Hello and a very warm welcome back to this blog. Today we are going to concentrate on the Pinterest Changes In 2021 What Worked Before Doesn’t Work Now.
For years Pinterest has worked in a certain way, a way that really worked, now, however, everything has changed.
It is not good anymore to keep posting the same images to different boards, That’s the old way to use Pinterest.
There have been so many users who have lost thousands of impressions because they stuck to the old ways.
Other established accounts got suspended! Ouch.
Let us dive in and see what we bloggers should be doing now in 2021 to get our accounts growing again.
Has your account stopped growing?
Is it stuck at a certain amount of impressions?
How long has it been stuck for?
I have followed lots of advice that is no longer in date, when you are new it’s easy to do as you don’t know any better.
Some of this advice I have shared on this blog to help others.
Now, however, the advice is being addressed and new practices are being shared with you.
This post may contain affiliate links. This means if you click a link and make a purchase then I may receive a commission. The price you pay will not be affected.
P.s. I only recommend products and services that I actually use.
What Is Not Working Now?
The first thing to address is how many pins you are putting out every day.
Pinning too many pins a day is a waste of your valuable time.
There are loads of Pinterest courses around and I have purchased a few of them.
Many give you very different advice, One of the most effective courses for the growth of my blog and the Pinterest account is by Carly Campbell.
This is a manual pinning strategy and that is what Pinterest recommends as working the best for your account.
What is the recommended amount to pin?
That will be answered very soon!
Should You Still Use A Scheduler?
The answer to that really depends on how old your account is.
Tailwind is the official partner of Pinterest and as such, it is the only recognized Scheduler.
If your account is new or only a few months old then yes you should use Tailwind to schedule your pins.
Because Pinterest wants new pins then it could be better to stay out of the tribe’s feature unless you have taken Amy LeBlanc’s Pinterest course which teaches you a way to get around the repins 🙂
I wouldn’t use the smart loop feature in Tailwind because that encourages you to repin other people’s content.
If your account is established then I would have to say No stick to the manual pinning.
Should You Pin Other People’s Pins?
Again that can be a difficult question to answer.
Yes if your account is new. You really have to pin other people’s pins.
The biggest reason for this is when you set up your boards you need Pinterest to know what they are about. The best way is to share pins from other people.
Set your boards up and pin 10 pins from content that relates to your niche, This way Pinterest will know what your account is about.
Your account is established then it is okay not to pin other’s pins.
Changing Your Pins
After doing some experiments with different pins I have found that sticking to the same colours and fonts wasn’t working out as well as before.
They were getting less engagement!
Now that has been changed the engagement is coming back.
Utilizing different colours, styles, as well as multiple fonts are working out loads better!
Makes sense really, if you are making 3 pins for every blog post then they are all competing with each other, if you make them all completely different there is no competition.
What should we be doing instead?
Let’s cover that now!
1 Actively Follow People In Your Niche
There was a time when followers really didn’t matter, However, now that is no longer the case.
Who sees your pins first?
Your followers, Pinterest shows everything you post to your followers to see how they engage with it.
When they are responsive with sharing, saving, and clicking then the pins get shown to others.
Make a point of following new people every day.
Take the time to look at their profiles to gauge if they will be interested in your niche.
They aren’t any good to you if your niche is not of interest to them.
Eventually when your account has some time behind it then the pins will start ranking for the keywords you have used. That takes a bit of time.
2 Use Keywords In Every Possible Place
Using keywords is of great importance on Pinterest and even more so if you have a new account.
Keywords are the way your content is found. People type into the search bar what they are looking for and if you use keywords effectively your pins will come up.
Where should you put the keywords:
- On your profile
- Board name
- Board section
- Pin text
- Pin description
- Alt text on your blog posts
- Meta title on your blog
I know for a fact that you have heard this before BUT it is so very important to get it right, this really matters!
