Are you using Pinterest for your business? Maybe you’re thinking: Oh no, not another social media platform I need to crack the code on in order to be successful. Let’s set the record straight.  Pinterest isn’t social media, it’s a search engine and while your followers there are important, they aren’t our main focus because our reach goes far beyond the people who follow us.

This is why we’re so pumped that Pinterest recently decided to publicly show your monthly viewers on your profile instead of just your followers which is awesome because it’s a more accurate picture of the impact of your pins on Pinterest. (And let’s be honest, we’re sick of our worth being measured by the number under our name, right?) We’ve used a few simple strategies in my business and last month we were able to increase our monthly viewers by 500k! Yeah, half a MILLION. You’re in for a treat, because today I’m spilling the beans on how we did it.

We’ve all been guilty of this at one time or another: pin dumping. You log into the app and 50 pins later you are still there planning your next party, your future child’s nursery or dream vacation. But, when we’re pinning strategically for our business, it’s important to bring those pins in consistently each day instead of all in one batch. I teach (and practice) batch working to the extreme in business and to avoid having to log in and pin each day, we use a site called Tailwind to schedule our pins throughout the week.

Like other social media sites, Pinterest has an algorithm of sorts which is called the Smart Feed. The Smart Feed shows you the best pins, specific to you, based on your past pinning and your activity within the app.  We can reach more people than just those that follow us by getting our pins into the Smart Feed and one of the ways to do that is to make sure that the first 5 pins you are pinning each day are high-quality content that our followers will love. Pinterest will gauge how those 5 pins do with your audience first in terms of engagement (repinning, clicks and comments) and then distribute the best pins into the Smart Feed for others to discover.

Pinterest best practices state that bringing fresh content into the platform is a great way to be successful on the app. “Fresh Content” can mean a new pin from your Instagram image, a new blog post, a fresh pin to an old blog post, a link to a new product. You can get creative here, but it’s important to make sure you are pinning the new content you’re creating each week.

Another great strategy we’ve used to increase the number of people who see our pins each day is by pinning to a group board that has the same target audience as my business and participating in Tailwind tribes. In both cases, you’re gaining exposure to other people’s audiences through participating in the group board or tribe! This works because by posting to a group board, you will gain access to other’s audiences through them repinning your content.

Too often we get too busy to look at the numbers, but when you take the time to research what’s doing well for you (and then do more of it) you will save yourself time in the long run. There are many places to check in to see what content and which pins are resonating the best with your audience. A strategy we’ve used that’s been successful is to check our data monthly before we create fresh content to make sure our audience is engaged and that we are serving them well. You can check which blog posts are most read on your site (pins that are clicked through), you can check which pins are most repinned, and which boards are performing the best! You can also see what your audience responds to: is it more photos or words on your pins, do they love inspirational posts or more educational, and so on. Creating high quality content for the audience your serving is one of the keys to success on this platform.

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