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If, like me, you’ve spent time researching the best way to use Pinterest to grow your business, then no doubt you’ve seen multiple blog posts such as “how to schedule a month’s worth of content in an hour and explode your blog!”. Well, I’ve read those posts and I call bullshit. Scheduling that much content takes closer to 4-5 hours. Plus I’ve tried all kinds of strategies that were supposed to ‘explode’ my views, and no dice. So I found a way to harness the power of Pinterest as a marketing platform for my online business without letting it become a huge burden and time suck. And the results speak for themselves. I get 2.2 million monthly Pinterest viewers using this simple Pinterest strategy! 🙂
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I’m at a point in my business where I’m pretty tired of all the click-bait articles that promise me explosive sales and pageviews. I’ve clicked them and they’ve let me down. (Never mind the fact that most ‘how-to’ posts don’t ever tell you ‘how-to’ do anything. So annoying.)
Turns out there is no formula for making your business a success. You’ve got to march to the beat of your own drum so to speak. Your business, your rules.
So that’s what I’ve done with my Pinterest strategy. I’ve made it my own and this strategy has been working really well for me.
Here are some stats:
Monthly Pinterest viewers: 2.2 million
Monthly Pinterest engaged viewers: 75K
(these numbers fluctuate a bit but if they go down they always come back up about a month later)
I get an average of 10-12 new Pinterest followers a day. Some days I get close to 30!
Blog monthly pageviews from Pinterest: 25K
Pinterest accounts for about 30% of my Etsy shop views.
My sincere hope and belief is that this simple Pinterest strategy can work for you too.
But I’m not going to sit here and promise you explosive results. That’s crap and I won’t do it. All I can do is share the strategies that work for me.
Above are my personal stats, but Tailwind (the Pinterest scheduler I use, but which isn’t a requirement for this strategy to work) also publishes the Typical Results of Tailwind for Pinterest Members every year, so you can see exactly what the average growth rate looks like for their members.
What I do ask, is if you give my strategy a try, try it for a minimum of 60 days. That should definitely be enough time to see if it’s working for you. You should see your followers start to grow daily and your views go up dramatically.
You’ll know it’s working for you when the process doesn’t feel like a huge chore but you’re still getting great results.
This strategy is so simple. It might be simple enough that lots of people are already doing it! But on the off chance that you’re still searching for a Pinterest strategy to help grow your business that won’t take up all of your waking hours, this is it!
I used to try to sit down once a week and schedule all the following week’s pins. I pin about 40 pins per day. So scheduling all of those was taking me well over an hour.
Now I’m a busy mom. I’m juggling a lot of stuff on a daily basis and finding 60-90 minutes to work on a single task is nearly impossible. Someone always needs a snack or help with their lego, dinner needs to get made and appointments got to. Scheduling pins just never made it very high on my priority list.
So what ended up happening was that a whole week would go by and I never got a chance to pin a thing. And an inconsistent Pinterest strategy is almost worse than no strategy at all!
I discovered that what I CAN commit to is 10 minutes a day to schedule that same day’s pins. I typically do it while I’m eating breakfast. Because mom life = multi tasking.
I schedule all my pins using Tailwind. (But don’t stop reading if you don’t use Tailwind, my strategy works with manual pinning too!)
Tailwind suits my needs because I pin to a lot of group boards. (around 70 I think) Tailwind helps me make sure I’m making the best use of those group boards and keeps track of when I’ve pinned to them. Mainly so I don’t end up accidentally spamming boards with my pins or breaking group board rules.
Read Also: A Comprehensive Guide to Group Boards
I like that I can space out my pins and schedule them to multiple boards in just a few clicks. Tailwind also schedules pins at optimal times of day for me, so I don’t have to be awake at 2am in order to capitalize on the waking hours of pinners in California.
So let’s get to it.
10 Minute Pinterest Strategy
The first step for me is scheduling my own pins. Those are pins from my own blog posts or of my shop products.
(I wrote an in depth tutorial on the best way to create pins for Etsy listings, which you can read here.
I also wrote an entire e-book on How to Rock Your Product Photography Using Only a Smartphone.)
I schedule any current blog posts, new product pins or older content that hasn’t been re-pinned for a while. I schedule all my pins to my own relevant boards and all relevant groups boards. That will account for about 8-10 pins per day.
Next I need to find another 28-30 ish pins to fill in the rest of my day’s schedule.
I do that by clicking on the ‘following’ tab in the top menu bar. Scroll down, allowing all the pins to load until you reach the red button that says ‘find more people to follow’.
You need to scroll all the way down in order to load all the pins. This is a necessary step if you are using Tailwind. Otherwise when you click the blue flame Tailwind button only a handful of pins will appear for scheduling.
Then I simply work my way through the feed and select the very best pins that will appeal to my audience. I schedule all those pins to my own boards. (I only add my own content to group boards, not other people’s content.)
I’ve found that I can usually pull 30-35 great pins from my ‘following’ feed.
With any luck I’ll end up over-pinning by 5 or 6 pins which will help fill in the next day’s schedule. If I do that every day I might get the weekend days filled up too so I don’t have to even think about Pinterest over the weekend, another perk of using Tailwind! (I’m trying to find a better work/life/mom balance. If that’s even possible. Whomp whomp.)
