Pinterest’s Head of Product Marketing, Sarah Hoople Shere, hopped on a live call with Tailwind and was able to give us some definitive answers to a mind-blowing number of everyone’s most commonly asked questions!!!
If you have more questions to add to the list, leave them in the comments to get them answered.
#1 BEST OVERALL PINTEREST STRATEGY
How do you build an audience?
- Add Pinterest “follow” and “pin” buttons to your website. Learn how to do it here.
- Make sure your followers on other channels follow you on Pinterest.
- Encourage people to try your posts to generate engagement.
Do followers matter?Â
- Followers represent a small portion of who you reach.
- Focus on your monthly engaged numbers.
- The quality of your followers are more important than the quantity, similar to your pins.
Does it matter when you pin?
- No, but you will see that your followers engage with you more at a certain time.
- However, focus on the first 5 pins that you pin each day, and depending on the engagement of those 5, you’ll get more distribution.
Is there such a thing as pinning too much?
- No, but consistency over longer periods of time is better than high volume all at once.
- For example, pinning something every single day is better that posting everything on the weekends.
- That being said, quality over quantity is still the best.
Should you delete under-performing pins?
- No, I don’t recommend deleting pins.
- Old pins won’t hurt the distribution of your new pins.
- Plus, that old pin could become popular in the future, so don’t delete it!
How do you get found on Pinterest?
- You get found by having good SEO.
- Pinterest feeds your content through your followers first to see which ones get good engagement; the ones that do get distributed to a broader audience. That is why it’s important to focus on your first 5 pins of the day.
- Make sure your pins are getting a lot of engagement, and that will help you get to the front page.
- Lean into your content that is getting the most repins, and keep on creating relevant content.
Is it important to pin other people’s content?
- You won’t get penalized if you don’t, but if you can’t stay consistent with your own pins, pin other people’s content. Consistency is that important.
- Start with your own content that you pin first, then focus on other people’s.
Are group boards a good way to show your content and make sure it’s seen?
- Yes! They will see what you pin on there—but not all your other pins unless they follow you.
What is the difference between monthly viewers/reach and monthly engaged?Â
- “Viewers” see, and “engaged” interacted with it, such as repin or click.
CLICK ON THE IMAGE BELOW & LET’S CONNECT ON PINTERESTÂ ?
#2 BEST PINTEREST SEO PRACTICES
Where is the best place to use keywords?
- In your pin description is the most important place to include keywords.
- Include items about the pin itself and anything related to the pin as well.
- Keywords in board titles, board descriptions, and your bio also help.
What should you include in your pin description?
- Include a strong call to action to get the best click-through rates.
- The longer and more helpful your descriptions are, the better.
Do keywords in boards help pins perform better?Â
- Yes. Also, if you’re saving pins to multiple boards, pin them to the most relevant boards first.
- The success of the pins on your board(s) is largely due to your board descriptions.
How do you find keywords?
- See what other people are already searching for in the search bar.
- When you type your topic in the search bar, more words will pop up that are associated with that topic; this is all generated by what users are actually searching for.
Does your image file name matter?
- No. But your pin description should match your pin content.
What qualifies your content to be eligible to be shown in smart feed?
- Having a business account
- Having a claimed website
- Saving content regularly
Is there an advantage to pins being pinned from your website vs. being uploaded or repinned?
- Either are fine, but yes it’s beneficial.
- If people pin directly from your website, it tells us that it’s a good pin.
- Make sure to be the first to pin from your own website, because they prioritize whoever the website belongs to if you have fresh content.
Is there an advantage to organic pinning vs. scheduled pinning?
- No, you’re not penalized for using third-party tools.
- You’re considered active if you’re saving content regularly but not necessarily through pinning organically.
- We have partnered with Tailwind to help you schedule your pins. This is the only company we recommend.
Read: How To Get 100 Pinterest Followers In 7 Days where I show you how I used Tailwind to SKYROCKET my followers and traffic!
Below is a sneak peak into my Tailwind account!
#3 BEST PINTEREST AESTHETICS GUIDELINES
Do board covers matter?
- No, they are not important.
- It’s more important to have good SEO on your pins.
Do pins with warm colors and faces do better?
- Not really. It depends on what category of content you’re saving.
- If it looks good it will be repinned.
Do lifestyle images work better than images on a white background?
- Yes, because people want to see context and how something is used.
What is tasteful branding?
- Tasteful branding is key; make sure your website is included on all your pins so people know where it’s from.
- Having branded content builds trust with readers, because they know what kind of content to look for from you.
- Avoid putting your logo in any of the corners because it can be cut off.
- The best place to put your logo or website is on the bottom center or top center of your pin.
What kind of text is good on an image?
- Text is good if it explains the image or contextualizes it.
- The image itself can’t tell the whole story so make sure each word counts.
What are the most effective pin sizes?
- It’s best to have a 2:3 ratio.
- 600 x 900 is best, 600 x 1260 at most. Any larger will get cut off.
I personally just use the size they have on Canva.com (735 x 1102) which is pretty close to the 2:3 ratio. I also like to create a few different pins for each post to cater to different people.
