How to stay relevant on Pinterest – Pinterest Content Strategy 2023
If you’re anything like me, Pinterest has proved to be a tricky wee beasty this past few months. With impressions dropping across the board and click throughs diminishing dramatically for many users.
Pinterest made massive algorithm changes a while back. And, since then the strategies that seem to have worked for people for many years have all of a sudden stopped working.
The IPO of Pinterest back in April 2020 on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) also had an impact on the company’s strategy and direction going forward.
With Pinterest becoming more of a hybrid search engine/ social network type platform. Pinterest is the third most relevant brand in the US, it’s a big deal and with the IPO this only serves to solidify Pinterests mark on the digital landscape.
In terms of what this means for you as a blogger or small business, think Facebook.
Think about an algorithm that is skewed towards keeping people on the platform itself. Think pay to play. Think limited exposure for organic content that is repetitive. Think fresh content discovery.
This is not a simple , here’s how I pin post. Nor is it a quick fix. This is an in depth dive into what drives Pinterest as a company and how you can best leverage Pinterests vision and mission to your advantage.
Let’s dive into what this means in terms of actionable tactics to stay relevant on Pinterest in 2023 with Pinterest best practices.
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What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a way for people to discover new and inspiring content. Think of Pinterest as a search engine. Its a visual way for people to search and find ideas and inspiration. As a blogger, think of Pinterest as you would Google. It’s your best friend. It’ll help you be found and it will help you to drive traffic to your blog.
1. Pinterest discovery journey
Remember that the buyer journey is not all about the destination! They don’t call it a buyer journey for nothing! When I talk about a buyer journey I’m talking about the stages a person might go through when they are looking to purchase a product or engage a service.
The buyer journey has a couple of important steps for consideration but this diagram below is a pretty basic way to help you understand your buyer’s journey.
From knowing nothing about your product or company or the options available to them to finding out about alternatives, weighing options and then finally making a purchasing decision.
As a general rule the buyer journey goes something like this:
- Attract – get people to notice you and your company. Your not talking about specific products at the point. General awareness stage.
- Engage – now people have noticed you, start to engage with them with offerings such as freebies and articles.
- Convince – get specific when it comes to your audience’s needs, provide value for them, email workflows and tailored content.
- Convert – now you can start to hammer home that you are worthy of buying from – social proof and testimonials.
- Delight – keep them delighted as customers so they come back and become fans and eventually evangelists for your brand and your products.
These steps loosely form a flow from the awareness stage to the consideration and decision making stages.
Remember that Pinterest is all about discovery! So don’t make your Pins all about the end of the journey.
Don’t ask for something before you’ve provided value. Pinterest itself commented that the way a customer or user interacts on their platform is in no way a linear journey. Keep this in mind!
Ways to use the Pinterest customer journey
- Keep in mind that you want to touch on every aspect of the customer journey on Pinterest.
- Be mindful of focussing too much on the end of the funnel
- Don’t ask for the conversion when you haven’t done the groundwork on the steps higher up the journey!
- Add value at every stage of their journey
- Build trust through offering content that isn’t an ask
2. Pinterest’s Mission
Pinterest is all about leveraging its existing user base and attracting a new user base to stay on site, browse, discover and ultimately shop. It is in Pinterest’s best interest to keep users on site as long as possible. Without linking out to a third party site too early.
The less users engage on site and go through all the steps towards discovery, the less potential revenue Pinterest makes. Remember, Pinterest is a listed company now.
They NEED to hit their targets now more than anything. They need to grow month on month, year on year to provide a return to their investors. Their stock price needs to go up.
For us bloggers, this means that we need to pay into this motivation. We need to not simply look to link out to our site as quickly as possible. We need to provide opportunities for engagement and interaction on the platform itself.
How to encourage interaction and engagement for your brand on Pinterest.
- Ask a question at the end of your Pin description
- Engage on other people pins with mindful and relevant comments
- Pin complete content- ie: content that doesn’t require users to click off site (see example below)
- Spend time on your feed looking for great new people to follow and interact with
- Mix up your Pins with a combination of text based and image only assets
Pinterest’s Value Proposition for Pinners
Pinterest aligns itself with four value propositions for pinners. These are crucial for bloggers to understand in order to maximise the benefit they can get out of using the platform. I’ll dissect each of the four values below.