How to Adapt to a Manual Pinning Process
Your ‘following’ feed is a great place to find relevant pins whether you use a scheduler or not. Since Pinterest rolled out the simplified pinning button, it takes much less time to re-pin things.
You can simply scroll through your feed, pinning as you go. If you work through the whole feed you should get a good 30-35 pins, which is a great daily amount to see some growth in your Pinterest account.
The down side to a manual pinning strategy is that you can’t take advantage of optimal pinning times throughout the day. You’ll be pinning all the day’s pins at one time.
And you’ll have to come up with another method of keeping track of the pins you send to group boards, which can be a real hassle.
Pinning manually might add an extra few minutes to the process, but not too many. Time is money and all that. Either you save time by spending money (on a scheduling tool) or you save money by spending time (pinning manually). It’s up to you how to use your limited resources!
Why This Pinterest Strategy Works
As long as you are following a good variety of people, your ‘following’ feed will contain a solid variety of pins. This means you can schedule pins to a number of different boards all from one page. No more searching for “DIY nursery decor”, finding a few pins, searching for “dairy-free desserts”, finding a few pins, etc.
I don’t have to bother shuffling my Tailwind queue or waste time making sure I track down a good variety of pins. The ‘following’ feed is by nature a randomized list of diverse pins. Win!
How to Curate Your Following Feed
For the first week you use this Pinterest strategy, you may need to curate your ‘following’ feed so that you are seeing only the best and re-pinnable content. I don’t have time to sift through useless pins and neither do you.
So for the first week you’ll have to add an extra 5 mins to the process.
Scroll through your ‘following’ feed and observe the pins that you would never re-pin. Either the content doesn’t suit your audience or the pins are visually unappealing. If there is more than one pin of this nature from a single pinner, click through to their profile and unfollow them. Unfollow 3-5 pinners a day.
Next, click on the +person button at the top of the ‘following’ feed or on the red ‘find more people to follow’ button at the bottom. This will take you to a page of suggested pinners tailored to your interests. Find 3-5 new people to follow who produce high quality pins that will appeal to your audience.
After about a week you will have a well curated feed of high quality content to re-pin from.
Wow, I had a lot more to say on this subject than I thought I did! Haha! Props to you if you made all the way to the end of this epic post!
Drop ANY questions you have in the comments, I’m happy to help!
I read this whole thing waiting for the sales pitch! How many times are you promised some winning pinterest strategy only to find you have to buy it? Argh!
Anyway, this seems really helpful and I’m going to give it a go before I invest in yet another Pinterest course promising the world haha xx
Thank you so much for this post. Of all posts on Pinterest regarding tips and advice, I find yours are the most comprehensive and the most helpful.
I am beginning to join Pinterest Group Board. Wish me luck!
Thank you for this great article, I have read so many that do not give any useful or helpful information. Like you and many others I have an Etsy Shop and have been frustrated with how to market and get views. I have been a Pinterest user but have not used for pinning for my shop yet. After reading your article I have a few questions, I hope you can help me.
1. In this article you said that once you create your pin to save it to one of your relevant boards, then you can pin it to other boards. My question is can you pin to the main feed on Pinterest or does Pinterest use their algorithms to decide which pins make the feed?
2. Etsy has a quick pin link to pin your items to Pinterest. Should I use this link or make my own pins (ie.PicMonkey), I am concerned with the photo dimensions that you recommend and not getting seen due to incorrect sizing of my photos.
3. You said you should have a board for Etsy listings (which I need to make) Do you need to resize all the photos in PicMonkey for this board for best results?
Any feedback you can give me would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Diana
I have tailwind and used for a while, but even that was overwhelming to me. I am slightly concerned about the follow/unfollow aspect. I don’t want other bloggers to get upset or think I’m playing games…but I want to give your strategy a try. I have to do something to get traffic to my blog and hopefully finally make some money!
Thank you for a helpful post!
There are “follow/unfollow” schemes out there that are designed to game the system and build followers in a very sketchy way. This is not one of them 🙂 This is simply cleaning up your following tab and making it more useful to you over time.
Thank you for all the info!! I found your blog today and honestly I couldn’t tell you where I found it from, but probably Pinterest. Sharing this with a friend because it is SO helpful!! Thanks!!
I’m so glad you found my post helpful, thanks for stopping by and sharing!
Thank you. Just to be clear….you only post 8-10 pins from your blog and then 20-30 pins that come from another source? I have never heard of pinning so much content from another blog.
Hi Colleen, Yes that’s correct. Many people abide by the 80/20 rule. 20% of the content you share is your own and 80% is other people’s. I don’t measure quite that precisely, but I think it’s good to share a big variety of content. That way you don’t come across as spammy or overly self-promoting. 🙂
Dear goodness! I have been paying someone to do this for me because I thought it was such a time suck, even though I knew it drove traffic to my blog. Your strategy has already saved me money because I CAN devote 10 minutes a day to do this. Thank you so much.
