I’ve realized the power Pinterest has for bloggers a long time ago. I began pinning and optimized my profile almost a year ago. I got to 100K Pinterest views per month by pinning manually. But still, I never created my overall Pinterest strategy, learned from the experts, or started scheduling Pins to increase my reach and engagement.
In this post, I’ll share the big Pinterest mistakes I’ve been making that were preventing me from seeing any success on Pinterest or direct blog traffic from it. Also, I’ll talk about the new course I’m taking – Pinterest Traffic Avalanche – that is already giving me all the information and tactics I needed in one place.
My 7 Top Pinterest Mistakes Slowing Down My Progress
1. Not using Tailwind consistently.
I had signed up for the free version of Tailwind, which meant I could schedule 100 pins every month and join 5 tribes. I only used it a few times and already saw results from the tribes.
I knew for sure that any blogger taking Pinterest seriously is using a paid version of Tailwind, has most (if not all) of their Pins scheduled for the month, and had joined many Tailwind Tribes for even more exposure.
I was avoiding it as it’s a whole new tool I need to learn how to use and that can be overwhelming at times. While there were plenty of video tutorials, blog posts and even free courses on the topic, I never went through them and still wasn’t making the most of Tailwind.
Thanks to Pinterest Traffic Avalanche, I was finally motivated to get familiar with Tailwind and all its features, purchase the Plus version and start scheduling Pins. This will save me a ton of time in the future and will help me with tracking my Pins.
Pinterest Traffic Avalanche is by Alex and Lauren from Create and Go who earn over $100K/month from their 2 blogs and know all about Pinterest. This is their most popular course and they share exactly how they grew their Pinterest account and turned these page views into blog traffic and income.
2. Not creating more pins for popular blog posts.
Pinterest loves new content and that includes bloggers creating a fresh pin for old but quality blog posts and pinning it again to relevant boards. But with a lot of content on your site, it’s easy to forget that and it was another one of my big Pinterest mistakes.
Now, part of my strategy for updating old content (which is something I spend a lot of time doing these months) is to design new Pins for articles, give them a different angle, test certain colors, fonts and titles. This requires having a few pins for each post as you never know which one might go viral.
That’s also great for testing purposes as once you find out what works, you can create more pins with a similar design.
Lauren shares in Pinterest Traffic Avalanche that it’s best to create 5 pins per post. Also, we shouldn’t pin them all at once or in the same week (which I was doing sometimes) as they lead to the same URL. Instead, you should spread them out and pin them once or twice a month only.
Read also: How Megan Became a Full-Time Pinterest Manager
3. Not joining Tribes.
My next Pinterest mistake, or should I say Tailwind mistake, was not joining Tribes.
These are basically communities where you can share your best and latest Pins. Many bloggers are claiming that they might be more effective than Group Boards at this point.
Well, with Tailwind Plus, I also got Tribe Power Up so I can now join unlimited tribes and start adding my pins to them.
Here’s the results I’ve seen since then on my Pinterest profile:
4. Not pinning to group boards consistently.
Manual pinning is hard and that means I was just randomly adding a pin to a group board and only made sure it hasn’t been shared there before. So many days I was not sharing content to group boards at all.
But without the many followers there seeing my pins, there was no chance for me to increase my reach and engagement.
5. Not evaluating group boards and leaving some.
Lauren talked a lot about the power of group boards in Pinterest Traffic Avalanche and shared their strategies. But also said over and over again that many bloggers never check if the group board is effective or not and keep pinning to it.
In reality, only a few group boards are going to give your pins the attention they deserve and even help them get viral every now and then.
The only way to find them is to:
- Apply to many boards (you’ll only get accepted to some of them);
- Actively pinning to them for a week;
- Checking the analytics in Tailwind (there’s a Board Insights section showing you stats from the last 7 days);
- Leaving boards that aren’t helping you.
6. Joining only high-quality group boards.
The next one of my Pinterest mistakes related to group boards was not being sure which ones to join.
My favorite method of finding new ones has always been to go to the Pinterest profile of a bigger blogger in my niche that I know and like and check out their group boards. Most of them would be closed to new members but some would still be open.
However, Lauren shares some other details in Pinterest Traffic Avalanche and now I know that not every board is worth my time. Especially not those with followers fewer than my following on Pinterest.
7. Not tracking the right metrics.
It’s all about metrics and Alex and Lauren have been testing these for a long, long time before finding out what really works. I’ve been focusing on those provided by Pinterest but they are mostly vanity metrics. Some have nothing to do with blog traffic and just show what’s been going on with your Pins across the platform.
The real information that can help your blogging business is in Tailwind and you get access to it when you switch to Tailwind Plus. Lauren has videos in Pinterest Traffic Avalanche walking you through each metric there and sharing what to track and when. So I have a lot of work to do now.
These were some of the big Pinterest mistakes I was making for a long time. I still believe this is the best traffic source for bloggers (especially in some niches) and can be the 1 thing you focus on that helps you grow and monetize your blog.
If you too want to learn from experts like Alex and Lauren, learn more about Pinterest Traffic avalanche here.
Happy pinning and scheduling 🙂
Stock Photo from Africa Studio @ Shutterstock