#173: What's Working on Pinterest in 2021?

What’s working on Pinterest in 2021? Isn’t that the question we are all asking ourselves?

I’ve got Alisa Meredith from Tailwind back on the show (her fifth appearance), to share what their internal data crunchers have discovered, based on their Tailwind user base.

Given how Pinterest is constantly changing, Alisa’s insights are extremely helpful as we all fine tune our own Pinterest strategies.

Today we discuss:

What type of content Pinterest creators are adding to the platform
Whether Pinterest followers really matter (yes, they do!)
How you should be thinking about story pins today
How you should be divvying up your time creating content for Pinterest
And whether repinning is still a thing!

If you want the most up-to-date info on Pinterest this is your episode!

What's Working on Pinterest in 2021? | MiloTree.com

Table of Contents

Show Notes:

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Intro 0:04
Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie.

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Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the Blogger Genius Podcast. I’m your host, Jillian Leslie, I’m founder with my husband of Catch My Party and the MiloTree pop-up app. I’m a business coach, and a business translator.

Jillian Leslie 0:28
I take what’s working in blogging and online business, break it down, share it, so you can use these tips yourself, grow your business and make more money. Before I get started, I want to ask if you would do me a solid.

By the way, I’ve always wanted to say that. So, thank you. If you are enjoying the podcast and getting real value out of it, would you head to iTunes and give the podcast five stars and write a very quick review.

This way more people will find it. It will continue to grow. And I can continue to bring you awesome guests. Like today, I’ve got my dear friend, Alisa Meredith back on the show.

For those of you who don’t know her, she is one of the marketing brains at Tailwind. She is a Pinterest expert. And I love when she comes on the show to share what is happening on Pinterest, now. As we all know, Pinterest is constantly changing.

So, you’re going to really want to listen to this episode. Without further delay. Here is my interview with Alisa Meredith. Alisa, welcome back to the show.

Alisa Meredith 1:51
Jillian, I’m so happy to be here.

Jillian Leslie 1:53
I was just sharing you are my most popular guest in that this is your fifth appearance on the show.

Alisa Meredith 2:03
That’s crazy. And I’ve loved every minute of every one of those Jillian.

Jillian Leslie 2:07
And what I love is we get to connect every time because we are also good friends. So, it’s always nice to be able to chat with you and then pick your brain and hear all of the new information like it’s just a win win.

Alisa Meredith 2:20
Well, next time I think we need to book for two hours, because let’s be honest, we need it.

What is Working on Pinterest Now?

Jillian Leslie 2:25
We need it. What I’m excited about having you back on the show is you always give me the most cutting-edge information on Pinterest. And so, if I were to say to you what is working now on Pinterest, what would your answer be?

Alisa Meredith 2:47
I don’t know how you’re going to feel about this answer. But I guess when you ask what is working well, just initial thought, it’s Story Pins.

Jillian Leslie 2:58
Interesting. Interesting. Okay, if you were to explain more about, Story Pins.

Alisa Meredith 3:03
If I were.

Jillian Leslie 3:05
Yeah. If you were.

Alisa Meredith 3:07
So, what we did at Tailwind recently, we have a data guy, which is like, it’s the best present you could ever give a marketer. He’s a data person. So, we’ve been putting him to work.

And one of the things that he looked at, for us were 20 million pins that were saved in February and March of this year to see what are Tailwind members pinning? Especially what are people who are paying for Tailwind pinning?

So, we know that these are marketers who are investing in their marketing. So, what their activity looked like and how’s it working out for them?

What Type of Content Are Creators Making on Pinterest?

Well, 95% of what they’re sharing is static images. 4% of what they’re sharing are video pins, and a little teeny 1% would be story pins. We looked at engagement on those. And when we talked about engagement in these studies, we’re just looking at saves.

So, when somebody repins your pin, okay, we found that video pins got eight times more repins than static image pins and story pins got 41 times more saves with static image pins.

Jillian Leslie 4:20
What that say to you that people are now coming to Pinterest for video or that Pinterest is showing video and story more, like how do you read that?

Alisa Meredith 4:30
Yeah. So, I think both are going on there. So, you asked, “Is it people are coming to Pinterest for video more?” That is definitely one of the things that’s going on.

So, searches on Pinterest that include the word video have increased by I think it’s 28% year over year. So, people are actually typing in “hair tip videos.” Like looking for video content specifically. The thing with story pins.