Making sure the keywords are in every place they should be is the difference between traffic to your posts and NO views at all.
Pinterest makes it super easy to find the keywords using the search bar.
Just type in what you want to call your boards and take note of the keywords in the coloured bubbles below the search. Those are what you need to be using.
For example, you are in the DIY niche, you type DIY into the search and this is what comes up:
Your boards would be:
- DIY Home Decor
- DIY Furniture
- DIY Gifts
- DIY Crafts
- Diy Fashion Etc.
If you then chose DIY crafts as a board to get more keywords click on the Crafts bubble and this set of words will appear:
Using the above keywords from the 2 searches I would write a board description of :
DIY crafts for kids and parents to make during the school holidays, as well as easy and fun gifts to make for those special occasions. great way to keep the children entertained.
In that description, we have used 5 of the suggested keywords. These are the most searched terms by users of Pinterest, this means you will have a better chance of being found.
3 Recommended Amount Of Pins Per Day?
There has been a lot of discussion in Facebook groups about how many pins should you put on Pinterest in a day?
The official recommendation from Pinterest is 5 new pins a day. They say only the first 5 pins uploaded each day will get any real engagement.
Why has everything changed?
For roughly 3 years Pinterest has been saying they want a better user experience and they didn’t really put that into practice until now.
5 new pins every day, these can be from old blog posts but they have to be 5 totally new pins that don’t resemble what you have made before.
Doesn’t sound like much work and to be fair it isn’t but it does become monotonous week in and week out.
To combat this I use Amy’s pin templates they only take a minute or 2 to swap the images and change the text. Saves a ton of time.
4 New Posts Matter
As a blogger, you already know that you need to produce new content on a regular basis, and to keep Pinterest happy it’s important to continue with this practice.
Because you can make new pins for old blog posts that will only get your account so far forward. To make it grow further you need new content as well as new pins.
How often should you produce content?
That will really depend on your schedule, if you can do 1 new post every week that will be okay.
I’m a full-time blogger so my schedule allows for me to write 5 new posts a week at present.
5 The Content You Produce Matters
Another big change with the Pinterest algorithm is its ability to read pin descriptions as well as your content, previously it could not do this.
Everything is now about the user experience so the post is read to match it up with the correct search terms.
Just sending people to an opt-in page is not going to work as well as it did before.
People want a lot more information before they get to that point.
Say You want a recipe for vegetable soup, you won’t want to land on a page to purchase a book about soups. You just want that specific recipe.
The most important fact for Pinterest is the user experience.
The next point is keywords in your URL.
Having keywords in the URL will tell Pinterest what the post is about so that it can assess the value of the content.
It is also possible for the algorithm to see how many internal and external links are present. Pinterest is getting really clever now.
Filling your posts with affiliate links is not going to get you a ton of engagement now.
To combat this you cant put all of your links on a resources page and point the links there.
Giving the user what they are searching for is what it is all about.
6 Consistency Is The Best Practice
Consistency is the most talked-about practice. We need to be consistent with everything we do as bloggers.
Pinterest has stated that they don’t want you to put 20 pins on the platform on Monday and none for the rest of the week.
What they want to see is 5 new pins every day, so 35 pins a week.
Those people that follow this practice will see much quicker growth on their accounts.
Doing this is not as bad as it sounds, Pinterest has a scheduler that you can use to send out the new pins 5 times a day or you can use tailwind.
Using the Pinterest scheduler just choose the option to publish at a later date and a drop-down box will appear to choose the date and time.
One is free to use but you can only schedule every 30 minutes for 2 weeks.
The other is a paid-for service but you can schedule to the minute and for many months in advance.
My Final Thoughts
We have covered a lot in this post.
Lots to think about!
The main points are really just to post 5 new pins a day.
Use either the post at a later date option on the Pinterest featured scheduler or if time-bound use Tailwind.
Be consistent in everything you do!
If you have found this to be of value then please pin me.
