Pinterest Marketing Plan
Today we are talking about creating a workflow for your daily, weekly, and monthly Pinning habits. Here to talk with me today is Alisa Meredith. Alisa joined me in episodes 14 and 33, so be sure to go back and listen to those to hear more about her and her Pinterest story.
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Alisa recently wrote a post on the topic of a workflow for Pinning, and when it was shared in the Simple Pin Facebook group, it just exploded! This post answered one of the most common questions I get in consults with new clients – “Can you just give me some kind of workflow so I know exactly what I need to do?”
The truth is that there is no magic formula for Pinning. Pinterest is such a personal platform; what and how much you Pin per day or week is completely dependent on your own business, what you are already doing, and where you want your business to go.
While a formula won’t work for long, when Alisa begins working with a new Pinterest client, she does often begin with a formula. It is as much a way for her to assess the account as it is for the new client to have a way to find their bearings on Pinterest.
What to do on Pinterest daily
The first thing to do is to try to do some live Pinning every day. Look through your home feed, vet the links, and repin. Check your favorite blogs, and Pin from those. Alisa even has certain people that she wants to give support to, so she will check to see what kind of content they have out, and Pin that.
You want to be sure you are sharing quality Pins, but your next concern is quantity. How many Pins should you be sharing per day? If you are a frequent listener of this podcast, then you know that here at Simple Pin we recommend no more than 50 Pins per day. Better still would be to keep it in the 20-30 range.
Alisa schedules 10-20 Pins per day through Tailwind, and then shares live whatever great content she finds.
Now, what if you don’t have a lot of your own content to Pin? That’s fine! Simple Pin doesn’t have a ton of content yet, nor does Alisa. So we both share a lot of other people’s content. Be a curator of great content and you will watch your audience grow. Give people what they are looking for and what they are interested in.
Be a curator of great content and watch your audience grow.
Daily live Pinning is important for you the content creator because it helps you to keep up to date on the actual Pinterest experience for your users. You need to be in there, seeing what’s being Pinned, what’s being shared, so you can keep up with what your audience wants to see.
And lastly, watch your time. Pinterest can be quite a rabbit hole and time suck if you aren’t careful. Set a timer so that when you go in to do your live Pinning, you don’t look up two hours later, having Pinned nothing.
What to do daily:
- Pin every day.
- Focus on quality content, not numbers.
- Check your mobile feed.
- Set a timer.
What to do Weekly
The first and most important thing you need to be doing at least once a week is creating new content. Write a blog post, create a recipe, make fabulous images for your new content, polish, and update older posts. (If you have older posts that tend to get a lot of Google traffic but not much Pinterest traffic, see what you can do to change that. Does the post need some new Pinterest friendly images?) Then Pin the new content and rePin the updated ones.
Check your followers. See who your new followers are and if there are some you want to follow for even more great content to share. If one of your new followers is someone who is Pinning some really quality content, then go a step further and check out some of the other people they follow and even some of the people who follow them.
This is a fantastic way to find new people, and new people means more content. This is something that you can easily do from your phone in just a few minutes; no scheduled work time has to be devoted to this.
Look at your analytics. See what’s doing well for you, and what’s not. If you have a Pin that’s doing really well, then maybe you should Promote it, or create more Pins for it with different images. This is a great way to catch issues with your account.
Why not check your analytics daily? Listen in to find out why neither Kate nor Alisa recommends checking your analytics daily, and what analytics Kate looks at each month.
What to do weekly:
- Create new content.
- Check your new followers; find new people to follow
- Do a quick analytics check
What to do Monthly
At the beginning of each month, go back to your blog and repin all of your evergreen content. Evergreen content is the content that still applies, and never goes out of date; or content that can easily be updated. Update and repin through your scheduler to every board it fits.
Do a deep dive into analytics once a month. Pinterest analytics is a great tool for building your editorial calendar. This is the time to really see what the last month held – which posts were repinned the most, etc. What a great way to get ideas for developing new content! If you struggle to come up with ideas for your editorial calendar, just look at what’s being pinned over and over.
It is important to keep your boards up to date as well. Go in and see which boards are thriving, and if a board seems dead, move the relevant Pins to other boards and move the dead board to “secret.” Don’t delete Pins, and never delete boards. Move the Pins around and make a board secret if you need to.
Download the FREE cleaning Pinterest boards checklist.
Check to see which Pins are hot for the month. Check the Tailwind blog, other Pinterest marketing blogs, or better yet, download my FREE Pinterest planner. In the planner, we tell you exactly which Pins are hot for each month. This is another way to get content creation ideas.
Also, look at the popular Pins on Pinterest. Is there a type of photo that’s doing really well? Is there a topic that you are seeing get a lot of attention? Maybe you can try some of those things this month.
And finally, once a month, evaluate your group boards. If some of them have dropped off in activity, then feel free to leave those, and try to find better ones to replace them. Alisa uses Pin Groupie to look for new groups. There is also a Facebook group, where you can find new ones.
What to do Monthly
- Repin evergreen content
- Deep dive into Google and Pinterest analytics
- Update your boards
- See which Pins are “hot” for the month
- Evaluate group boards
Feeling overwhelmed by all that we’ve shared today? Don’t be!
Start small…there is no perfect plan for moving forward on Pinterest. Just take that first step, keep moving forward, even if it’s slow. Pinterest is a slow burn anyway, so there is no reason to feel pressured.
Use Pinterest to support your blog/business. Let the things you see there inform your future decisions and fill your editorial calendar. You never have to guess what’s going to work; Pinterest will tell you.
Connect with Alisa
Time stamp:
Intro
4:40 What to do daily
11:00 What to do weekly
20:00 What to do monthly
32:00 Final tips
Questions? Comments? Tips? Join the fun below.
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Hey Kate,
When it comes to using social media to drive traffic to your website, Pinterest is one of the best networks out there. As an image centric social network, Pinterest is an excellent social network for event professionals.
Pinterest’s popularity is primarily based on its neat structure. Even the large boards with hundreds of posts should be naturally pleasing to the eye and easily understood. Eventually, thanks for sharing your healthy thought with us.
With best regards,
Amar kumar
I pin wayyyyy more that 50 times per day. Should I back off?
I would, yes. Try reducing to 50 first and then go from there.
And why is that? I used to pin 20-30 and got close to no traffic. Ever since pinning closer to 50 of my own and another 50 of others traffic has increased but is still not as awesome as some of my fellow pinners that pin upward of 200 a day. I can’t pin that much it’s crazy. I wish I could pin less but am scared traffic will disappear completely??
What we’ve found in working with some clients is that when they are pinning 100 pins or so it’s less targeted and therefore just throwing up pins. For those that decrease and go to 20-30 per day, their stats have actually increased after that decrease. However, if you saw a big increase than keep doing what you’re doing.
I really love how you put your Pinterest posts together with not just content, but image and audio. And the audio is embeddable. I’ll be happy to share your content soon on DNN as I just discussed information technology jobs for inner city youth. Keep doing what you do with Pinterest marketing tips and Pinterest blogging. You’re right on the $ gUaP $! 🙂
Hi Kate,
One quick question. When you rein your evergreen content, what kind of interval do you use? I have been using 24 hours between pinning the same pin to different boards, but what I am seeing is only the first pin seems to do well. I am testing 48 hours between pins but I wanted to get your advice.
Thanks in advance,
Lindsey