We were talking about this earlier. And Pinterest is all in on story pins, because their direction for 2021 is to not just connect people with ideas, but connect people with creators of those ideas.

So, to get some kind of interaction happening on the platform, and to showcase idea creators. So, their way to do that is with story pins.

And the idea of a story pin is that all of the information needed to take this action should be happening in the story pin, which means there is no link from the story pin off a platform.

Jillian Leslie 5:37
As we’ve talked about in the past, you watch a story. Or you get to the end of the story, and you end up and usually the call-to-action then for the creator is what?

Pinterest Followers Matter!

Alisa Meredith 5:50
Usually, it’s “Follow me” on Pinterest.

Jillian Leslie 5:52
Got it. So, Pinterest is leaning in then to followers, growing followers?

Alisa Meredith 5:59
Yes, they are. And I was telling you earlier, I did this little tiny baby survey, or study rather, I got story pins on my own account. So, I uploaded one and I followed all the rules.

The first one is a panel and it has several panels, it’s not an ingredient list, a material list. So, it has everything that they want you to have in there. So, someone could potentially follow through it was making a painting. And so, I just posted it.

And I looked at my follower count in the 10 days before and leading up until that day, I posted it and then the 10 days afterwards, and my follower growth had quadrupled.

Jillian Leslie 6:43
Wow. Wow. Okay. So, what that means is, you put up the story, Pinterest showed it to a bunch of people. And those people took the action of following it.

Alisa Meredith 6:57
They did.

Jillian Leslie 6:59
Then let’s continue to connect the connectors.

Alisa Meredith 7:02
And so what. Right?

Jillian Leslie 7:03
Exactly, so you’ve got more followers, which means what?

The More Pinterest Followers, the More Your Pins Get Shown

Alisa Meredith 7:08
Well, I have more followers who are interested in Acrylic Pour Painting now. So, next time I post something, maybe a video of my painting and other story or just an image, maybe that leads back to my Instagram, they’re going to be more likely to see that content.

And because they’ve already expressed an interest in it, they’re probably going to engage with that content as well. Which is going to help that continue to spread across Pinterest. And I don’t have a website for my painting.

So, I would just be leading them back to Instagram because that’s usually where if anyone wants to buy something, they’ll DM me. So, I would just lead them back to Instagram.

But in effect you’re getting, like downstream impact on your traffic. Because you’re getting those more engaged followers to your account.

Jillian Leslie 7:55
Got it.

Pinterest Is the Long Game

Alisa Meredith 7:55
It’s like Pinterest is that long game anyway like Google. Like you make an investment now and it’s going to pay off for a long time. But it might take a little while to start.

Story pins are the same way like okay, maybe it’s not super satisfying that you’re not getting immediate clicks to your website because of the story pin. But it’s going to build down the line.

Jillian Leslie 8:21
We’ve always said this about MiloTree, which is your Pinterest pop-up grows your Pinterest followers, but these are your most engaged followers because they’re the ones who’ve been on your blog, your website seeing your content.

Chances are they actually came from Pinterest to your blog. It says “Follow me” on Pinterest and so we’ve always been saying the more followers.

First of all, if you get these followers from say your story pin or from MiloTree, these are those engaged followers that will kind of get that flywheel going.

Alisa Meredith 8:56
Absolutely.

Jillian Leslie 8:57
So, there isn’t a disconnect?

Alisa Meredith 8:59
Nope. No. And I know it can be a hard sell when you don’t get that immediate return. But that’s marketing. Sometimes it takes a little while.

Jillian Leslie 9:09
You’re right. Pinterest is a long game. You’re playing the long game with Pinterest. Okay. First of all, I just want to back up for a second. You said you follow the rules in terms of making this story. What would you say those rules are again?

Best Strategy for Making Story Pins

Alisa Meredith 9:26
Okay. Use video fairly often. So, my opening scene and actually my second panel too are videos. The first one draw people in with a super engaging first panel. Do use more than one panel.

I see a lot of one panel stories and I think people are just trying to hack it to get more distribution on that. I’ll explain why you don’t want to do that. Also, show how to do something start to finish.

Because what you don’t want to do is show them part of the story. And then they can’t click anywhere to go off and they’re frustrated. You have to show them the whole thing.

And then in the last panel encouraged people to follow you. And a lot of this is opposite of what we usually would say on Pinterest, which is don’t give them everything, give them a taste and make them click.

Story pins, you’ve got to give them everything. But the point there is to get them to follow you. Something that has come up. Let’s see mid-March, Pinterest came out with some news about story pins.

