really clicked.
Thank you x
Love this! Pinterest is accounting for about 90% of my traffic right now! I love using Tailwind as well as going in and manually pinning things.
That’s wonderful to hear! 🙂
Really great tips. I definitely need to work on keywords. Thanks for sharing
My pleasure!
I’ve just started using Pinterest for blogging so this was so helpful! I’ve bookmarked it to come back to ✨ ✨
So happy you found it helpful! 😊
so many helpful tips! thanks for sharing such an informative post! i’ll be implementing everything you just taught me! thanks!
Such a good solid post. I literally went one by one and did each of the things you said. Will definitely continue on Pinterest. One question I had was do you recommend using the same format of pins – same font, colours etc?
That’s amazing! And no, definitely play around with different styles and colors of pins. There are all sorts of people on Pinterest who have different visual likes and dislikes so the more you play around with the format with your pins, the more people they will appeal to! 🙂
This was so very helpful!! Thank you so much. K discovered I have been doing Pinterest all wrong! I will get it up a bit and watch my analytics.
Happy to help!
Thank you so much for this post! It has helped me a lot. I have a quick question, those 25 new pins that will go out every day for three weeks, do they all go to multiple boards, and do they all link back to a different blog post each or do some go back to the same blog post? x
Amber – https://theunpredictedpage.com
Hi Amber! They should be spread out across different boards. So don’t pin the same pin to the same board more than once. You can definitely create multiple pins that link to the same blog post, but don’t schedule them to go out all at once because that might seem spammy to Pinterest 😊
Great article and thanks for the update. Really got me fired up to make some necessary changes to my Pinterest strategy.
Best of luck! Feel free to reach out if you have any issues!
Super helpful post!! I’m trying to learn all I can about Pinterest and this helps me so much! I will definitely refer back to this on a regular basis!
Happy to hear that this was helpful! 💛
I needed this post! I’m trying to up my Pinterest game right now and had never even thought about the keyword research you suggest! Thank you!
You’re welcome! Happy to help.
What a helpful post. As a book blogger, I tried IG but I just don’t have the creativeness for taking pictures but I’m enjoying using Pinterest. I would love more blog followers so I’m going to take your advice. Thanks, Mariam.
Whoa! Awesome post. Very helpful Pinterest tips. I am new to the blogging world and love your articles! Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for your kind words! I’m happy you like my posts. 🙂
I really enjoyed reading this post, do you have like a pinterest growth course i can purchase?
Yes I do 🙂 You can find it here: https://gumroad.com/l/pinterestperfect
A very helpful Pinterest post! I’m definitely adding this to my #BlogShareSunday tweet this week! 🙂
Ellie Xx | https://elliebowsandsparkles.blogspot.com
Thank you so much!
Great advice, Mariam! Could you please clarify one thing – I need to pin the same pins to multiple boards that are basically about the same thing? Should I pin it to one board first and then REPIN that same pin to other boards? Or should I upload the same image to each board as a new pin?
Thanks 😊
Hi! So every pin you pin to any board should be a fresh pin, meaning a new image. You can make 2 similar (not exact) pins and pin one to one board, and the other one to another board that fits the niche and uses keywords that are relevant to your pin title and descriptions.
Thanks for your reply! ❤️