This was so very helpful. I’ve resenting invested in tailwind and I was asking myself “How can make this repinning a bit more effecient?” I love the little tip about using your following page. It had helped me loads in the past five minutes! Thank you for sharing.
Sending my love xx
Thanks for such a great post Laura. I found I got caught up in the Pinterest rabbit whole so easily. This strategy simplifies things so much and I love how super simple it is. I’m interested to know if you use Tailwind Tribes as well and how do you incorporate them into your strategy.
I’m so glad you love my Pinterest strategy! I do use Tailwind Tribes, they can really help you increase your reach. If you use Tailwind, I definitely recommend using tribes too. But not all tribes are created equal. It’s a good idea to assess the performance of a tribe every now and again to see if it’s worth your efforts. If a tribe isn’t performing well for me, I leave it to make room for another. I only have the basic Tailwind plan that allows for 10 tribes, so I want to make sure they’re good ones! I’ll add my new pins to them at the same time I’m scheduling pins to all my boards. I only add my own content to tribes, not anyone else’s. But I make sure to follow the rules and re-pin others!
Have you tracked how many of that 30% Pinterest Traffic has turned into a sale in your Etsy store? I would be really interested to know the conversion numbers specifically from Pinterest traffic to your store. There is a lot of traffic vanity metric floating around, and not much conversion stats from that traffic.
Have you been able to track your Pinterest conversions from your Pinterest marketing ? It is easy to do. You just create a Pinterest affiliate link for your store and use that link in all your pins to see which converts into a sale.
Great post, thanks for sharing.
Hi Pam, No I haven’t tracked exactly where my sales come from. I probably should. But I find it really easy to get stuck in the rabbit hole of stats. Lol. I tend not to worry too much about really specific analytics as long as my sales are remaining constant. Great tip though, thanks! I’ll give it a try if I decide to dive deeper into studying my analytics. 🙂
Hi Thank you so much for sharing this strategy. The problem arises when you have only a few posts and even if you create extra pins for the same post, the repin rate may not be so good. I found this great resource on how you can use Google Analytics to manual pin at times when your audience is most active.
You’re so welcome! I totally understand too, it’s hard when you don’t have a lot of posts to pin from. To start with you may only be pinning 10% of your own content and 90% of other people’s content. Over time those percentages change as your blog grows.
I started out that way too. But what I found was that creating a few options for each blog post I do is a great way to get more mileage out of what I am doing. I blog twice a week. I was trying to do more but found it overwhelming. Do you have a blogging schedule? A good balance is 80% other peoples things and 20% yours. It will increase as you go like she said.
Thanks so much for the strategy. Right now I can’t afford investing more money so it was good to see this CAN be done manually.
You’re so welcome! Some people swear by manual pinning, others swear by using a scheduler. Whatever works for YOU is the best Pinterest strategy!
Love this idea, Laura! Thank you for sharing—appreciate your transparency! I’m forever trying to get better at Pinterest—can’t wait to try this!
It’s a constant work in progress for all of us! Thanks for stopping by!
I love that you’re so open about finding what works for each person and their business. I personally only schedule 5-8 pins a day because it’s too taxing for me to pin up to 40, my growth may be slower for it, but I am growing. So I call that a win. Thanks!
If your strategy is working for you, then that’s totally a win! The key is in not allowing these kinds of tasks to become overwhelming, otherwise we’ll burn out. 🙂
i have felt like a failure this week, so i am going to try this. thank you 🙂
Don’t feel like a failure, Pinterest isn’t worth it! Some weeks we’re totally on the ball, other weeks not so much. That’s life!
These are great tips. As a new blogger, I am trying to learn every tip and trick I can. As a Mom, I need to find ways to save as much time as I can!! I love this article and I am definitely going to start implementing this strategy on my page. Also repinning this for my fellow bloggers! Excited to see more of your content!
I’m so glad you found my Pinterest strategy helpful. Thanks for sharing! 🙂
I agree with everything in this! I was spending over an hour a week scheduling, and I kind of discovered this strategy by mistake. I thought I was just bad at scheduling because I was not getting great results and it was taking me too long. Thanks for helping me know I’m not crazy!
Meanwhile, I always try to write how-tos that actually teach something.
Nope, you’re not crazy! I have read lots of great how-to articles too, they are out there! Thanks for reading!
This is probably one of the most helpful features I’ve run across regarding Pinterest strategy. As a new blogger, I feel like I’ve been spinning my wheels trying to figure Pinterest out (and it’s been a HUGE time suck). I’m going to try your method for 60 days because it is totally DOABLE!! And making sure I repin this one for my fellow blogger friends. Thanks, Laura!
Please let me know how it goes! Thanks so much for sharing!
Laura, your first few paragraphs about the how-to posts that don’t tell you how to do anything had me chuckling 🙂 This pinterest strategy is helpful for those of us who aren’t using tailwind. I have also found I get decent engagement if I pin from people who are following me as well. A good 50/50 mix works although I probably still manage to pin from “following” if I do it this way. This gives me an opportunity to scroll through my followers to see if there are any interesting profiles to follow that I may have missed.
Sounds like you’ve got a great handle on your Pinterest strategy! 🙂