October Pinterest Trends: What to Pin in October

In addition to managing Pinterest accounts for over 90 clients, I try to teach simple, actionable steps for those who don’t want to turn their Pinterest account over to someone else but need tips on how to do it themselves. One of the most important things to remember about Pinterest is that is is both seasonal and search-friendly.

There are certain times of the year that people are more likely to search for specific things than they do at other times of the year. One way I am trying to help you DIY your Pinterest pages is by giving you monthly suggestions on keywords and terms for that particular month. Why is this important to know? 2 reasons actually:

• To help you create appropriate content for your website
• To help you curate the content your audience wants to see

So today, we’re going to be talking about October Pinterest trends and what you should be pinning in October time to help your business grow this month.

October Pinterest Trends: Top Keyword Searches

If you have a typical blog, you already likely approach the seasons with an eye toward what people are looking for. So you probably have your fall recipes on tap, some fall decorating, maybe some Halloween ideas, and a pumpkin craft or two. But if you are a B2B (business to business), don’t tune me out! I’ll talk to you specifically near the end.

Related: Seasonality on Pinterest

Halloween

When October rolls around, the term “fall” is huge, and with fall comes Halloween. Halloween is quickly becoming bigger than Christmas on Pinterest. Need a costume idea? You can find thousands of ideas for costumes on Pinterest, (I buy my kids’ costumes at Costco, but if you’re crafty, you can find some amazing ideas on Pinterest!), along with ideas for snacks and the most popular treats to hand out at the door.

Food

What comes to your mind when you think of fall food? It’s probably the same things as some of the most popular search terms: apples, canning, pumpkin pie, caramel, candy corn, etc. Now is the time to get creative in the kitchen and whip up some yummy fall recipes. If you aren’t much of a cook, be sure to curate the best of the fall recipes for your boards. If you aren’t into creating recipes from scratch, perhaps you can take a tried-and-true recipe and put a twist on it.

Related: Pinterest Marketing for Food Bloggers

Football

Even if you aren’t a huge sports fan, you can’t neglect the wide open opportunities to reach the football crowd. Back to those recipes…people are clamoring right now for easy recipes to create for tailgating. They want snack ideas to make for when they have folks over to watch the big game. The great thing about the football content is that it carries on all the way through the fall and into the new year, up to the Super Bowl.

Activities for Kids

Fall is full of  ideas for kids to do while the weather is cool enough to be outside for extended periods of time. Who doesn’t remember gathering leaves to shade with a crayon? Or pressing them between two sheets of waxed paper? Is it time for your kids to be deciding on a science project for school? These are all popular search terms on Pinterest right now.

Fashion

Fashion is always a hot topic on Pinterest and fall fashion is no different. Boots, cardigans, sweaters, long sleeves, and scarves are the rage during this season. Don’t forget to curate plenty of content on fall hairstyles and nails. This is a hugely popular topic on Pinterest. If you are a beauty or lifestyle blogger, take full advantage of the season to get some stellar content out there.

Related: How to Use Pinterest as a Fashion Blogger

Oktoberfest

If it lines up with your audience, be sure to take advantage of posting recipes and festival ideas that center around Oktoberfest. I admittedly know almost nothing about it, but if it’s in your niche, go all out on creating and curating the type of content that your audience will appreciate.

Thanksgiving

Wait, you say, Thanksgiving isn’t in October. Yes, I know. But you need to be pinning Thanksgiving content now. If you have content from last year on recipes, crafts, or decor, go ahead and start pinning those once or twice a week so they get picked up in search. You may experience some huge traffic spikes the very week of Thanksgiving but only if you have the pins already circulating.

Christmas

If you questioned me on pinning Thanksgiving already, I know you think I’m reaching now. But truly, not everyone is a procrastinator. There are people who actually plan ahead for Christmas. These people are already thinking about gifts. So if you’ve ever thought about creating a gift guide for your readers, now is the time to be working on that and getting it pinned.

Home Decor and Organization

What are people doing in their homes in the fall? Many people like to do some decorating, whether that’s the mantel, the front door, the porch, or some special places inside. Some folks also start trying to get more organized before the holidays get here. Now that the kids are back at school, there is a push for better household routines, so meal planning is huge in the fall.

Another great way to get your finger on the pulse of what’s trending on Pinterest during a specific timepoint is to explore keywords using the Pinterest Trends Tool.

Using Promoted Pins

If you have never experimented with promoted pins, the first thing I want you to do is to go over to my website and get my Promoted Pin Guide. It is absolutely free and will give you everything you need to know to get started using promoted pins.

When you’re ready to begin, I suggest you start with your most popular content based on Halloween or other fall topics that did really well for you last year. It’s very important that you go back to that post and look it over carefully. Make sure it is updated for today and that all the links are still functioning correctly.

Next, go into your Pinterest account and find the pin from that post that was the most popular. Once you have that figured out, open your ads manager and create a traffic campaign with keywords. Follow the steps in the guide to set up a campaign. At the end of the campaign, assess your results.

What Happened Last Year?

Traffic tends to spike during the holiday season every year. But before you get anxious about what’s happening with your account, it’s important to look back at your stats and see what was happening for you this time last year. Ask yourself, are you growing over last year? Have you grown over the past quarter? Don’t get disappointed before you complete this research.

The best way to do this is to go to your Google Analytics and look under Acquisition, go to Social, then to Network Referrals, then to Pinterest. What were the Top 5 most popular pins sending traffic to your blog? And how are those pins doing today as compared to last year this time?

What if you weren’t even using Pinterest as a business last year? Then you will likely be seeing an increase in your traffic every month compared to when you weren’t using Pinterest! And even if you have nothing to compare it to, just keep pinning. Continue to pin and engage. There are no magic tricks to Pinterest; it’s just a matter of keeping on.

For the B2B

I told you I would come back and talk about the B2B folks because we simply don’t have a lot of seasonal content like a lifestyle or food blogger might have. I still look back at my analytics though and I find that it is relatively the same. However, my sessions have gone up by 2,000 overall and my overall traffic has gone up significantly.

I have one pin that has grown by 26,000 and it’s a pin that I didn’t think would do well. It replaced my #1 pin from last year which was How to Clean Up Your Pinterest Boards. That pin has now been surpassed by Converting a Personal Pinterest Account to a Business Pinterest Account.

The crucial thing to know here is that when I went back to that post after seeing how it had exploded, I saw that I had no links in it, so no way to monetize it. My action item is to go into that post and update it. I have podcast episodes I can link to and other ways to try to engage with that audience.

The people who I see having the most growth are not the people who check their analytics every day; they are the people who know where they are headed with their blog and what they want to do with it. As a result, people end up following them and the traffic comes over time.

I hope all of this has been helpful for you. Take some action this week! Find out what your top five pins are and go update those posts. And be sure to comment below telling me your successes and asking your questions. I love to hear your ideas and your creativity because it gives me new ideas!

Time Stamp-

0:45 Seasonal Keywords and Search-Friendly Terms
1:35 Using Pinterest Like a Pinterest User
4:05 Top Searches for October
12:10 Using Promoted Pins
14:25 What Happened Last Year?
19:20 For the B2B

Links and Mentions-

Kristie Hill-

• KristieHill.com
• Growing a Pinterest Account in One Year

Stephanie O’Dea-

• A Year of Slow Cooking
• Ethics and Online Business

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