I’d never used Pinterest seriously UNTIL I realized that I could use it to grow my blog and online business.
And girl, that changed my LIFE! (not an exaggeration here)
18 months and over a half a million page views later, I can safely say I’ve learned a crap ton from my mistakes.
So if you’ve been scratching your head, wondering “why isn’t Pinterest working for me?“, stick around because you might just find the answer.
Mistake #1: Mixing your personal and business account
There is nothing more disappointing than looking at a blog/brand/business account on Pinterest and having no idea what its really about.
Look, I get it. You love Pinterest for all the cute amazing inspiration that you find there.
However, you as a USER and you as a CREATOR have two very different objectives.
As a brand or a business, your account should be a CLEAR representation of who you are, what you do and what it is that you sell.
This means that your business account should be strictly BUSINESS.
If you’re too lazy to separate your accounts then you can make your personal boards private and that would be a good way to kill two birds with a stone.
However, if you plan to use Pinterest marketing to grow your business it is a wise idea to keep your professional account just for professional purposes.
This helps new users and Pinterest understand exactly what you post about, how relevant your content is and who they should show your pins to.
Mistake #2 Not sharing your posts on group boards.
In the early days of blogging, I thought that as long as I continued to create new posts, I’d keep magically getting new readers.
WRONG.
Any and every experienced marketer will tell you, that you can’t just create content and hope for your ideal audience to find you.
You need to go out there and PROMOTE.
In fact, I would say you need to promote 10x more than you create.
Enter, group boards.
An excellent way for you to reach a bigger audience even when you’re just starting out.
Watch this video for how to find and join the right group boards:
Once you are a part of group boards in your industry or niche, make sure to save your new content to these boards. (by save I mean: repin)
Mistake #3 Relying heavily on automated tools such as Tailwind.
Automation exists to make your life easy. Inside my course Pinterest Traffic Explosion, I teach this strategy in a lot of detail.
HOWEVER (and this is a big one)
No amount of scheduled engagement can ever replace MANUAL engagement.
So even if you do post 10 or 20 posts a day using Tailwind, it is helpful if you spend at least 15 minutes a day engaging as a user on Pinterest.
Every social media platform rewards engagement and Pinterest is no different.
While automation can make your life easy and bring consistency to your Pinterest account, manual pinning helps Pinterest see you as a high-quality pinner and reward you for the same.
Mistake #4 Designing pins that aren’t appealing to your audience.
Pinterest is a VISUAL platform.
Repeat that after me?
Pinterest is a VISUAL platform.
This means, that each time a user logs in, they have nano seconds to decide which pin to click on?
Your design WILL make or break that CLICK.
And if you don’t get a click, you don’t get a conversion. #GoodbyeSales
This means in order to have a strong presence on Pinterest, you need to be testing out which designs work best FOR you.
Now this doesn’t mean you should make 40 new designs each month and see which one works.
You can start off by simply making 3-4 variations of the SAME post.
Here are a few things you can tweak:
- Colors
- Images
- Headline
- Numbers
Test out your pins over a 2-3 week period and see which ones respond the best. Note down which category of posts these pins fall in.
Rinse and repeat.
Even though I have a pretty good idea which of my pin designs tend to go viral and which ones don’t, I still experiment a LOT.
Pinterest loves fresh new content so the more you can adapt your strategy to that, the more you win.
If you’d like to grab my tried and tested viral traffic templates, click here to get them.
Mistake #5 Only pinning your content.
Once you reach a point where you have thousands of posts and a team handling your Pinterest account full-time, you don’t need to curate other people’s content.
BUT, for all others curating a profile that has at least 50-60% of other people’s content is a recommended practice.
This will help your followers remain engaged and not get blasted with only your posts.
Not to mention the BETTER your content is on Pinterest, the more you get bumped up in search and improve your overall profile performance.
Mistake #6 Not having enough pins on your personal boards.
While auditing some of my students’ accounts, I have come across what I’d call “thin” boards. In principle, they exist as boards, but they don’t have enough content for a completely new person to follow them.
This is a major red flag.
Even if you are brand new to Pinterest, you can always refer back to point #5 and save other people’s high-quality content to your boards.
When you do create content in future for your boards, come back and add that.
But don’t let those babies be empty!
Mistake #7 Creating a new pin from scratch each and every time.
Making new pins every time from scratch is the #1 thing you can do to basically KILL your productivity.
Not only will you waste hours of your time, but you will also HATE doing this over the long run.
Don’t let this make you hate Pinterest.
If you are smart and have a template-based system, you can EASILY create new pins in minutes if not seconds.
I usually publish 100 new pins/month and I have no specific VA that helps me do this. I also run two different online businesses, live in two countries and STILL manage to drive tends of thousands of page views.
The easiest way to go about it, is to make a template and then REUSE it.
If you don’t know what a great template looks like, you can grab mine here.
Mistake #8 Thinking Pinterest followers matter.
While on other platforms such as Instagram or Youtube, followers can matter, on Pinterest, they really don’t.
Especially not at the beginning, when you’re still getting a solid foundation in place.
If your content is stellar and search-optimised, the followers will come.
In the beginning, I had less than 500 followers but still have tens of thousands of page views.
The more people engage, click and view your content the more people Pinterest will show it to. And that’s really at the crux of what matters.
Mistake #9 Not realizing that Pinterest is a search engine.
When you’re looking for something on Pinterest, what is the first thing that you do?
Go to the search bar and type what you’re looking for, right?
That’s also what every other user does.
What does that make Pinterest then?
A SEARCH ENGINE.
You can make the prettiest pin, join 300 group boards and have the most amazing profile, but if your pins are NOT search optimised, GOOD LUCK!
This would be the same as writing a 3000-word blog post on a killer topic but not knowing how to optimize your post for SEO and then wondering, why Google isn’t showing your post on page 1.
Pinterest is no different! Make sure to always add long-tail specific keywords to your pins and boards.
Wanna learn the expert strategies behind growing a business with Pinterest? Check out our membership program, Pinfluencer Collective.
Mistake #10 Being inconsistent.
I’m sure you’ve heard it before.
Consistency breeds success.
Pinterest is no different.
The best pinners have a monthly, quarterly, annual strategy mapped out.
They test, they tweak and they TAKE ACTION.
They don’t just leave things up to the Tailwind gods, but actually step in the mud and do the groundwork themselves manually.
If you are inconsistent with your strategy, your results will mirror the same.
I hope these 10 Pinterest mistakes gave you some food for thought. Let me know in the comments which one you’re making and plan to fix!
Watch the full video here: 10 Pinterest Mistakes That Are Hurting Your Business
