48. When to Pin Back-to-School Content

[00:00:00] Stephanie: You know that timing is important on Pinterest, but when is the right time to start pinning back to school content? Pin too early, and people might not be interested. Pin too late, and you'll miss the wave. So let's chat about how you can know exactly when to start pinning your back to school content for maximum reach and engagement.

[00:00:33] Welcome back to the podcast. We're continuing our discussion about how to prepare your Pinterest strategy for back to school season. In episode 46, we talked about how to identify your top performing content from last year, and then in episode 47, we talked about what to do with that information. Now it's time to get that content added to Pinterest with some fresh pins. But when is the right time to start pinning?

[00:01:04] Anytime I hear the phrase, you know, just right, I can't help but think of the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. She sat in chairs that were too big, too small, and just right. But when you think about it, that just right chair was best for her. The big chair was just right for Papa Bear and the tiny chair was just right for Baby Bear.

[00:01:30] So when we talk about the just right time to pin your back to school content, there are some best practices to think about, but there are also some factors that will be specific to you and your audience. To get started, I thought it would be helpful to think about the different groups of people that will be using Pinterest for their back to school planning.

[00:01:52] And so first up, we have the early planners and I would say people decide to plan early for different reasons. So there are some people who just had a really, really rough school year, and they had some big issues, and they wanna make sure they find some solutions while those issues are at the top of their mind. And other early planners, they might decide to start cruising Pinterest a little bit early

[00:02:24] because they want to think about school as little as possible over the summer, so they wanna make sure they have all of their plans in place. Early planners might also just want to be able to take advantage of the quiet copy room when everyone else is trying to clean out their classrooms and leave for the summer.

[00:02:44] So these early planners are typically looking for things on Pinterest in late May and early June. Then the second wave of Pinterest users will be those who start thinking about school at some point during the summer. So I mentioned in a previous episode that I enjoyed doing a little bit of searching on Pinterest during the summer,

[00:03:06] you know, as I went on road trips or I had some time to kill. It felt more like a pastime than, you know, work time impeding on my summer. I enjoyed scrolling through Pinterest and looking for things. Now I always swore off any thoughts of school during the month of June. I was exhausted and I needed to recharge. But after the 4th of July is usually when I would just kind of naturally start to open Pinterest here and there.

[00:03:37] But really those summer planners, it could be at any point in the summer, but those are people that trickle into Pinterest as their mind kind of starts to go back to the classroom. Then you get the final wave of back to school pinning activity, and this is the big wave. This is around August and even into September

[00:04:00] as teachers physically get back into their classrooms. Their teaching assignments and their class lists have been solidified, and they are ready to hit the ground running and to find the resources they need to have a really smooth school year. With that pinning behavior in mind, let's chat about how you can get your pins scheduled in enough time for them to get discovered by these Pinterest users.

[00:04:26] So I am in several mastermind groups and most people feel like six to eight weeks is the best amount of lead time to get your pin indexed before the season begins. And so one of the reasons for this is that you still want it to be close enough to the season that there is someone who is planning early because you want it to be close enough that people are interested in interacting with and saving that pin, because that is what gives Pinterest really important context about that new pin.

[00:05:05] If you pin earlier than six to eight weeks, people likely aren't interested in that yet and they'll scroll right past it. And honestly, that can be a death sentence for your new content. But then the other thing that I have noticed in my work on Pinterest and I don't feel like it's being spoken about very much, is that real time pinning does work.

[00:05:30] So if you pin something in the current season, so if you pin a back to school pin in August, it will likely get some traction. Now, it probably won't get the same amount of traction had you pinned it earlier because you did miss a couple of the other waves of pinning activity, but it's not too late if that six to eight week window has passed.

[00:05:55] Now that's just a very general guideline. It's time to actually dive into making that data-driven plan based on your own business and your audience. Ultimately the best time to pin can be determined by looking at your own data and by using tools that Pinterest provides. So first, look through your top posts and pins and notice when you're looking at the graph, when the traffic spikes happen.

[00:06:26] So where is the traffic at its peak during back to school season? And then walk back just a little bit on the graph and take note of when the traffic starts that upward trend. So those are gonna be your early planners and your, you know, people that are starting to think about their classrooms before that big burst right at the beginning of the school year.

[00:06:52] If you hover over that point on the graph, it will give you the exact date of when that happened, and so you can then plan six to eight weeks before that peak, and that's when you wanna start pinning at least some of your fresh pins for that post. Another great place to look for a little bit more insight into the timing of things based on your keyword is the Pinterest trends tool.

[00:07:20] Now, this tool isn't available for every keyword possible, but you can definitely use it to identify upturns and spikes during back to school season. And this information can be really valuable in making a plan for when you wanna start pinning your back to school content. So with all of that said, this episode is being released on May 17th.

[00:07:43] Without even knowing your content, I would highly suggest that within the next week or so, you pin at least one pin for each of your top pieces of back to school content. And then sprinkle the remaining pins throughout the summer based on when you noticed those peaks in user interest and activity. I hope that this episode has given you some food for thought about when to start pinning your back to school content.

[00:08:11] The more pins you create and schedule this year, the more data you'll have for next year. And I am cheering you on as you set up your summer pinning strategy. But anytime we make changes to our strategy we need to be careful. The Pinterest spam filters are wild these days, so it's important that your back to school pinning strategy doesn't get you in hot water with Pinterest.

[00:08:37] And that's what we're gonna chat about next week. You'll wanna be sure you're following the Pay Less for Traffic podcast so you don't miss next week's discussion.