Do you struggle to know what a Pinterest growth strategy looks like? Do you find yourself wondering if you are killing the game on Pinterest? If you have, you aren’t alone! We all wonder if we’re doing a good job with our business. Today, we’re diving into some Pinterest history, giving you some action items, and sharing a few stories of people who have asked the same questions. Our goal is to help you find a way to understand what Pinterest metrics you should be paying attention to and how to get your benchmark for growth.
Am I Doing Good On Pinterest?
It’s perfectly normal to wonder if you are doing good on Pinterest – or any social media platform for that matter. You want to make sure the energy (and maybe money) you’re putting in, is having a return. So we all wonder if we’re doing a good job with our business, but when we start comparing ourselves to a “mystery metric” or other people, we aren’t actually focusing on our business. You end up not moving your business forward because you’re caught up in all these different stories and metrics of other people. One of the major keys to staying on track with your Pinterest growth strategy, is remaining focused on your business.
Related: Pinterest Growth Tips – An Interview
Some Pinterest History
In order to understand why so many people are experiencing declines in traffic, we need to go back a few years… The pandemic shifted a lot of things for Pinterest. Everyone was home. Everyone was looking at renovation projects to complete, new recipes to try, and fun activities to keep the kids busy. There was a major surge in Pinterest traffic because well, what else was there to do? Anyone who had a blog or an eCommerce shop saw incredible growth. 2020 and 2021 were the years to really press in and build your business. Then 2022 came and everyone was starting to get back into the office, and traffic was dropping across the board. Like a lot. Now in 2024, we’re starting to see some people come out of that and begin growing again. But we’re also still seeing some people experience big dips or remain stagnant.
Simple Pin has not remained immune to this. We’ve seen some big drops in our own traffic and it’s been pretty frustrating to see. However, we still see value and have chosen not to jump ship on Pinterest – it’s still our biggest traffic source, even with all the dips. But we have spent a good amount of time reevaluating our Pinterest growth strategy and making small adjustments where needed.
Knowing the Basics
What we’ve learned in all our years of marketing on Pinterest is that your audience is going to tell you what it wants. It’s easy to start comparing to other businesses; to get caught up in finding the solution to more outbound clicks and impressions and saves in other places. When you do that, you take the focus off your audience and what they want and/or need.
So how do you get intentional about things? Stop looking at what someone else is doing. Start finding a strategy that works for YOU! Find something to ground yourself with and stay in your lane. If you’ve never actually taken time to sit down and determine your goal (on Pinterest), here are a few basic questions to get you started:
- Who are you?
- What do you sell/talk about?
- Who is your audience?
Putting all those things on paper is a great first step to developing a solid foundation for a successful Pinterest growth strategy. From knowing the answer to those 3 simple questions, you can begin to form a strategy for pin design and a list of keywords to focus on. The next piece of the puzzle is just remaining consistent with those things.
Do Not Underestimate Images
If you want a successful Pinterest growth strategy, you have to think about your pin images. Most people diminish the value of good images on Pinterest, often making them an afterthought. But the truth is, images are the main thing that causes someone to click on your pin. Remember, Pinterest is a visual search platform. It’s all about catching the eye of the pinner! So honestly think about if your images are the best they could be or if maybe they need some improvement.
We recently changed up some of our pin designs for the Simple Pin account. It was actually a bit scary to make those changes because we weren’t sure how they would perform, but they actually ended up with better engagement. We wouldn’t have known they’d perform better unless we tried. We understand how nerve wracking it can be to make a shift, but nothing is permanent and if things don’t work out, you can always change it back.
Related: Pinterest Images
Pin Count Will Vary
If you wonder how often you should be pinning, it all depends on how much content you have. Don’t compare yourself to somebody who has been on Pinterest for 10+ years if you are just getting started. Things are going to look very different for them. Someone who has more content is obviously going to have more URLs to pin than someone who just started their blog last year.
That’s why when we get the question, “am I doing good?” it’s almost impossible to answer. It all depends on your niche and the type of business you have. Are you B2B or B2C? How long has your business been around? How long have you been on Pinterest? How long have you been growing your authority in your industry? All of that matters. And how well you’re doing on Pinterest will depend on those unique elements.
Related: Pinterest Best Practices – Your Pin Strategy
A deeper look at a pinterest growth strategy
Today, we are taking a look at one of our listener’s Pinterest page. He wrote in asking us why his account was suddenly plummeting – which is a really good question! Let’s take what we talked about above and put it into practice.
A little background of Steve’s account:
- He’s been pinning since November of 2023.
- He was staying consistent with two pins a day between video and image pins.
- His first month on Pinterest, his impressions were up to 78,000. However, at the time, his account was not a business account.
- Now his impressions are down to 11,000, with little to few saves or clicks.
- According to Steve, his images are better than they have been in the past.
The first thing we noticed when auditing Steve’s account was that he is doing really well with consistency.
When he mentioned that during his first month on Pinterest his website wasn’t claimed, that clued us in to believe that was probably a contributing factor as to why his numbers started going down. After officially launching a business account on Pinterest, it’s flagged. In Steve’s case, Pinterest started caring a lot more about what he was putting on their platform once he was a verified business.
Side note: If you are a business linking back to your website, you must have a business account on Pinterest. They do not allow personal accounts to link back to websites.
We took a look at his pin images next… and most of them didn’t actually match what he was talking about on the other side of the pin: the blog. Plus, the images themselves appeared to look like clickbait. There were also some design elements that didn’t fall in line with Pinterest Best Practices. Those are all things to pay attention to when designing pins for your business.
Minor Tweaks = Major Shifts
We are not in any way saying that Steve isn’t doing a good job and that he needs to quit Pinterest. What we are saying is that there are two tweaks he needs to make to get his help get his numbers back up:
- Work harder on image design. Maybe enlist help from somebody who has an eye for design and can keep in line with Best Practices. Make sure to do keyword research and use those words on your pin images to attract the right audience to your website.
- Make sure the pin to website connection makes sense. People want to know when they click on a pin what they are going to see on the other side. Make it make sense.
If you are like Steve, feeling discouraged by Pinterest, and maybe even beginning to feel like it’s not worth it anymore, don’t give up yet! One thing you should actually compare to is your other social platforms. If you find it still holds the number one or two spot (yes, even with the drop in traffic), it’s still worth it. Remember that most likely this is a season. Studies are showing that Pinterest is doing really well with the new generation, so we don’t know how things are going to change.
Hire Out For Help
So the reality is that you are probably doing great with Pinterest. There’s just minor tweaks that you can make to improve some things. When you get to a point where you want to make a minor tweak, but feel scared because you don’t know how, go seek out people to help you with it. If you’re struggling with image design, consider hiring our image services. Our designers create custom branded designs just for you! Or you can buy pre-designed templates in our shop.
For a limited time when you book a Discovery Call with our team, you get 15% off our services. Book your call today and start seeing positive growth with your Pinterest account again!
More Pinterest Marketing Resources:
Shop: Creating Click Worthy Pinterest Images – Workshop
Watch: Top 3 Most Important Things To Get Right With Pinterest Marketing
