What to Do When Your Pinterest Marketing Is Not Working

Are your Pinterest marketing efforts tanking? Follow these tried and true solutions when your Pinterest marketing is not working to get things back on track!

In the past, I have polled my free Facebook group (now closed), our Simple Pin Collective Membership and our SPM team to ask for suggestions for my podcast editorial calendar. I create my calendar every six months and don’t like to get too ahead of myself, especially since we’re dealing with a social media platform that can change at any moment. I want to always cover solid tips that stand the test of time.

The first thing that most people wanted to hear about was advanced Pinterest, followed by site optimization, hearing more about the business aspect of Simple Pin, client success stories, and Pinterest basics. First up under the Advanced Pinterest umbrella — advice on what to do when your Pinterest marketing efforts don’t seem to be panning out.

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What You Do When Your Pinterest Marketing Is NOT Working

It wasn’t surprising to me that so many of you wanted to learn more about advanced Pinterest and what you’re supposed to do when you feel like you’ve hit a wall. If you feel like you’ve tried everything under the sun and you’re just ready to throw in the towel, I have five action steps for you.

I’ll be assigning you a little bit of homework today. I’ll be giving you previous podcast episodes to go listen to so you can get some basic solid information that is foundational for the Pinterest platform.

Action Item # 1 – Images

As I’m recording this at the end of March 2018, the current image size that Pinterest recommends is 600 x 900 or 600 x 1260. Longer images are now being cut off within the Pinterest feed. You don’t want your images too long, too busy, or too text-heavy. You want them to be to the point and to peak curiosity. Consider changing up your images and then A/B testing them. After you listen to that episode, and then move onto Episode 72, which is all about understanding Pinterest analytics.

You can also listen to the episode where Cassie and I talk about capturing the pinner’s attention with your images. If you struggle with images, just get some healthy feedback. There are plenty of Facebook groups and memberships, like our’s, where you can post an image and just ask for feedback (and don’t worry, I only allow kind people in my Facebook group, so you don’t have to worry about any mean comments).

Action Item # 2 – Keywords

You have to get smart with your keywords. You can go back and listen to episode 35, where I give you a free checklist to help you understand where and how to keyword on Pinterest. A word of caution though. You don’t want to be guilty of keyword stuffing. Incorporate keywords into natural, descriptive sentences using keywords in your pin descriptions, on your blog,  in your alt text, and in the Pinterest description box if you use Tasty Pins.

Just make sure you have a keyword-rich pin description. That’s how people are matched up with you on Pinterest through the smart feed. Make sure your board names have keywords. Look at what people are searching for and utilize those keywords. Again, episode 35 (How to Keyword on Pinterest) will teach you how to look for those keywords using guided search.

Action Item # 3 – Leverage Your Audience

I cannot over-emphasize how powerful your audience is as far as sharing on your behalf. There’s a lot of ways you can encourage them to share your Pinterest content. I use my weekly email newsletters to remind people to follow me on Pinterest. I always leave a “pin it for later” link, which I talked about extensively with Michelle in my Affiliate Marketing and Pinterest episode.

Share buttons on your site are a must. And be sure that they work when your site is being viewed on mobile devices (you want everything as mobile friendly as possible!). You should also talk about your Pinterest boards in your blog posts. Finally, cross-promote on your social media platforms.

Action Item # 4 – Find Your KPI’s And Hit Them Hard

If you listened to episode 87 on Pinterest KPIs, you already know a lot about this topic. If you haven’t, go listen to it and download the KPI worksheet. Take 30 minutes after you listen to the episode and list out specific KPI’s for your business. I highly encourage you to leave out page views and instead list indictors such as: email sign-ups, ad income, conversion to services, etc.

It will take time to figure it all out, but once you get it dialed in, you’ll be able to make better decisions concerning Pinterest. Layne of The Project Booth helped me through this process and it was immensely valuable.

If you want to know more about why I think page views are not ALL THAT, you can go back and listen to me climb on a soapbox and talk about Pageviews Vs. Income here.

Action Item # 5 – Take A Break

Sometimes we just need to take a step back and be okay with the results. I talked about this way back in episode 15 with Kristen Doyle. Kristen talked about how she took a step back from Pinterest because it was totally stressing her out.

Go back and listen to that episode and then take some time to remind yourself about your “why.” Why did you start blogging or using Pinterest? What are your goals? Maybe it’s time to outsource Pinterest marketing so that you’re not constantly stressed out. Before you do so, you need to make sure that you’re okay with someone else steering your Pinterest ship while you focus on other things.

If you’re not quite ready to completely hand over the reins, consider joining us in the Simple Pin Collective. It’s our monthly membership site where you can learn alongside me, my hand-picked mentors and several other content creators and product sellers who are just trying to do their best on Pinterest. Learn how to use your time efficiently and effectively through monthly trainings, live coaching calls with me, great Facebook group support and more. Click here to learn more.

If you’re feeling frustrated, try one thing from this action list. Maybe you need to go straight to number five and just take a step back. Whatever you’re going to do, jump all in and in 6-8 weeks, do some evaluation and see how it worked for you. Then you can add another action item to work on.

Which action item will you focus on?

 

Time Stamp
Intro
 5:24 – What You Do When It’s Not Working
 6:50 – Action Item # 1 – Images
11:35 – Action Item # 2 – Keywords
13:28 – Action Item # 3 – Leverage Your Audience
16:38 – Action Item # 4 – Find Your KPI’s And Hit Them Hard
21:30 – Action Item # 5 – Take A Break