#109: How to Get Ahead of the Changes at Pinterest to Win on the Platform

Feb 26, 2020

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Have you heard? Pinterest is making changes. In today's podcast episode, Alisa Meredith, my dear friend and Pinterest expert, and I are talking about how to get ahead of the changes at Pinterest to win on the platform.

As bloggers, most of us depend on several platforms to drive traffic to our blogs. One of the major players in the game is Pinterest. Pinterest is responsible for driving millions of page views to our site, Catch My Party, every single month.

But with all platforms, sometimes things change. And Pinterest has recently made some changes that have a lot of people talking.

It is absolutely necessary as online business owners to be aware of these changes and understand what they mean for us and how to best move forward.

Before we jump into all things Pinterest, I’m so excited to announce that beginning March 2, 2020, my husband and partner, and tech genius, David, and I are starting our first Entrepreneur Coaching Group. I’ve been mentioning this for a few weeks and I am so excited that it is almost time to start!

This is a 6-week program that will help you understand all the things you need to know as you build your blog into a profitable business.

We’ll be talking about all the tech stuff for sure, but we’ll also be covering how to create content, how to find your audience, what products to sell, how to monetize, and how to understand SEO.

We’ll also talk about social media platforms, email marketing, and all the other pieces of building an online business with a blog.

There will be live Q&A’s, teaching sessions, a private Facebook group, and we will be there with you every step of the way.

If you’re ready to get your business off the ground, head over to MiloTree and reserve your spot today!

Pinterest Wants Fresh Content

If you’ve been blogging for a while, you know that, in the past, you created a pin and then your job was to continue to pin that pin repeatedly, over time.

One of the main changes Pinterest is making is in regard to that practice.

Pinterest has said that they want new content. They no longer want us repinning the same pins over and over; they want pins that are fresh, and they are calling this "fresh content."

Let’s define fresh content for Pinterest

Fresh content is simply an image that has never been pinned to Pinterest before.

Pinterest has stated that their users engage more with fresh pins, and that doesn’t mean you can use the same image but change the words or the overlay. It doesn’t mean you can slide the image a few pixels right or left.

Think about what makes an image fresh from the user’s perspective.

The point here is to switch your time and energy from curating peer content and repeating your pins to creating and pinning fresh content.

Pinning to Multiple Boards

Obviously, the question arises then: Can you continue to pin your images to more than one of your boards?

You absolutely can! You can still pin your image to several relevant boards, with the important word there being “relevant.”

If you continue to share the pin to boards that Pinterest doesn’t consider relevant, you might receive a warning that you should consider creating fresh content before pinning to additional boards.

If you have a pin that is “sorta relevant” to a few more of your boards, change the text or the image to make it “very relevant” before pinning it to those boards.

The very first board you pin the new content to gets the most attention from Pinterest.

So, be very intentional about the first board you pin your new content to because that sends signals to Pinterest about the content and who they should show it to.

Relevancy and Recency on Pinterest

As time goes on, relevancy and recency are going to become more important to the Pinterest algorithm.

I asked Alisa to take a moment to define the terms, relevancy and recency, and how they apply to the new algorithm.

Let’s say I’m searching for products for my curly hair. I will be shown images of curly hair, pins with text about curly hair, etc. In other words, pins that are relevant to my search.

The takeaway here is that your content must contain what your pin says it is relevant to. That relevancy must also be consistent over your entire online content, from your boards to your pins to your website.

You also need to remain relevant to the platform itself.

People come to Pinterest to be inspired. Your pins and content should be both inspirational and aspirational because that is what the Pinterest user is looking for.

Recency goes back to the fresh content piece. The more you create fresh content, the more that content will start to bubble up in the search results.

Your relevant content that’s older, can still come up in results, but if Pinterest has two pins that are both relevant to a topic, the more recent content will come up first.

You still want to pin seasonal content early because it’s relevant to the season and because people are searching for that seasonal content ahead of time. So yes, repinning this type of content could be beneficial.

New Pins for Old Content

When we talk about fresh content, we are speaking specifically about fresh pins. So, what does that mean for your older blog posts?

If you make new pins for older blog posts, does Pinterest consider those pins fresh content? Yes!

The algorithm is not based on new URLs, but rather on new pins. You don’t have to put out more content in order to have fresh content for Pinterest.

You can make new pins for older content to have the recency factor work in your favor.

Creating Gorgeous Pins

With more focus on new images moving forward, we need to know how to make the most clickable pins ever.

Tailwind has come to the rescue with their Perfect Pinterest Pins Toolkit.

Once you download this free toolkit, you’ll see a pin checklist, a guide to writing great descriptions, and most exciting of all, free templates for creating gorgeous pins.

A new group of templates is released every month and is sorted by industry. Each template is 100% editable to make them your own.

You want your pins to be eye candy for the Pinterest user and this toolkit gets you there without you needing to spend hours on new pins.

All of these templates are available to add to your Canva account and are built based on Pinterest’s best practices.

Is Pinterest Jail Real?

If you hang out anywhere that bloggers hang out, you’ve likely heard that some bloggers are finding themselves in Pinterest jail. In other words, they’re having their accounts suspended.

I asked Alisa if Pinterest jail was a real thing, (it is!) and how we can stay out of it.

First of all, even if Pinterest recommended you pin no more than 25 pins per day, you wouldn’t get suspended for spam if you pin 27 pins per day. It doesn’t work that way. Pinterest has clearly stated that it isn’t based on numbers.

But let’s say you’re pinning 40 pins per day, and some of those pins are the same pin, and it happens that nobody is engaging with that pin. Well, you’re going to get tagged for spam and it’s pretty easy to see why.

At Catch My Party, we have tons of content to pin because people are constantly uploading their party photos to our site.

We had been pinning 100 pins per day, but all of those are new pins. What we are testing now is pinning 75 pins per day and watching our analytics to see what effect that has on our account.

Your Pinterest Best Friend

The thing I love about the Pinterest scheduler, Tailwind, and one of the main reasons we use them, is that they are like a best friend, walking closely beside you and letting you know if you start to veer into dangerous territory.

Your Tailwind dashboard will always warn you if they notice you putting yourself at risk.

Tailwind is there to put safeguards around your account; they aren’t reporting things to Pinterest, but rather are paying attention to best practices and passing those on to their users.

*Listen in as Alisa shares some in-depth information on how to best use SmartLoop and the future of video on Pinterest.

I so appreciate Alisa sharing her thoughts, and how Tailwind is approaching the changes that Pinterest is making. You don’t have to be afraid of these changes.

If the platform becomes more user-friendly, more people will use the platform, which ultimately leads to more eyes on your content.

Action Tips

If I had to give you some action tips from this episode, they would be:

Keep creating fresh blog content
Stay consistent with sharing your content, both new and seasonal
Create new pins!

Use the platform well and you will see a return on your investment!

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