1. Pinterest is a visual experience
First and foremost Pinterest is about visual search. Think about Google for instance. You need to be certain of your exact search terms when trying to find something of relevance.
Pinterest however lets you start from a place of uncertainty. And go on a content discovery mission to find the things that inspire you the most.
Remember their mission? – to bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love. This is poignant.
Pinterest is not about simply finding an answer to your problem or question. It’s about inspiration. It’s about a journey.
It’s not a linear function from desire to decision making. It’s all about finding true and unique ideas and inspiration to create something positive or meaningful in someone’s life.
2. Pinterest utilises human curation and personalization
Think about how Pinterest curates collections. They are hand picked and hand curated by millions of real people. The main thing to remember here is contextualisation.
When it comes to adding context to search results or content, humans beat computers hands down every single time. Each time a user adds an idea to a collection or board Pinterest gets smarter. It begins to understand how users are contextualising certain information.
For instance, the picture below might be added to varying collections by different users depending on their own unique context.
- Love
- Beautiful scenery
- Places to visit
- Hiking
- Couples goals
- Selfie inspo
- iPhone
- Traveling
As users organise and curate content, Pinterest learns their preferences. This allows Pinterest to then offer up a personal curated feed to each user that feels unique and highly relevant.
3. Pinterest is designed for action
A whopping 85% of people say they go to Pinterest because they are starting a project of some sort! Think about that for a second! This is a massively valuable piece of information!
Pinterest says that they want to make sure that users get the information they need and that every pin links back to a highly valuable source. They are actively seeking for users to be able to visualise their dreams and turn them into reality by offering a discovery journey and a final destination for their users.
4. Pinterest is an empowering environment
Oh my gosh! This one is awesome! Pinterest wants to help people to feel better about themselves. Not worse! It actively seeks to help people create the life they want and a life they love.
“Pinterest enables a personal journey toward action that is focused on the self and the future, away from the noise”
Pinterest
Think about this one a while! Remember this when you’re making pins or engaging on the platform.
Are your actions aligned with this Pinterest value proposition? Are you creating an atmosphere of positivity and acceptance or playing into some other more underhanded human emotion?
Now, as a blogger, think about how you can ensure you’re creating content for Pinterest that aligns with what they are trying to achieve.
How to create Pins that align with Pinterest’s Mission
- Create content that inspires
- Forget fear or FOMO based tactics
- Foster positivity
- Remember the journey, not just the destination
- Think about content for every stage of the buyer journey
- Think visuals, not just words
- Consider context
- Remember why the user has visited Pinterest
You can easily create stunning, clickable Pins in Canva and schedule direct to Pinterest with their new content scheduler. Which I thoroughly recommend. Or use an app like Tailwind which is super cool for scheduling and planning your Pinterest content.
3. Manual Pinterest Pinning Strategy
I’ve definitely wavered these past few months on what the best way to combat the ever changing algorithm and the changes this has meant for impressions and click throughs.
Any marketer who tells you that their way of pinning or their pinterest strategy is the be all and end all of Pinterest marketing is lying to you. There is no one right way to use Pinterest as a marketing tool for your blog.
There are however some general guidelines that might make your life easier and for me- changing from using a scheduler to pinning manually is one of them.
Everyone is different, and what works for me might not work for you… so test test test!
I started manual pinning as a way to combat the new changes on Pinterest. I was using Tailwind really successfully up until recently when things changed, as they did for everyone.
I love Tailwind and I’ve kept my account there and depending on what happens with Pinterest, I may reactivate it in the future, I still want to get the benefit of all the pins I’ve added to my favourite Tailwind Communities and I want to keep my analytics.
So, the account stays. I just lost the ability to schedule by dropping my monthly upgrade.
I now do two things differently though. I’ll tell you what these are and the reasoning behind this decision below.
Why I chose manual pinning
Tailwind was fantastic in the height of the Pinterest success days. When impressions were banging and click throughs were high. But once the new algorithm changed things started to not make sense anymore.
