Question: do you tend to be an early adopter of Pinterest’s new features — jumping on the bandwagon as soon as they roll out? Or do you tend to step back and let others be the guinea pigs?
Over the years, we’ve seen Pinterest roll out a ton of new features. Some that come to mind include:
and most recently, story pins. Some of these new Pinterest features are so fantastic, we include them in our regular content strategy. Other features miss the mark and disappear into the sunset.
Today, we’ll make the case that early adoption of Pinterest’s new features might just pay off BIG.
Beth, from Entertaining with Beth, is on the podcast today. In this episode, she makes the case that Pinterest marketing is like Vegas in that the house always wins. She believes you have to understand the game and learn how to play it smart to win.
This year, Beth decided to start playing the game when it came to creating story pins, and how that decision has resulted in getting millions of pin impressions and a 241% increase in traffic to her site.
Before we dive into Beth’s story…
Did you know that here at SPM, we have a lot of free resources for you? We have our:
These free guides are designed to serve you, no matter where you find yourself in your Pinterest marketing. Make sure you check them out.
The Benefits of Becoming an Early Adopter of Pinterest’s New Features: A Case Study
Beth is primarily a video creator. She launched her Youtube channel in 2012, creating recipe content that teaches her audience how to make quick and easy meals, as well as recipes that are great for entertaining.
She never had a blog as part of her business until she went to some blogging conferences and realized the opportunities she was missing out on. She launched her blog three years ago, and she’s been using Pinterest market during the course of that time.
Beth was a guest on the SPM podcast back in episode 29, where we talked about Youtube Traffic and Pinterest, and how to make video work on Pinterest (when it was a new feature).
Participating in Pinterest Story Pins Beta PRogram
After a recent kitchen remodel that took months, I decided I wanted to bake something from scratch. When I opened up Pinterest, one of Beth’s story pins appeared right at the top of my feed.
I emailed Beth about her story pins because I could tell she had put a lot of effort into this new Pinterest feature.
Here’s what she said:
These platforms are like Vegas in that the house always wins. So you just have to get smart playing the game that they want you to play in a way that benefits the you (the content creator) too. — Beth
When Pinterest changed their algorithm and really focused on fresh content, Beth started to create new pins like a fiend. She already didn’t have much time to spend on Pinterest, much less creating all-new content.
Story pins were in Beta at the time, and Beth had heard of them in Facebook groups. Beth didn’t really understand them but when Pinterest invited her to take part in the Story Pins Beta program, she decided to try them out for 8 weeks. She figured she didn’t have anything to lose because her traffic from Pinterest was already terrible.
Pinterest knows how important creators are to their platform, so there needs to be some benefit associated with creating story pins for creators. Since (currently) you aren’t able to link a story pin to your site, Beth wondered what the benefit might be.
It turns out that it’s a massive increase in Pinterest follower growth! Beth has seen her follower number grow from 14,000 to 47,000 in only two-three months – WOWZA.
A HUGE Increase in Visibility, Traffic, and Engagement
Beth started to see that her story pins were getting a crazy amount of impressions. She gets tens of thousands of impressions on her story pins, in comparison to the average 500 impressions she was getting on her static pins.
She was also getting good engagement. People had never commented on her static pins, but they were commenting on her story pins.
As a consequence, she decided to go ALL-IN on creating story pins
She started creating one story pin a day and only pinned static pins for newly published content. She began getting anywhere from hundreds of thousands of impressions to millions of impressions on a pin, and 30,000 saves.
Beth started looking closely at her Google Analytics and saw that her Pinterest traffic had increased by 40%. On top of that, traffic to her website had increased 241%. She found that people are doing exactly what I did when I saw that pumpkin bread story pin – they are going to her profile and clicking over to her website to find what they are looking for.
Pinterest Story Pins = Fresh Content
Pinterest is a self-serving platform for users, meaning they are going to follow people who are serving them.
Before, we were trained to believe that you couldn’t build relationships on Pinterest, but story pins have changed that. Story pins make everyone on Pinterest seem more human. Case in point, Beth is now getting comments with people referring to her by name.
Beth was spending hours trying to make sure she was pinning 30 pins a day as well as constantly creating fresh pins for existing content. Now, she spends 20 minutes a day creating one story pin. Since story pins service as fresh content, they feed the Pinterest algorithm precisely what it wants. The static story pins are great because every description you place on the pages is keyword-heavy.
Adopt Early, But Don’t Go Crazy with New Pinterest Features
Because Beth knows that her story pins are getting such huge exposure, she really wants them to be good. She adds as many photos and steps as she can so that people can be successful when using them to create a recipe.
She uses a vertical shot with her title and then another shot after that serves to “sell” the recipe a bit more. After people invested in making the recipe, she takes them through the steps of everything they need to know.
You don’t want to clog people’s feeds with story pins, and you don’t need too many in order to make a difference. One story pin a day is all Beth has needed to make a huge difference in the success of her Pinterest marketing.
Moral of the Story: Play the Platform’s Game to Win
There has been heightened anxiety when it comes to Pinterest marketing. You just need to follow the numbers and stats. Be willing to try new things and diversify. Don’t exhaust yourself. You don’t have to go crazy.
Pay attention to what new features Pinterest is emphasizing and begin to experiment with that feature. When you do what Pinterest wants you to do, you’ll be rewarded greatly.
You can find Beth on Pinterest, her Youtube channel, or her website. Shoot her an email if you decide to try out any of her recipes (especially that amazing pumpkin bread).
For Further Listening/Reading:
Thank you so much Kate and Beth! I had the identical feelings about Pinterest story pins and was ignoring them. Right after I listened to this episode I dug in and made one … and surprisingly it wasn’t that bad! I love Beth’s strategy and I’m going to adopt it! It’s day 3 and I’ve made one story pin everyday!
And also thank you Kate for helping me organically grow my Pinterest account from my 200 personal followers, to currently almost 7K followers & 1.7 million viewers. It’s incredible what you’ve done with this podcast. You took a seemingly simple topic and stretched and pushed it to flourish and help others to flourish too … especially at that critical period before their income starts. Thanks so much!!💖
Yey Cindy! So happy to hear about your success. And thanks for the kind words.
Interesting! Any idea why Story Pins aren’t available to all creators? I am in Canada and have never had them available.
Pinterest tends to roll out new features in phases to users in different locations. I’m confident you will get them eventually!
Hello Kate, Thank you for your article on Pinterest’s new features. Nowadays use of Pinterest is increasing for every type of business. Hope new features will help me to increase my small business.
As we emphasized in this podcast, we believe that early adopters of new features will be rewarded 🙂