the Pinterest strategy that is really making a difference in my business

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In July 2021 I decided to get serious about Pinterest in my business, initially settling on a three-month experiment. I wrote more about that in my blogposts about developing a marketing strategy and ecosystem that fits my business better. 

In this post I want to share what I’ve learned so far from my Pinterest experiment. I’ll share my strategy, the resources I’ve used, the analytics–and the difference that Pinterest is making to my business (and my life) as a whole. As with anything, this is what works for me right now. My hope is that you can take some inspiration from it, but this approach is by no means the only one.

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why Pinterest?

The short version is that I’ve always really liked the promise of Pinterest: the idea that you schedule pins, mainly, and that those pins allow people to directly click through to your website. Both of these are important to me, and things that Instagram–my main platform other than my newsletter and website up to that date–doesn’t, or only a bit, allows. 

I don’t want to be ‘on’ all the time, and certainly don’t want to create a business that requires this of me. 

Pinterest also doesn’t necessarily reward the time you spend on the app. Yes, the more you pin, the more impressions you get. But, that pinning can be done by scheduling. And you’re not required to be ‘on’ quite as much as with social media such as Instagram. This is a big one for me and many of the small business owners I work with. I don’t want to be ‘on’ all the time, and certainly don’t want to create a business that requires this of me. 

Another reason why I wanted to use Pinterest more is because I wanted to drive more traffic to both my newsletter and my blogposts. I love writing, and am increasingly looking for ways to add more of it to my business. Using a tool to get people to read what I write is motivating me to keep up with the blog more, and also gets the blog read more. 

the numbers

I started my experiment on July 5th. I’d been doing a tiny bit of Pinterest before that date (more about that below), though I ignored Pinterest for weeks, even months, at a time. 

These are the numbers for July, when I started my experiment, until October 2021:

month	impressions	total audience	engaged audience	outbound clicks
July	607	240	8	N/A
August	2790	1310	15	8
September	2920	1990	46	20
October	2930	1900	36	20

That leap between July and August was very, very satisfying. It also immediately showed me that I was on to something with my new approach, which really motivated me to keep going. 

resources

I can’t see on Pinterest when I first made my account, but I properly set it up in October 2020 after a workshop with Curly Carrot’s Dörte in the mastermind I was part of at the time. My main hurdle with Pinterest up until that point was that I just didn’t get how it worked, and I thought I had to approach it like Instagram or Facebook. 

In July 2021 I discovered Amy Le Blanc’s work (Levee Road Studio). I first took a free training, and then bought her course Scheduling Shortcuts*. This course helped me to finally create a Pinterest strategy that I’m happy with. What I love about Amy’s work is that she doesn’t do trends. She’s not one of those ‘experts’ who’ll repeat what everyone else is saying without doing her own research. And I love how based on research her approach is: she religiously reads the Pinterest developer blog, trawls through articles full of statistics and coding, and is an active Pinterest manager herself. 

Once I’d had the hang of things and was nearing the end of my three-month experiment, I asked Sarah Burk for help. I wanted to know whether I was on the right track, and just get another pair of eyes on my account. The account audit that Sarah provided confirmed that I was on the right track, and she offered some more tweaks and suggestions. 

method

After I took Amy’s course*, I settled on the following approach. 

pins

For every blogpost, I create 3 to 4 pins. I try to go for a variety of titles: one or two ‘how’ titles, and one or two titles that have a number, such as ‘3 strategies to…’. I then create copies of these pins, changing each version slightly: so one version of the pins will have a different filter, another a different size, etc. This way I’m able to pin my pins to various relevant boards without the Pinterest algorithm thinking that they are not ‘fresh’ pins, or that I’m spamming.

Eventually, I end up with 12 to 16 pins for each blogpost, that I pin to 3 to 4 relevant boards. My goal is to have one Pin go out every day.

scheduling

I get very nerdy about scheduling (as Amy does too), using a spreadsheet and everything, but you absolutely don’t need to 🙂 Because my account is still fairly new-ish, I never pin to the same link more than once a day, and for safety, space the pins out so that there’s always a day between each link. 

So: I might pin a blogpost today, and then pin the same blogpost (different pin), not tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow. Amy calls this the waterfall-method, and I love it. 

boards, keywords, parent interests

I won’t go deep into this here, and would 100% recommend Amy’s course* if you want to explore more. The bottom line is that I’ve tried my best to settle on board names that correspond to keywords and parent interests: essentially the terms that people use in their search (keywords), and the words that Pinterest uses to categorize its posts (parent interests). 

tools

Canva Pro*

I use Canva Pro* to create Pins. For the last couple of months I’ve also been using Canva to schedule my Pins. Before, I’d always been using a paid account to Tailwind, but since I’m already paying for Canva Pro I cancelled my Tailwind-account. I also find the scheduling tool on Canva easier to use in general. 

Having a limited set of templates keep me from overthinking and makes my pins recognizable.

templates

Canva has hundreds (thousands?!?) of Pinterest templates, and you can buy them all over the internet too. I got a couple from Amy that I like*, used a couple of others that I came across for inspiration, and eventually settled on 3 or 4 designs that I come back to again and again. Having a limited set of templates is great: it keeps me from overthinking and it makes my pins recognizable. 

coolors

Part of making Pins recognizable is using the same colour scheme again and again. I originally had quite a dark colour scheme for my business, but in October 2020 landed on something much lighter and brighter. I loved playing around with Coolors, a free web-tool, to settle on my colour scheme. 

unsplash

I use very few of my own images, and get most of them from Unsplash. This means that sometimes I recognize the images I use in other people’s Pins or websites, but I’m fine with that. It’s mainly background anyway, and when I see the same image pop up just a little too often I don’t use it.

ads

When I launched my business boundaries that feel good guide in October, I experimented a bit with ads on Pinterest. This definitely helped with making the Pins more visible (as well as the ones that were not about the guide), but did not lead to any sales. I want to dive more into using ads (nor not) in 2022. 

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In the next post I’ll write more about my general conclusions, what Pinterest has brought me and what my strategy for 2022 is. I’ll also write a little about the importance of settling on a strategy that works for you.

 In the meantime, do check out my Pinterest account and let’s connect!