49. How to Safely Ramp Up Your Back-to-School Pinning

[00:00:00] Stephanie: You are ready to go all in on your back to school pinning strategy, but how much pinning is too much? Let's chat about how you can safely increase your pinning so you can get the most out of back to school season without triggering spam filters and tanking your account. Welcome back to the podcast.

[00:00:19] All month long we've been talking about how to get your back to school Pinterest strategy ready to go. First, we started with finding last year's best content. Then prepping it so it's fresh and ready to pin. Last week we talked about when you should start pinning. But once you start, how do you safely increase your pinning for this seasonal content without hurting your account?

[00:00:43] That's exactly what we're going to chat about today. I'll walk you through why ramping up too fast can actually backfire. Then we'll talk about how to scale your pinning the right way. And then I'll give you a few things to watch for in your analytics so you can make sure that you're staying on track.

[00:01:02] First, let's talk about why you can't just blast all of your back to school pins over the course of a few days, six to eight weeks before the spike in traffic. We know that Pinterest values consistency. There isn't a set number of pins that Pinterest expects from you. Whatever you choose, pinterest just loves it when you're consistent, so whether that's two pins a week or five pins a day, or 25 a day, it's important that you keep the number of pins relatively consistent because sudden spikes in your pinning activity can flag your account.

[00:01:41] Remember that Pinterest is actively adjusting their algorithm in an attempt to target pinners who are flooding the platform with AI generated content, in order to target things with an algorithm to create the filtering and whatever, they have to provide signals of what the algorithm needs to watch out for.

[00:02:05] And so a high quantity of pins like just an insane number of pins or a sudden increase in the number of pins you create each day, both of those scenarios could send spammy signals to Pinterest, but you're sitting on this pile of fresh pins that you want to get indexed before back to school season hits.

[00:02:28] And like we talked about in the last episode, there is an optimal window to get this started. So how do you get all of these pins scheduled in time without triggering a spam filter? Well, really, there's nothing wrong with increasing the number of pins you add to Pinterest each day. It's just important that you do this gradually instead of all at once.

[00:02:51] So just as an example, let's say you want to pin 10 pins a day in preparation for back to school season, but as of right now, you're only pinning one or two pins a week. In this case, I would suggest that you start pinning daily with one or two pins a day, and then after you've done that for a few days, maybe even a week, you'll start adding one pin each day until you're up to your target number of 10.

[00:03:22] But as you're doing this, I highly suggest that that increased pin quantity, it should come from a mix of brand new URLs and then also some old content mixed in. You don't want Pinterest to see that you're increasing your frequency just by pinning a bunch of URLs that Pinterest has seen before. You want to send a message that I have new blog content, and so I am pinning more because I'm creating more.

[00:03:58] It's also important that you make sure your pinning activity doesn't repeat URLs too often. Another thing you can do to increase your pinning more safely is to create some fresh boards. That way you won't be repeating URLs too often on one particular board. And then the final thing to consider is that you should schedule your pins to go live throughout the day

[00:04:25] instead of having them hit your account all at once.

Like any good teacher, you know how important it is to monitor and adjust what you're doing based on performance. Pinterest will give you clues that you're starting to do too much. So one thing you can watch out for is any sudden drops in impressions or engagement.

[00:04:47] So we know that in general, stats slowly increase as the summer goes on. If your stats are trending that way and then suddenly drop off a cliff, that's a sign that you might need to back off on pinning for a bit and let your account just breathe before you continue. The other thing to keep in mind, especially if your pins are heavily branded, is that you shouldn't keep re-pinning content that flops on Pinterest.

[00:05:18] If you are pinning a blog post that just doesn't seem to take off, you should probably give it a rest instead of continuing to pin an ineffective URL because this sends signals to Pinterest that your content isn't high quality and it will start getting pushed out less frequently. And then you could also try to branch out from your branding to see if that will make it more clickable.

[00:05:44] And then the other thing you can adjust if pins just, you know, they might not be taking off the way you expected, is to try to focus on different talking points from the post. I've talked about this in previous episodes, but it really is a great way to make your pins stand out as fresh instead of just more of the same.

[00:06:06] So, just as an example, you might have a post about back to school centers for first grade. And part of that post, you have a section where you talk about some of your favorite manipulatives to use with those back to school task cards. And so you might decide to create a pin that says the best back to school manipulatives for centers, or something like that

[00:06:35] and then you could have a subtitle that says, plus printable task cards. So basically you're focusing on a different section of your post instead of the big picture. And what that does is that just, it shakes things up. So even though you're sharing the same URL, those pins just stand out as different.

[00:06:59] And so that's just one other thing. When you're kind of analyzing your results, you're monitoring and adjusting, that is definitely one thing you can adjust is that you're using more keyword variations and more talking points from your post, and that will also go a long way in keeping you from being flagged as spammy with Pinterest.

[00:07:23] Ultimately, I feel like it's not too hard to stay out of trouble with Pinterest. I mean, their spam filters are pretty hefty right now but when you're genuinely trying to create fresh content to cast a wider net on Pinterest, I think you'll be okay. There are a lot of people out there that are trying to take shortcuts and find the next hack to trick Pinterest into thinking their stuff is fresh.

[00:07:51] I don't know. I feel like that's playing with fire. As long as you're creating fresh content, I think you'll be okay. Just don't dump it all onto Pinterest in like within a day or two, and you'll be just fine. I hope that you've found this discussion helpful as you finalize your back to school strategy for Pinterest.

[00:08:10] I know that the effort you put into this strategy is going to be well worth it, that you are going to see increased traffic for your business. If you're still feeling like you could use some support with the ins and outs of Pinterest, don't go searching for a course until you listen to next week's episode.

[00:08:29] We're going to be diving into whether or not Pinterest courses are worth the money. Be sure to follow the podcast so you'll be the first to know when it's live.