35. Choosing a Pinning Frequency That Works

Stephanie 0:00

Knowing how much and how often to pin is one of the hottest topics in the world of Pinterest marketing. Let's chat about how you can find a pinning frequency that works for you and helps you see results.

Stephanie 0:14

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 0:25

Welcome back to the podcast. We are continuing our February chats that will hopefully help you fall in love with Pinterest again. In episode 33 we talked about making adjustments to your pin templates so you enjoy using those. In episode 34 we chatted about how logging in as a Pinterest user can help you reduce burnout and be a more effective Pinterest creator. In today's episode, we're going to dive into one of the biggest reasons why people fall out of love with Pinterest, and that is pinning frequency.

Stephanie 1:00

Historically, Pinterest feels like a content monster that needs to be constantly fed and attended to. If you don't have the budget to hire it out, you likely feel like it's not worth trying to use Pinterest at all because you just don't have time to be constantly creating pins, especially these days with the push for fresh content. Luckily, Pinterest schedules aren't one size fits all. You can see results from Pinterest with a modest pinning strategy and from an intense and complicated content creation schedule. You might not see the same results, but you will see a return on your investment, usually. The key is that you're putting your effort into the right things at the right frequency, and this is where current best practices come into play. If you're feeling like you don't see a return on your investment, you likely need to adjust your pinning strategy. Let's talk about when you might want to decrease frequency and when you might want to increase your pinning frequency.

Stephanie 2:04

If you feel like you're falling out of love with Pinterest because you're pinning all the time and you're not seeing results, it might be time to cut back on your Pinterest efforts for a season. I would only recommend this in a few specific situations. The first would be if you have a newer website and you only have a handful of posts that you've been pinning. I would suggest cutting back on your pinning frequency for a season and instead focus your marketing efforts on creating more blog posts. You could still create pins here and there to keep your account from going stagnant, but it would probably be better to build a bank of fresh content that you could then start a pinning schedule that wouldn't get caught in a spam filter. Second, you might want to decrease frequency if you have a stockpile of existing posts, but you don't plan on adding any more content to your website in the near future. If that's the case for you, you really don't need 10 pins going out every day for older content. You could easily decrease your frequency to something that feels better for your schedule. You likely won't see a large amount of account growth during the season, but you'll be able to maintain your account without burning out on it, and also, you won't send any bad signals to Pinterest by only pinning older URLs over and over. And so you might decide that one or two pins a day is plenty for the content you have. Now these first two situations were, you know, you might want to consider doing this. The third one is, you will want to decrease your pinning frequency if you're adding the exact same pin to multiple boards, because this is just playing with fire, and you could end up in a spam filter. So just simplify your pinning schedule, and your life, by sending each of your new pins to just one board.

Stephanie 4:05

So now let's switch gears and talk about when you might want to increase your pinning frequency. Now, I know it seems counterintuitive to tell someone who is falling out of love with Pinterest to do more on Pinterest, but hear me out. Pinterest absolutely loves fresh content right now. Specifically, Pinterest loves fresh blog posts. So the more posts that you can write and share, the more results you'll see from Pinterest. So if you are in a season where your results have been a little bit lackluster, maybe you've already tried decreasing your pinning frequency, and you know you've noticed stability, but not necessarily growth, try writing extra blog posts and adding more pins to the mix, and see what happens for your account. If you're just starting out with a website and you have started pinning yet, I would recommend waiting until you have a really nice stockpile of posts, and then you will be able to pin with a more aggressive frequency as you share those shiny new posts, because this is a really exciting time to have a brand new website to share on Pinterest, because they just love fresh content. And then, if you've been plugging along with a couple of fresh pins for your weekly blog post, maybe you just want to try increasing the number of pins you create for each fresh piece of content. So back when I started my blogging package for my clients, I would do two fresh pins for a new piece of content, and then I would make additional pins for their older content. Well now, because of the way Pinterest is, I do four to five pins right then for their new post, and I cycle them through with a little bit of space in between, just in order to capitalize on the love that the algorithm has for fresh blog posts. And so you could try something similar in your workflow. Maybe you were only making three pins for each of your new pieces of content. And so then maybe you up that to five, whatever you can do, but you might experiment with that and see if you have better results from Pinterest by doing that, just make sure that for each of those pins, you are choosing different keywords or different features of the post to market with each pin, because you don't want the pins to look pretty much identical. You want them to focus on different ideas and keywords. I think you are likely going to see a nice increase in your Pinterest analytics, if you increase your pinning frequency in the right way. Seeing that bump in impressions and clicks can definitely help you fall in love with Pinterest again.

Stephanie 6:56

As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, there isn't a one size fits all approach to pinning. There are people who are creating and scheduling 20 fresh pins a day because they publish 5 to 10 blog posts every week. On the other hand, there are people who create one new pin a day because they write one new blog post each week. Both of these account owners will see results from Pinterest, there will just be varying degrees of success. But the important thing is for you to choose a frequency that feels good and that you can stick with, because you won't see any results from Pinterest if you burn out and quit.

Stephanie 7:36

If you're looking for the specifics of a really effective but simple blogging strategy. I teach my approach to pinning in the pragmatic pinning module of my bring your own traffic course. This method is designed for busy teacher business owners who don't have the time to be on Pinterest every day, but they also don't have the budget to hire out. There is a free introduction to pragmatic pinning. If you'd like to check it out, just head to stephanieroyer.podia.com and take a closer look at bring your own traffic. Once you're there, just scroll down to module four, and you'll see the free preview. The direct link to this introductory lesson is also in the show notes.

Stephanie 8:21

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.