#4 NEW PINTEREST FEATURES
How do hashtags work?
- Hashtags were designed to enable people to see fresh content.
- Don’t go back and put hashtags on old content.
- Hashtags are shown by how recent a post is.
- If you want to see fresh content, search for hashtags.
- Hashtags are a way to get more distribution on the first day that they are pinned.
- You can add up to 20 relevant hashtags, but remember it’s always about quality over quantity.
Are people searching for hashtags or clicking hashtags?
- Little of both.
Does it matter where you place your hashtags in your descriptions?
- No, as long as they are there.
What is the following tab?
- This is a new feature where you see content only from the people you follow.
Is the following tab or smart feed default?Â
- The smart feed is default.
#5 BEST BUSINESS PINTEREST GUIDELINES
Can local businesses have success on Pinterest?
- Yes, focus on hashtags and pin descriptions with geographic terms.
- Include your location in your bio as well.
Can an online-store owner use Pinterest effectively without blogging?Â
- If you have lifestyle images on your store, use those.
- Focus on dimensions of the pin for it to show up the best.
- Utilize text overlays and descriptions so that people want to click through to your store.
How can a business use the visual search results?
- Just use typical SEO practices.
- Include a physical pin code.
If you don’t know what visual search results are, it’s a way to search for more things that visually match the image you are looking at. When you click on an image in Pinterest, a square icon pops up on the bottom right hand corner, if you press it, it will show you all the other images on Pinterest that have used this same image in their pin and things that look similar.
If you sell dresses for example, it will show more images of your dress and other similar dresses so shoppers can match and compare easily.
If you want to read the post below, click here: 5 Profitable Ways To Make Money Blogging.
#6 BEST PINTEREST GUIDELINES FOR OLD PINS
Should you delete pins from products that aren’t available anymore?Â
- No, instead update the link to something that is still in stock.
- Or if you don’t want to do that you can just leave it; we automatically stop distributing the pin if the link is broken.
Should you edit descriptions from your old pins?
- No, create new pins with a new description instead of going back and deleting old ones.
- You won’t be penalized for old pins.
Should you go back and add hashtags to older pins?
- No, because they aren’t fresh pins.
#7 MISCELLANEOUS PINTEREST TOPICS
Do backlinks to boards matter?
- They do not.
How much activity is happening on profile pages?
- Most is on the search page, not on profile pages per se.
- That is why your reach is more important than the amount of followers you have.
What is going on with stolen pins?
- We are actively working on techniques to combat this.
- We are aggressively investing in content matching to make sure the content displayed on the pins match the content in the post.
- We want to make sure the original owner is getting the benefit of their own content.
What should you do if your pin has been stolen?Â
- Report it by flagging it—but make sure to report that the link isn’t working instead of marking it as spam; this will trigger it for review.
Is it ok to pin the same image to the same board?
- Sure, just make sure that the pin has a unique description, such as why it’s relevant.
- Don’t loop for the sake of looping.
- There is no SEO value in repinning.
- Think about the pinners user friendliness.
If content creators pinned something at the same time, what order will you see them in?
- In the order they pinned.
Does changing website url from http to https affect your pins?
- No.
How long does it take for a pin to rank as a keyword?
- The better your engagement, the faster you will rank.
Does it hurt if you have multiple categories?
- Nope, doesn’t hurt. But focus on tangential categories.
If you have any questions about Pinterest Marketing, feel free to reach out to me at ladybossblogger@gmail.com, and I would be glad to answer any questions you may have!
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<3 Elaine Rau
*Disclosure: There are some affiliate links in this post, but these are all products I highly recommend. I won’t put anything on this page that I haven’t verified and/or personally used.
Jessica Lauren Vine says
Great answers to all of these Pinterest questions. There is a lot to learn but it is totally worth it.
Monica Sharma says
I have been using http://PinPinterest.com for almost 6 months now for my Travel blog, TravelMagma.com and my traffic has shown a tremendous boost. This tool ensures proper safety for my Pinterest account and doesn’t let you get banned while automating the marketing activity. Now, who wouldn’t love getting a large number of followers while sitting idle and relaxing, because this tool will do all the hard work for you. Its sophisticated artificial intelligence automatically analyzes and pins the most relevant ones.
Fazal Hussain says
Pinterest marketing is bit tricky and one must do pins frequently to make Pinterest work for them. Frequency really matters at Pinterest doing atleast 15 to 20 pins per day is good strategy for gaining enough exposure from the Pinterest users. The greatest benefit of utilizing Pinterest is, every time your content gets reshared it becomes top charted content all again.
Elaine Rau says
Good points Fazal! Thanks for sharing 🙂
Jane Brewer says
Hey Elaine,
This is a worth while read. I found it productive in learning how you can utilize Pinterest for your product or services. Thank you!
Rohit Patel says
Nice post, many of important points you discuss in this article.
Tisege Wayne says
Super helpful post, thank you!
Destiny Posh says
THIS POST WAS INCREDIBLE PACKED WITH AMAZING INFO THANK YOU LADY BOSS BLOGGER!