Impressions and monthly viewers were dropping.
So, I’ve switched things up. I now pin manually directly to Pinterest and use the Pinterest native scheduler to schedule posts in advance.
It was evident that Pinterest was no longer interested in having you Pin a pin more than once… or twice to different boards … there seemed to be no big advantage in pinning pins to multiple boards… they were not being recognised as new or unique pins. And the algorithm was being brutal on them.
I also found that the necessity to repin others pins from Tailwind Communities was becoming redundant.
Repins were not doing well on Pinterest and the calibre of pins in the Tailwind Communities had deteriorated so much so that I always had to check the URl to make sure it wasn’t a spam link.
Plus, the pins were sometimes not high quality and I spent a long time trying to find great content to reciprocate.
So, I now only manually Pin a new Pin first to my most highly relevant board directly on Pinterest. Then, I schedule it to Pin to a second and sometimes a third (not often) highly relevant board 7 days later using the Pinterest scheduler.
In Pinterest, you can schedule Pins up to two weeks in advance. Take this as a cue! Pinterest is not interested in you scheduling Pins many weeks or months in advance. They want new stuff. They don’t want you reschedule the same pin months out and then repeat it.
I also changed my frequency of pinning. I’ve moved from 30 a day – whopping – but it was working… To only 2-6 a day. But, they are high quality, new URLs, new content.
Pinterest Manual Pinning Strategy
- Pin 2-6 pins a day
- Pin directly from your blog if it’s a new post and new URL
- Pin only to one highly relevant board
- Schedule via the Pinterest scheduler to one or two (max) more highly relevant boards
- Do not pin the same URL within 24 hours
- Space the same URL out by 7 day intervals
- Pin the same pin only 1-3 times max only to different boards
The other thing I’ve invested in is using the new Canva content scheduler and planner. It comes free with a Canva Pro account and is REALLY good!
You can Pin directly from Canva. Again, be mindful of using this with the tips above. Pin less, pin high quality content and think about frequency of URLS.
I’ve given you a lot to think about here. But as I said in the beginning. Nothing is a quick fix for Pinterest and anyone that tells you they have the magic formula is probably not being completely truthful.
There’s certainly a lot of great advice out there… so take what makes sense to you and forget the rest. But if you can understand the driving forces behind Pinterest as a company and their goals then you are definitely on your way to aligning yourself with a great success formula for your blog.
When it comes down to it, it all boils down to ensuring that your Pinterest strategy is closely aligned with Pinterests mission and value propositions for pinners at all times.
Make sure you’re serving up content that fulfills every stage of your customers’ buyer journey and ensure that you are ultimately making their life better with your offering.
GOOD READ! this post is really of much use for newbie bloggers. One can get the basic ideas and tips to get started with content strategy on Pinterest. Thanks for adding such a useful post.
Thank you so much for this.. no honestly. I have been searching endlessly on how to work Pinterest. I prefer manual pinning but have set up an account for tailwind as that’s what a lot of people suggested.
This again is all new information and I will be saving it to reread again later as my brain is aching lol.
Hi Meekah
So glad you found it helpful! Pinterest can be a tricky wee thing… but so, so worth it for long term traffic gains.
Hello Louise! I enjoyed reading your post. There is a lot of information out there on the internet but this post helped me understand more about Pinterest. I am having a doubt! For one blog post if I create 3 pins and schedule those pins with the 7-day gap, as you said pin to the most relevant boards- so my doubt is, is it ok to pin the 3 pins to the same one or two relevant boards with the 7-day gap and also doing the same in the future when creating new pins for that blog post. And, I am a new blogger and I’ve got a lot of inspiration from your blog post. By now I am having 4 articles. Can you give me a short guide on how to schedule pins? I am confused like if I pin 7 days later, I won’t be pinning anything in between. What to do? (I think I will not get 2 to 6 pins now to schedule but maybe in the future)☺️
Hi Pavi
Don’t stress too much about the days and the number and the URL’s etc… if I can give you any advice.. it’s this. Focus on creating great content! … You can Pin the same URl a couple of time over a week… but I advise to create NEW content- new URLS regularly… adn Pin those. You can create new pins for the same piece of content.. just keep it fresh! The main thing is to not Pin the same URl too much… or Pinterest might see this as spammy.
