You may have heard we recently launched two big projects my team and I have been tirelessly working on this summer: The Jenna Kutcher Shop and The Pinterest Lab. We have learned so much in this process and I wanted to pass on some of our takeaways in the hopes that it would help you as well. So here are my top pinning tips we’ve learned through launching the shop:

I was tempted to just get all of my pins into Pinterest right away. I whole heartedly believe in batching my work and efficiency and getting it all in there at once would have made sense from that perspective. But, if you check out my shop board, you’ll notice not all 14 products are pinned there yet and we launched several days ago! Why?

It’s because they’re scheduled to be pinned in an app we use called Tailwind for the times that my audience is typically on Pinterest. Why is this important? Statistics show that the first time a something is pinned makes a difference in terms of reach and engagement with your audience. I didn’t want all my pins to be dumped in my followers feed because they would likely just scroll through and ignore the content and feel super sold to.

We follow the 80/20 rule which means we pin 80% of other people’s content serving my audience in topics they are interested in and 20% of my own work. So instead, all of my shop pins are scheduled for times when analytics tell me my audience is online and more likely to engage with the content in their feed and this is spread out over the next few weeks.

So here’s what we teach in the Pinterest lab: create 2-3 pins for the same content and start to test out which type of imagery and pin styles resonate best with your audience. Then, often times a pin may fit topic wise on multiple boards or group boards so this creates a ton of opportunities to bring one piece of content into Pinterest over the course of time.

Let’s look at an example. One of my products is my customizable media kit template.

This pin is scheduled for 2 group boards I participate in as well as my shop board and the Marketing Tips for Creative Entrepreneurs board. So my one piece of content has 3 separate pins and will be pinned to 4 different boards each  so that’s 12 total opportunities to get this content in front of my audience spread out over time. Finally, Tailwind makes it super simple to reschedule pins so after some time passes, we’ll go back in and repin my most valuable content again.

Ok, this is a biggie. What are rich pins and why do you need to apply for them? A rich pin is going to show more details about your pin including your name, the website it was pinned from and a description pulled from the website. This helps with your branding and name recognition and brings a trust value to the pin as it is validated with a legitimate site (and not a spam pin). Another reason I love rich pins is that it helps with your SEO because they include more information about your pin in the metadata that will help your pin show up in search results.

Does all this talk of validating rich pins, metadata, SEO and keywords stress you out? Since we’ve launched The Pinterest Lab, the #1 question we’ve gotten is on the logistics behind applying for rich pins on the various platforms so you’re not alone. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! I made a freebie walking you through exactly how to do it that you can download below.

Another way to keep your content in front of your audience (other than pinning it multiple times) is to make sure your pin description is loaded with keywords. Think back to the last time you used Pinterest. Let me guess: it was to search for something specific, right? You entered a keyword into the search box and hoped to find something you were looking for in the search results? Are you like me and often use Pinterest more than Google?

Ok, so now think about how this impacts how we bring pins of our own content into Pinterest. We want to show up in those search results, right? And just how do we do that? Keywords. Here’s the thing – Pinterest is more like a search engine than a social media site and once we can make that mind shift, we will see a huge impact in the traffic that is generated from Pinterest. Let’s look at one of my pins as an example (keywords in bold).

The description for my customizable media kit template:

Ever wonder how to create a media kit for your business? As an influencer or small-business creative entrepreneur, it’s important to have a strong media kit that outlines what you can offer brands or partners, that communicates the value your brand can offer to them, AND that makes you look legit (and charge what you’re worth!) This customizable media kit template by Jenna Kutcher will help outline you, your brand, your numbers, and so much more. Grab yours here: https://shopjennakutcher.com/products/customizable-media-kit

We infused this pin description with every term we could think of that someone who needs this product might be searching for in Pinterest. Don’t forget to include your name in the pin and an action item telling people what you’d like them to do next.

That’s it! My 3 main takeaways from pinning my shop content. Want to learn how to 5x your web traffic using Pinterest?  Join me in my FREE Pinterest masterclass here.