Boy do I have some stories to tell about Pinterest Marketing!
Back in the day…
Nah, we don’t have to get into what Pinterest used to be like, though, do we?
If you were there, you already know. If you weren’t, well, there’s no reason to reminisce, is there?
Instead, let’s talk about Pinterest marketing as we know it today. Ok?
Pinterest Marketing in the Post-Pinterest Traffic Avalanche Era
Gone are the days of publishing hundreds of pins a week and seeing an insane influx of traffic.
Those days spurred the “Build a blog, get ads up, make thousands in YOUR SLEEP!” frenzy and I’m going to say something a bit controversial about that.
I’m glad those days are gone.
Yeah, I said what I said.
Blogging and Pinterest then almost ruined the internet, honestly.
Lists posts with 9,000 ads, 3 videos that chase you down the page and random pop-ups was not fun as a user.
And what was even worse, as a blogger, was when Pinterest did a little shake up and suddenly your pin wasn’t popular anymore and your traffic would take a nose dive.
I assure you, as someone that managed an audience of 100s of bloggers, for as many people as you have seen talk about the bliss of a hot pin, there are many, many more frustrated because of a pin that died or never took off in the first place.
So, yes, I’m glad those days are over.
But, I’m also not saying Pinterest marketing is dead. I think it has a place, but I think we all need to adjust our expectations.
Just a bit.
Because the Pinterest marketing of today is less avalanche-like and more plodding snowshoer.
Less Isn’t Necessarily More, But It Is Less and That’s a Good Thing
I publish 5 pins a day for each of the brands I pin for.
At the moment, that’s 15 pins total a day for 3 different Pinterest accounts.
If 2019 me heard that, she’d stare at me blinking her eyes wondering what was wrong with me? Was I lazy? Crazy? Both?
Well 2019 me, I’m NEITHER, I’ve just done my research and experimenting, OK??
How Many Pins a Day?
When I came back to Pinterest late in 2023, I basically picked up the same pinning strategy I had abandoned back in 2019(ish).
20-30 pins a day. A. DAY. That’s what worked in 2019.
Luckily, it is not what works today.
Today, I pin 5 pins a day.
That’s it.
I don’t use a 3rd party scheduler. I use the simple but effective Pinterest native scheduler.
I don’t spend more than 30 minutes a day and I don’t even create and schedule pins every day. If I spend 30 minutes pinning 3-4 times a week, then I have my three brands covered.
It is a much less time intensive and dare I say enjoyable part of my business than it used to be.
I never liked any of the third party Pinterest schedulers before, but they were kind of essential when you were pinning 200+ pins a week.
Now, I’m not saying that if you are currently pinning 20-30 pins a day and you switch to 5 a day that you’re going to suddenly get an influx of traffic.
But I am saying that after I switched, I didn’t see a difference in traffic to my site. Impressions? Sure of course they will go down because you’re pinning less, but Impressions are a terrible metric to consider especially when it comes to Pinterest.
So, if I can save time and frustration by pinning 5 times a day and still get the benefits of what Pinterest is today, then why in the name of all creatures great and small would I pin 20-30 times a day?
That’s rhetorical. I wouldn’t, obviously. And I don’t.