How Bloggers Can Follow The Pinterest Best Practices - february 2020 blog income report

How Bloggers Can Follow The Pinterest Best Practices

How Bloggers Can Follow The Pinterest Best Practices

If you’re a blogger, you probably know that Pinterest is a fantastic source of traffic. In fact, it’s the only social media channel I need and use for my blogging business, and what I recommend to my readers and students of my courses.

However, as with any major platform, Pinterest changes its algorithm constantly and we need to adjust.

If you’re on Pinterest already and have been pinning and scheduling for the past year or so, you’ve probably noticed something different in the past months.

Many accounts got suspended (even if their creators didn’t know why) and many bloggers who’ve been getting a ton of Pinterest traffic, suddenly saw a drop in page views and engagement.

All that is because the Pinterest best practices have changed. Let’s see how.

The New Pinterest Best Practices

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If we have to summarize this in 1 sentence, it would be this: ‘Focus on creating fresh Pins as often as possible.’

Nothing new, you might say. And it’s a piece of advice that experts have been giving for a long time now. But this time, it’s different.

Pinterest really has put an emphasis on fresh images (even if the descriptions and titles remain the same) and is against duplicate content.

However, now ‘duplicate’ means something different and this is where the biggest changes in our scheduling and pinning habits will occur.

Duplicate content is now described as any Pin that has already been shared on Pinterest. If its URL appears in 2 boards, it’s duplicate and it won’t be given as much value as a fresh Pin that you’ve just added to the one most relevant board of yours it belongs to.

However, the URL itself or the description and other elements of the Pin wouldn’t be considered duplicate. We’re talking about images here as Pinterest is a visual platform for discovering ideas. What you need to do is go to Canva or whatever tool you use to create images, and quickly come up with a new graphic (that means new colors, images, text, etc.)

As Pinterest stated: “Duplicate content will be distributed less or seen by smaller audiences compared to fresher content. If assuming equal relevance there. Accounts that share far too much duplicate content could see suspension or penalties”

If you want to learn directly from the source, watch this webinar a Pinterest rep and the CEO of Tailwind.

Is Tailwind still the right tool to use?

Yes, and it becomes even more valuable. For a start, please keep in mind that Tailwind is a Pinterest partner and they work together to create and comply with the best practices so that the platform can provide the best experience for users (not for marketers or bloggers).

You can keep using Tailwind (or start now if you haven’t signed up yet) as it does most of the work for you. All the scheduling features, the reports and – maybe most importantly – Tribes, are things you can’t miss out on as part of your Pinterest strategy.

How to actually create fresh content on Pinterest?

Okay, so your main goal from now on is to create new Pins. But what else?

Well, even for old posts, if you thought about adding the same Pin to other relevant boards, it’s now better to create a whole new image (which takes just a few minutes with Canva), and save it to your most relevant board. 

If you want to add a Pin from 1 blog post to 3-4 relevant boards, then you will create 3-4 different Pins (even if they have the same hashtags, titles, etc) and add one to each board.

It’s a popular Pinterest tip for bloggers to create a few Pins for each blog posts. And now that comes in handy more than ever.

Also, it might be time to ditch group boards (they don’t provide almost any engagement now anyways compared to the good old days) and focus primarily on Tailwind Tribes as a way to share your Pins with others and re-share theirs.

This simplifies your scheduling process as you will add each Pin to 1 board of yours. According to Pinterest, that will give you a much better engagement than following the old Pinterest best practices.

Users love fresh content and that’s why they use the platform, and now the algorithm loves them too.

To help you with that, Tailwind has come up with their SmartGuide.

Tailwind SmartGuide

Over the last few weeks, I’ve noticed some new things in Tailwind.

When I try adding a Pin to many group boards at once, for example, the tools reminds me of this:

More than 10 Boards selected!
Heads up! When Pinning to multiple Boards, Pinterest best practices recommend choosing only the most relevant Boards for your content (avoid more than 10). Pinning the same Pin to too many Boards can reduce its effectiveness and limit its potential reach.”

tailwind smartguide best practices

When I try to schedule a Pin and give a day between it’s shared to different boards, I get this reminder:

“Heads up! Pinning the same image too frequently could put your account at risk and reduce your distribution on Pinterest.

tailwind smartguide

In a nutshell, the Tailwind SmartGuide:

  • Monitors your Pinning;
  • Alerts you if you might be doing something that will put your account at risk;
  • Suggests quick fixes
  • Keeps you up to date with the Pinterest best practices
  • Gives you an ‘All Clear’ badge if everything’s fine 

Resources to Grow Your Pinterest Traffic

I can’t recommend enough the course I’ve taken, Pinterest Traffic Avalanche, by 6-figure bloggers Alex and Lauren from Create and Go.

It’s one of the most detailed courses on the topic and created by people who’ve achieved great success on the platform.

Pinterest Traffic Avalanche create and go courses

Also, if you’re determined to make Pinterest work for you, you need Tailwind to automate the whole process, track important information about your profile, and use Tribes (this feature itself can allow you to multiply your page views).

Here are some articles I’ve written on the topic and interviews I’ve done with bloggers who do well on Pinterest:

It’s important to build the habit of following the Pinterest best practices and stay up to date with the latest algorithm updates. 

Remember this: 

  • Fresh content: create new Pins often (and that means a completely new image)
  • Ditch duplicate content (Stop re-sharing one pin to multiple boards, even if they are only yours. Instead, create a new Pin each time).
  • Follow the instructions and suggestions of the Tailwind SmartGuide and you’ll be reminded to pin one image to less than 10 boards, use a bigger interval than 2-3 days, and follow the rest of the best Pinterest practices.
Learn more about the 2020 Pinterest algorithm update, what the current Pinterest best practices are, and how that affects bloggers: #pinterestbestpractices #pinterestupdate #newpinterestalgorithm #pinteresttips #pinteresttipsforbloggers

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