5 Ways To Up Your Pinterest Game Right Now

Social media is a funny old ball game… obviously the people that build these platforms want us to use them, right? That’s how you get success (as the platform). But why is it then that they don’t actually tell you how to use the platforms?

The Facebook and Instagram algorithms are basically myths… and Twitter is just Twitter. But Pinterest… well finally, here’s a brand that wants you to use their platform and actually helps you use the platform and use it well.

What Exactly is Pinterest?

I’ve been on Pinterest for as long as I can remember to be honest and it’s always been my source of inspiration especially for food, home decor, fashion, travel and fitness. And that’s because what you need to remember is that Pinterest is more like a search engine than a social media platform.

It’s one place that you don’t need to stress yourself about getting more followers as what’s actually more important is your monthly unique views. I currently have around 1500 followers on Pinterest and when I checked today I have an average 5.7k monthly unique viewers… and that’s by hardly doing anything other than using Pinterest for personal reasons.

Pinterest in the UK

For the past couple of years, I’ve been a part of the Pinterest UK Community. It’s basically a space for UK based creators to learn about Pinterest news and trends, connect with other creators and access special opportunities such as the Pinterest Summer Brunch I attended at Ace Hotel on Saturday 11th August 2018.

The event was packed full of Pinterest best practice information as well as panel discussions sharing tips on how to grow your Pinterest profile so I figured I would share some of what I learnt with you… maybe so we could all give Pinterest a little love from here on in…

Here are the tips I have to help you improve Pinterest right now…

Improve Pinterest Stats with a Business Profile

Unlike Instagram, you don’t need to fear about Pinterest not showing your content to anyone if you make your profile a business one. It does though open up some epic analytics about your Pinterest account, allows you to add your webpage to your profile (and verify it) as well as to promote pins (i.e pay to have pins advertised).

Have a Tidy Up of your Profile

With quite a few changes to Pinterest in the past few months and even years it’s probably a good time to have a tidy up. Update your photo and biography if you haven’t done so in a while.

Archive any out of date boards. Keep your personal stuff personal with secret boards. Aaaannnnddd, what I have just started doing myself is organising my boards using the sections within.

So for example my House and Home board now has these sections: Just Decor, KTCHN, Dining…, Office Vibes, Make A Hallway, That Bathroom Though and Beautiful Bedroom Inspo. Here’s the pincode for my House and Home board if you wanna check it out…

It’s worth bearing in mind too that the words you use in your board names and descriptions are searchable so it’s kinda no longer fashionable to have weird and wonderful names for your boards.

Make sure you use keywords and terms that people would be searching for like “denim jacket outfit” or “smoothie recipe” when writing descriptions. The same also goes for the individual pins themselves… add in a detailed description so your pins can be found and identify where they lead to.

Always share a mix of content

I listened to a podcast all about Pinterest before I went to this event and in that it was suggested to share 80% of other peoples content and 20% of your own. Pinterest themselves shared that it kinda works differently for everyone though.

Personally, I don’t share nearly enough of my own content and I know I’m missing out as so many people shout about Pinterest being their number 1 traffic driver.

You can share content from your blog directly; installing the pin it buttons also helps readers to pin your content. You can also share images from Instagram (go to the image on Instagram, click the 3 dots and then copy link, go to Pinterest and click the +, then save from site, insert the URL and then click done, choose and image… etc), share your images from RewardStyle (affiliate links work on Pinterest) and images from websites you use to shop.

Pinterest is all about the future

In-fact, it’s all abut planning the future. Put yourself into the shoes of a ‘Pinner’ (probably just you being you) and keep in mind that people use the platform to look for new things to try and are open to new ideas.

So when you think of creating, for example, a board about Easter Craft Ideas, this needs to be done in advance. Best practice is to create your boards around 1-2 months (45 days to be exact) in advance.

BONUS: Learn from the pros

There are sooo many posts about Pinterest, on Pinterest and although I have read a fair few, my time is limited. So instead of wasting time trying to find the one tip that will be a winner, I invested a few pounds into a Pinterest e-book by Ana of The She Approach.

I had a quick scan through it and managed to implement a few tips immediately but am excited to really sit down and have a proper read to find out what I’m missing.

And it’s not completely viable to attribute my recent progress to this e-book but I managed to surpass 20k unique viewers after taking my own advice, then surpass 100k unique monthly viewers just one month later after making a few of the changes Ana suggested. That’s a win, right?!

Update Jan ’19: So, I’ve now just hit 194.7k Unique Viewers after running through some of the things in the e-book and my goal is to surpass 200k in January, and to hit 1 million (yeah I said it) in 2019! You can get yourself $5 off Ana’s e-book using the code TSA5OFF and thank me later!

If you’re still keen to learn more…

Then you can have a read of the Pinterest Creators Blog on Medium. They share all their editorial themes there which you can use to inspire your content and then submit to get featured on the Pinterest homepage.

I’m currently working on submitting for one of their November themes so keep an eye out for me…

They also have a link to download their Possibilities Planner for 2018/19 which is a guide to help you think about what’s happening on Pinterest, what moments might work for you and who you want to reach.

The editorial ideas they share are also fab to help inspire content for you blog especially as you know people will be searching for information around those topics.

There is so much more I could go into on Pinterest but I think this should have given us more than enough homework for now!

If you have any specific questions then please do drop them in the comments or get in touch on my social channels…

In the meantime though, let me know if / how Pinterest has been working for you?

Elle