Did you know that there’s a Pinterest off-season? Yep. It’s a thing. And today we’re going to cover how to maximizing your efforts during this “off-season.”
If you are totally new to the podcast, and brand new to Pinterest, you should check out our four-week START newsletter series that’s customized for you. It will help you create a solid foundation that you can build your Pinterest marketing on.
If you’ve already created that Pinterest foundation but you want to keep growing, we also have a newsletter series designed for you. This newsletter series will help you take your Pinterest marketing to the next level.
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For each niche, there seems to be a time when there is a slow season. And it’s typically during the summer. Not everyone has clearly defined “off-season”, but you can apply everything we talk about today to whatever type of slow season you might face in the days to come.
The “high season” on Pinterest is from early September to February 15th for most people.
We notoriously see traffic take a nosedive during the early summer months, and by default, we see people worrying about where their traffic went. Instead of wasting this downtime fretting, put it to good use by completing a series of vital “housekeeping tasks”.
Maximizing Your Efforts During the Pinterest Off-Season
Create New Images
The first thing you can do if you notice that your traffic is falling is to create new images for your top 10-15 posts or products.
You can find your top 10-15 posts in your Google Analytics. We have a podcast episode that talks all about how to make Pinterest work for you. Listen in and you’ll get a lot more tips on using analytics.
Create an image that looks slightly different from your original pin. You want to have these images prepared for when you plan to start pinning them to your boards.
Optimize and Monetize Top Posts
Make sure your top posts are totally optimized and monetized.
Listen in on last week’s episode about Pinterest affiliate marketing to help you get started. Look for any place where you can add affiliate links, as long as they suit your audience.
Think through what tool you can create and give it to your readers in order to be really helpful. You can create an opt-in incentive to add to these posts (it doesn’t have to be huge or complicated). Get your reader on an email list so that you can share new guides that you’ve created with them.
Lead Your Reader to The End Goal
Explore various ways to funnel your people towards your end goal. One of the things I like to do on my “legacy pins” (thanks Monica Froese for this phrase!) is to remind my reader of the services that we provide.
On my “how to clean up Pinterest boards” post, I also want to let my reader know that I have a checklist for them. My end goal is to get them on my email list because then I can communicate with them and nurture my relationship with them.
Clean Up Your Pinterest Boards & Profile
The next thing you can do during your slow season is to clean up your Pinterest boards. Go through your profile – check out your branding and make sure all your boards are properly named.
You can look at your group boards in Tailwind under “board insights” and see if the board is still good and performing well.
Look At Your Site Like a User
The Pinterest off-season is a great to look at your site through the eyes of a pinner.
Use your Share buttons and click on your pop-ups (MiloTree is the pop-up I like to use to build awareness and grow my followers).
A lot of people don’t realize how annoying pop-ups can be on mobile if there isn’t a clear way to get rid of them. It’s a huge barrier to the user reading your content.
Have a few friends look at your website and provide feedback about it. I had a friend give me feedback on my email just recently and it was super helpful. She brought up things that I had never even thought about.
Make sure that you are keeping people on your site and that they aren’t bouncing away quickly.
Examine Yearly Analytics Data
It’s vital that you do a deep dive into your Pinterest analytics on an annual basis. It’s important that you know when the high times and low times are in your business. The Pinterest off-season is the perfect time to check this task off of your list.
This allows you to know when you have time to prepare for the busy season. When you have that downtime, you can really optimize and update your site.
We can always be chasing the “dangling carrot” of traffic, but you want to be more focused on increasing your revenue.
Nail Down Your KPIs
When you’re looking at your yearly analytics and trying to increase your monetary conversions, you need to figure out your Key Performance Indicators.
Everyone’s KPIs are different. For some of you, it may be ads or affiliate marketing, while for some of you it may be emails or clients.
You need to know these KPIs in order to truly grow your business. If we don’t know what our KPIs are, we are just playing a guessing game in our marketing.
Take a Break
The last thing I would love for you to do in your business during the “off-season” is to take a break.
Sometimes we can work so hard on content creation and building our business that we never take time to rest and relax.
As the person who is running SPM, I have to have the time where I can step back, read books, and really take time to think about how I can invest in my team.
Here’s a small list of some of my favorite business reads that you could read during your Pinterest off-season:
Traction: Get a Grip On Your Business
Clockwork: Design Your Business to Run Itself
Never Lose a Customer Again: Turn Any Sale Into Lifelong Loyalty in 100 Days
The Legacy Journey: A Radical View of Biblical Wealth and Generosity
You can make the time and space to be creative happen in many different ways.
For me, it sometimes looks like getting a local hotel room and using a weekend to focus on planning specific things for SPM, or I find a different place to spend a Friday working. Sometimes I even just go get a massage or spend a day decompressing.
I would love for you to leave a comment telling me what your goals are as you are preparing for your high season. Share ways that you reset and get ready for when you need to spring back into your business.
Time Stamp:
Intro
4:08 – Simple Pin Newsletters
5:48 – Create New Images
8:35 – Get Your Top Posts Optimized and Monetized
11:09 – Get Your Reader to The End Goal
13:30 – Clean Up Your Pinterest Boards
14:32 – Look At Your Site Like a User
18:27 – Find Out Your Yearly Analytics
19:50 – What Are Your KPIs?
20:42 – Take a Break
Great podcast!
There’s so much I need to learn as a blogger, but as a person that regularly pins, visits websites, and reads blog posts, I’m seeing more and more with an overwhelming number of ads and/or pop-ups that I can’t get off my phone even when clicking the “X” repeatedly.
I totally get that the owner wants to make money and/or get subs, but more and more it just ends up being too difficult and distracting to follow the flow of the post to read and often annoying.
Yes, it’s a tricky line to walk for a content creator…balancing the need to monetize their site without ruining the user experience.
Loved catching up on your Podcasts as this month was also my off month traveling while working minimally on the go. I plan to map out my strategy and create new images while monetizing all my previous first posts from earlier this year. I find that it is getting more important to schedule out future posts while planning for consistent social media posting and a new podcast launch for the beginning of the busy season. Listening to your podcast and implementing your advice has been wonderful! Thank you for all you do!
Brilliant Stacy. You are ON IT! Thanks for being a loyal podcast listener 🙂