Hi, Thanks for the great Article! I have a question too:)
Actually these 2 points confusing me “Do not pin the same URL within 24 hours” “Space the same URL out by 7 day intervals”, For Example: I have created 5 images for my 1 post. If i publish Image no.1 today, then i need to pin image no.2 on next week??. So i have to pin these 5 images by 5 weeks? Kindly clear my doubts, Thanks
Hey Aigul
Yes, ideally, you’d space out the same URl by AT LEAST 24 hours… but I prefer 7 days. The theory here is to make sure you’re not spamming the same URL. Maybe try 48-72 hours in between and see how you go as a middle ground. I highly recommend testing out what works for you.
Seriously Excellent Post, Really i am struggling to get ideas for same URL pinning. Can you please tell me what is unique pins?? It would be big helpful for me. Thanks!
Hi Aigul, a unique pin is simply a pin with different graphics and text on it. Ideally though you want to not be pinning the same URL too many times.
Thank you for that very helpful information. I’m getting used to the Canva scheduler and like the fact that I can create pins and schedule from the same program. What I have trouble with is keeping track of what I have pinned and where its been pinned and when I am going to make a new pin for an older post and so on. Do you use a spreadsheet or know of some easy way to keep track.
ha ha ha … yes! I do use a spreadsheet and I feel your pain!
Hi there Louise! Thanks so much for this information. It really helps! I just have a couple of questions. When you say pin to a relevant board, would you pin to your own board or to a group board or both? I don’t have a lot of followers on Pinterest so I’m wondering if I only pin to my own boards if other people won’t see my pins as much? Or is that not how it works? Questions 2- pinning straight from Canva sounds great but you said to make sure you’re pinning directly from your new URL/post- should we pin the first time from the new URL/post and then moving forward for new pins it can come from Canva? Thanks so much in advance!
Hi Jessica, I would normally pin to my own boards first. And to the one that BEST matches the content. Then, I might schedule to pin to a group board later on. Followers are not such a big thing on Pinterest. Don’t worry too much about that. If you make sure you have great titles and descriptions on your pins, the right people will see your posts. Q2. Good question. I would Pin direct from your blog page first. Although, Pinterest has siad it doesnt make any difference. But I think it does! ha ha ha … then use Canva from then on.
This was a great read! I’ve noticed the drop in engagement via tailwind communities and have been super bummed about my views. I’ve been pinning content (not always brand new) about 2-3 times a day and it’s definitely more effective!
I think I’ll try your method and pin newer content and use the scheduler. Thank you so much for your advice!
You’re so welcome!
I haven’t tried Pinterest much but I’m going to take this approach from next year for sure.. thanks for this!
I am reading your paragraph over on using the pinterest scheduler, but a bit lost – how do you schedule a pin a few days later to another board after it’s already been published? Are you just writing the same pin description and duplicating it and then having it schedule to a different board?
Hey Sierra! Ahhh sorry! Yes… so you simply replicate all the same title, text etc… and add it to a new board scheduled a few days later …
This is such a great post. I needed to read this. I have been struggling with my Pinterest here lately so thanks so much for sharing!
Thanks Charity!
I searched the net for an hour trying to find answers to help me understand why my traffic is tanking and this post was spot on – makes a lot of sense. It’s especially hard to find good, updated information out there for people who manually pin only versus using a scheduler, like myself. I think my issue is the amount of times I am repinning other people’s content. Will be book marking this and highlighting the points to tweak my strategy. Thank you!!
Glad it was useful Sierra. Pinterest has really changed things up and you definitely need to be pinning way less and not the same URl!
Absolutely going to use this plan of action! Thank you!
Awesome! You’re so welcome Sydney! Let me know how you go!
Great information. I’m relatively new to Pinterest and still working on getting my blog posts featured appropriately. This article helps immensely.
Hi Mike.. so glad it was helpful for you! Pinterest is amazing- just takes a bit of time to get your head around it… and to start seeing results.
Thanks for this great resource, you really helped shed some light on the pinterest methodology!
You’re welcome Lindsay!
