18. What’s the Deal with “Fresh Pins”?

Stephanie 0:00

If you've spent time in the Pinterest marketing space over the past couple of years, chances are you've heard about the value of creating fresh pins. But what does that even mean? Fresh pins? Let's talk about it.

Stephanie 0:15

Hey there, teacher, business owner, it's time to give your bank account a break and pause that ad campaign. I'm your host, Stephanie Royer, and I'm going to show you how to pay less for traffic.

Stephanie 0:26

Welcome back to the podcast. In today's episode, we are going to continue our discussion of Pinterest by addressing a phrase that I'm sure you've heard before, fresh pins.

Stephanie 0:39

We're going to talk about, well, what's the deal with fresh pins? Why is everyone talking about them? What makes a fresh pin? And then I'm going to answer another question that might be weighing on your mind, which is, how do people have time for all these fresh pins? So first, what is the deal with this new buzzword that has come up? Everybody seems to be talking about fresh pins these days, and it has really come to be due to the way Pinterest has evolved over the years. Because, as we talked about in the last episode, Episode 17, Pinterest has prioritized different types of content in the algorithm as it grew, as it changed, as its priorities changed, and so the current trends that we're seeing right now on Pinterest is that the algorithm prefers fresh, never been seen before, pin graphics, and this is why it feels like people are talking about fresh pins all the time now. Now, since we're not Pinterest engineers, we can't say for certain why this is happening, but we can look at trends and make assumptions based on what we're seeing. So one thing that we noticed a few years ago is that the Pinterest algorithm figured out how to aggregate copies of the same pin. When we talked about the glory days of Pinterest, when you could create one pin with a title and description, upload it to tailwind and then tell tailwind to stagger that out to like 20 different boards. It was a beautiful thing, and it worked great. But people started checking their pin activity, and where you have those little numbers under each of the pins that you've created, you can see the impressions and the outbound clicks and the saves. Well, we started to notice that all of the pins that used the same graphic and description, they all had the same stats. So Pinterest was treating these pin copies as the same pin. And so ultimately, it became pointless to create a pin and then loop it through a variety of different boards because the pin already existed. As far as Pinterest was concerned, the algorithm was just going to push it out to users in the same frequency as any other single pin, pinning it multiple times. There was no benefit in doing that. Another reason we're talking about fresh pins, quite a bit more is because it gives you the chance to just make more of what works and leave behind what doesn't. So if you have a pin that takes off and does really well, you can look at that pin and break it down into its different components and create different designs to see what was it about that pin that struck a chord. And you can use the same text overlay on one new pin. You could use the same color combinations on another pin. You could use the same product image on a third pin. And you can really just kind of experiment to see what are the elements that are successful about this particular pin, and can I replicate it on future pins? And so by regularly creating fresh pins, you're opening the door to this kind of experimenting.

Stephanie 4:18

So with all of that said, what makes a fresh pin? You will definitely get a different answer to this question based on who you talk to. There are some people who still prefer to kind of work the system and reuse as much as possible. So they might copy and paste the same pin description to multiple pin images, or they might create a design, and then in Canva, you can do the color and font shuffling to get a fresh round of pins without really much effort at all. And there's really nothing wrong with that. I'm just not one of those people, and here's why. I look at each pin as an opportunity to target new keywords to appeal visually to different people, and also just to focus on a different aspect of the blog post or product. Because why would we want to waste that opportunity by spending time creating just derivatives of an old pin? As a Pinterest manager and a blogger, I create a lot of pins every month, and they are all unique. They are all fresh pins. And so I thought I would share with you what I consider to be a fresh pin. And like I mentioned before, everybody has their own set of criteria for what constitutes a fresh pin, but I figured I would share mine with you. First, I use a fresh image that's added to either a new template of some kind or an existing template. But then, even though I'm using a general template, I regularly switch up the colors and the fonts on the templates to make the pins look as fresh as possible. Since all of my clients are TPT sellers, I'm using mostly their product images, and so I try to cycle through all of the different product image options that they've provided to me, so that each time I create a pin for that blog post, I'm featuring a different aspect of the resource that we featured. So the next thing I do for a fresh pin is I use a different keyword variation on the text overlay of the pin, because most pins, you know, it's the graphic and then some sort of text over the top. So if I had one pin that said Halloween centers for kindergarten, the next pin would likely say kindergarten Halloween centers. So I would just alter the different keywords so that we can focus on different variations with each pin. And then third, if I'm using the same product image for multiple pins. So let's say, for some reason, my client didn't have a lot of image options for a particular blog post, and I'm going to have to reuse the image. What I will do is I'll try to crop it in a slightly different way. I might zoom in on one aspect of that image or shift it a little bit to the left. Whatever I do, I just try to make sure that the images on that pin aren't lined up exactly the same way across multiple pins. And finally, I always type out a fresh title and description. A lot of people don't do this, especially the description, because it doesn't seem like Pinterest cares too much if you reuse the same title or description over maybe a couple of pins, I definitely, definitely would not suggest doing the same title and description for every pin you create for a blog post, but I would suggest always using a fresh title and description, because it's just another opportunity to target more keywords and to cast a wider net.

Stephanie 8:16

After hearing my list of what constitutes a fresh pin, you might be thinking, well, who on earth has time for this? No wonder people hire out for Pinterest management. If you feel like that, I have good news for you, because just like Pinterest tends to favor fresh never been seen before, pins, the algorithm also tends to favor brand new blog post URLs. To me, this means that you don't have to spend hours of your life creating fresh pins for old posts if you don't have time for that, because that isn't where the biggest ROI is on Pinterest right now. Instead, you can prioritize creating pins for your brand new blog posts instead. Just making that shift alone is going to save you a lot of time. This doesn't mean that pins for older content don't succeed because they definitely do. It's 100% worth your time to create fresh pins for older blog content. I just wanted to point out that you shouldn't feel like you can't use Pinterest unless you have time to create five fresh pins a day. In fact, like we talked about in the Pinterest myths episode, more isn't necessarily better. So let's say you set aside a few hours to batch 100 pin designs. They're pretty much the same design. You've just maybe shuffled the colors and switched a couple fonts around. It, but they are just different enough that the algorithm will treat them like a new pin. But what if that particular design that you've based all of these slight variations on - What if that design is a flop? Now you have 100 meh pins when you could have just set aside 30 minutes or an hour to create maybe 7 to 10 strong, unique pins with awesome titles and descriptions. I think sometimes when people think of fresh pins, they are thinking of the old days of Pinterest and the quantities that we used back then, and they're thinking that they need to have that many fresh pins moving forward. And some people are some people are creating a lot of pins, but you don't necessarily have to do that in order to see results.

Stephanie: 11:00

I hope that this episode has given you some food for thought about what it truly means to create a fresh pin. Instead of looking at it as how can I trick Pinterest into treating my pins like they're fresh? I suggest asking a different question, how will this pin reach my target audience in a way that my previous pins didn't. Or if you want to capitalize on a successful pin, ask yourself, How could a fresh pin help cast an even wider net?

Stephanie: 11:35

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Stephanie: 11:50

Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you enjoyed this conversation, I'd love it if you could share it with a teacher biz bestie. You have created high quality resources. Now let's help teachers find them. I'll see you next time.