Remember the Adthrive Summit I was telling you about? It was an incredible experience, and I learned SO MUCH about ads, SEO, site optimization and so much more. I feel like it’s rare that I go to a conference a learn these days so to learn such high level stuff on a variety of topics all weekend long was just AWESOME.
Today, I wanted to share some tips with you that we learned from Enid Hwang. She’s the 6th EVER employee of Pinterest and works now as their Community Manager.
She had loads of wisdom to share with us and debunked a lot of myths that are often heard bouncing around in the blogging community.
Pinterest Tips from Pinterest
Some of these are more obvious while others were complete news to me. Even on the obvious ones, it was nice to get confirmation that things we had suspected about how Pinterest works are correct.
Pinning frequency – There’s no magic number for success here. The average (non-blogger) user pins around 70 a week, so this is the recommended minimum. However, you can’t pin too much(yay!)! She did say to be sure that you are focusing on pinning QUALITY pins instead of looking for a magic number or formula.
Pinterest Myths Debunked
Pin spacing / the 24 hour rule – This was something a few of us talked to Enid about after her session. Is it okay if you pin two pins from your site in a row? Do you need to let a specific post URL “breathe” for 24 hours before repinning the same pin to another board?
I was excited to hear that both of these are myths (or no longer apply) – You can pin from your blog multiple times in a row (there’s not magic balance here as long as you are pinning quality) AND you don’t need to wait 24 hours between shares of the same pin to multiple boards. This doesn’t mean that you should pin one pin 20 times a day to different boards and call that a pinterest strategy (she was clear about this too) – BUT we don’t need to be so stressed about guessing at a perfect ratio.
How to use hashtags on Pinterest
This has been a huge question mark ever since Pinterest said that hashtags were back, I was so glad to hear her clear some things up!!!
Use broad hashtags like #recipes or #parenting and for food bloggers to hashtag specific ingredients and methods too.
Use lots of hashtags – she mentioned 20 per pin as a reasonable number, which surprised me!
How to use pin descriptions effectively
In addition to hashtags she said to make sure you had a strong call to action in your pin descriptions. If you are selling something use language like “buy here”. This is another tip that surprised me. Since Facebook quietly blacklists a lot of call to action words, I was encouraged to hear that Pinterest takes a more reasonable approach. She said pins with a strong call to action have a 35% higher click through rate than pins without them!
What to do if you need to edit a pin
*Knowing now about hashtags, and calls to action, kinda makes you wonder if you should spend the next week editing old pins so that they perform better. Enid said it’s better to create a brand new pin than to waste time editing old ones.
Pins have a half life of 3.5 months. So after 3.5 months have past you’ve already gotten half of the traffic you are ever going to get from that pin. This is good info to have for tracking purposes! And it’s helpful to know that going back and editing thousands of old pins isn’t something we need to do.
Which is better new pins or re-pinning old ones?
Creating a new pin is better than re-pinning a super old one. This is topic that has long been debated but she told us directly that right now (2018) it’s better for you to create a whole new pin straight from your site, than it is to repin an old one, even if that old one was doing well historically. If the pin is over 4 months old create a new pin.
I’ve been testing this one out for the past few months and have definitely seen results by creating new things from my website instead of trying to “revive” an old pin (because that’s not at thing anymore!).
I told another blogging friend about this and she said she’s actually doubled her Pinterest traffic by doing this. Definitely worth trying!
How to get more pin followers
*Some one pointed out that we used to gain followers more quickly than we do now. How can we increase our followers???
Enid said that it’s true they aren’t really helping people discover each other as much anymore, so it’s a lot harder to grow your following. She said that: “followers are the floor of who you can reach, not the ceiling” and that if your followers react well to your pins, then those pins will show up in the feed and in searches more.
While this is great news for the visibility of smaller accounts, this was also the only point she made that I felt like was missing a piece. I have personally seen pins go mega-viral on accounts with 40 or so followers so I know that what she said about the floor/ceiling is true…BUT the sponsors and brands that we work with don’t necessarily know this. Having high pin follower numbers can help us connect with brands and higher numbers always look good in media kits. Also, as a blogger, I’d like to have the biggest “floor” of reach possible, even knowing that a properly optimized pin can do really well on a small account.
For Pinterest follower growth, I’m continuing to use MiloTree. This is a good way to convert visitors to your blog into followers on Pinterest (and other social media accounts).
Here’s my referral link if you want to sign up for MiloTree. It literally takes 2 minutes to set it up on your blog and you can start increasing those followers asap!
What to do about stolen pins
She addressed the whole room with a little bit of information about how they are dealing with scrapers stealing our pins (including a better way to report). This was another topic we talked to her about in more detail after the session and I was really comforted by all of the ways Pinterest is fighting this battle for us. They don’t want to publish all the details of what they are doing (lest spammers just find new ways to thwart them) but they have some really smart things up their sleeve and are absolutely taking action on it in a really big way. yay!!!
There was so much awesome information in this Pinterest session, and I’m so thankful that Adthrive gave us the opportunity to learn straight from Enid!!!
I’ve tried to hit on all the most important things she covered, but if you have more questions, feel free to hit “reply” I took loads of notes and can check if she shared info about what you are looking for too!
xoxo
Paula
Monica Matthews says
This is fabulous info, thanks for sharing! I hope and pray they are actually going to crack down on stolen pins and spammers. What is the best way to report them? I have been using the “strike” option on the report form.