Feb 26, 2020
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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