Thanks for the helpful post! I’m new to my business Pinterest so I’m looking for all of the tips I can find to help!
Super Katie! Hang in there! Pinterest is definitely a longer burn 🧡
This is a very thoughtful article about Pinterest and all the changes. I fully agree that there is no right way to do it. I am still using Tailwind but quite differently. I pin fewer pins and place each one on fewer boards. I also use the Pinterest scheduler a little. Thanks for all this information. It really helps.
You’re welcome Christine. There definitely is no one right or wrong way to use Pinterest that’s for sure. ❤️
I often get so overwhelmed by Pinterest so these are great tips for me to know. Thank you for making it so clear.
I know right! Pinterest can be so overwhelming. And especially with all the changes they make all the time! But it can be so worth it in the long run. 💕
Some really great advice. Pinterest is so useful for businesses and bloggers!
Glad it was useful for you Jo!
Thanks so much for this highly informative article! Two questions: (1) How many different pins do you prepare for each new post/URL? (2) Do you think we should – with this new strategy – have fewer boards with a broader spectrum to make sure, we often enough pin to a board? I’d love to hear your opinion about this! Thanks again and have a great day!
Hi Christine! Initially I do 2-3 fresh pins per new blog post/ URL. I then schedule these to 2-3 top relevant boards MAX. Roight now using a manual pinning approach – with scheduling in the Canva Planner and the Pinterest native scheduler. min 24 hours in between… preferably 7 days! I’ll then go through regularly and do a new pin for each URL/ post and do the same with them regarding scheduling. I have a lot of posts so I can rotate this a few times a week easily.
Q 2…. hmm good question… I’m not really sure to be honest. But I would say that it’s more important to make sure you have pinned to a relevant board than to have loads of pins per board. Each board has a highly relevant SEO description and Pinterest takes its cues from these regarding both search and distribution. So… I would say no, keep highly relevant, topic specific boards and don’t make your boards broader. 🧡
Thanks so much for answering my questions!
Pleasure 🧡
Thank you so much for sharing this. It is so useful for forward planning strategy.
You’re welcome ❤️
I started my blog in August and Pinterest has been so confusing to me. This really cleared some things up. Thank you.
Awesome! yes! Pinterest is mega confusing! But so worth it to hang in there!
This is the second time I am reading this post – there is so much valuable content, I needed to save it! I currently manually pin and am going to try some text only versions of posts leading to my blog- great idea!
Great! I highly encourage both text only and image only pins… you have to try stuff out!
This is excellent! I screenshotted (word?) the list because it is so valuable and I need the reminders right at my fingertips. Thank you!
Hi Louise, thank you for this amazing blog post, I’m a bit lost when it comes to Pinterest but you clarified so many doubts I had! I have a question though… I’ve only just started pinning so I’m not expecting huge results at the moment, I know I need to be consistent and patient. However, I think I might have made some bad mistakes, like deleting boards, moving pins from board to board, and pinning the same URL more than once in one day. Is there a possibility that my account is being shadowbanned as a result? If so, how long will the “punishment” last? Thank you so much!
Hi Daphne! Glad the post was helpful 🙂
Yes, Pinterest is somewhat a long game! So hang in there… I would say though that don’t be too worried about your “mistakes” … Pinterest IS pretty forgiving! Just be sure to not be spammy… ie: LOTS of the same URL in quick succession… hmmm shadowbanning… I don’t know a whole heap about Pinterests policies around that… but.. they are super helpful if you contact them… and that’s what I suggest you do! … they normally respond within 24 hours and are really accommodating 🙂
Wow – I was coming to about the same conclusions that you listed under your manual pinning strategy. Thanks for sharing – this gives me the confidence to follow my gut and change strategies. Also – this strategy should free up time for creating more content.
Yeah, it’s definitely changed a LOT! I’m finding the manual pinning works much better, for now anyway. I’m not cancelling Tailwind completely, as I do love it. But for now, it’s simply not worth it given the changes.
I don’t use pinterest much sometimes I even forget I have it, but great post 🙂
ha ha ha … yep I had forgotten I had my very old personal Pinterest account when I first started out – was actually fascinating to browse through all the old pins!