And one of them was that there is now an engagement based system for distribution. So, what that implies is that there wasn’t before and basically, any story pin could get a lot of distribution.

But now they’re looking at, are people clicking to see your story pin? Are they adding reactions? Are they advancing from panel to panel? So, have more than one panel, create that actual value, allow people to engage.

And we know they don’t have a place to add a link. So, what some people have done then is to add a link in their descriptions, they like copy and paste this link to visit. That can hurt your distribution, because they’re on to that.

Jillian Leslie 11:11
Oh, interesting. What if I were to say use like a Bitly and put it in a panel? Can they read that and know that I’m doing that like a custom link?

Alisa Meredith 11:23
I don’t know. They didn’t specify. But I think it’s risky. I think I would probably test it though.

Jillian Leslie 11:31
Okay.

Alisa Meredith 11:32
But the point is, understanding what they want working with the way they want it to work, then that would probably be a no. But you could try it.

Should You Share Video to Pinterest From Other Sites Like TikTok?

They also said that sharing video directly from other sites, i.e., TikTok with watermark could hurt your distribution.

So, when we did a study a few months back, we found that of the pins that went out in November and January of this past year, the ones that had, I’m getting my numbers mixed up.

But anyway, we looked at several hundred pins, that had over 5,000 repins on them. And about 30% of the ones that we analyzed were video pins. And a surprisingly large number of those were TikTok videos.

So, if we were to do that, again, would we find different results? Would there be fewer TikTok videos? And they’re probably, but it’s really easy to cover up that watermark. So, you should probably still repurpose them and just take that extra step.

And what we found too, is that it wasn’t just goofy TikToks. It wasn’t just an image with like a bit of animation on it.

It was actually a really helpful video that would show step-by-step how to do a workout or hairstyle or something that people could actually use. So, if you’re wanting distribution, that’s what I would recommend.

Jillian Leslie 13:01
Interesting. Interesting. Yes. In fact, it was on TikTok, where I would see people saying, hey, if you want a way to get traffic, go put this TikTok up on Pinterest. And so, it was like TikTok, people were saying that all the time.

Alisa Meredith 13:20
Wait a minute, so they were saying for you to download their TikTok and put it on Pinterest like your own?

Jillian Leslie 13:26
No. No. Like if I was following like marketers on TikTok. One of the tricks they had was take your videos like let’s say, you’re doing cooking on TikTok to make sure to put those on Pinterest.

Alisa Meredith 13:39
Yes, you absolutely should do that. But just like with Instagram, now, you want to get rid of that watermark.

Jillian Leslie 13:45
And there are ways to do that. So, you can google that.

Alisa Meredith 13:47
There are apps, all kinds of apps, you can do that.

Jillian Leslie 13:50
Absolutely. But you don’t necessarily want to share directly from TikTok to Pinterest.

Alisa Meredith 13:55
Right. TikTok is like the easiest way in the world to edit video, so, I totally get why you’d want to repurpose. I’ve done it myself.

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Best Pinning Strategy in 2021

Jillian Leslie 14:49
So, let’s talk about this, which is this idea of an original pin the first time it’s going live on the platform versus taking that pin and pinning it into a bunch of boards.

Alisa Meredith 15:04
Okay. So, we did another study recently. This was, we wanted to look at what percentage of the saves were going on for new pins, those fresh pins versus the three pins or the saves.

So, what we found is that of all the engagement that happened, and I’m trying to remember what was the time period, I think it was February and March.

And we found that 73% of the saves that were happening were happening on that first time out pin. Now, this is different from last time, I might have talked to you about this, it was a higher number. It was 70% and 30%.

Now, it’s 73 and 27%. So, it’s not that there’s no benefit to resharing. But there’s less.

Jillian Leslie 16:13
So, you’re getting the most bang for your buck, that first time that pin gets pinned to that first board.

Alisa Meredith 16:21
Yep.

Jillian Leslie 16:22
Like that’s your money. That’s what you want to be focusing on.

Alisa Meredith 16:26
That is and that is, again, why it’s so super important to share your pins to the most relevant board. Give Pinterest the best chance that first time out to figure out what this pin is and how to distribute it.

Jillian Leslie 16:39
And you do that through one; creating an engaging pin with a really strong heading on like headline on the pin.

Alisa Meredith 16:49
Yeah.

Don’t Use Hashtags on Pinterest

Jillian Leslie 16:49
Lots of keywords in the description, some hashtags?

Alisa Meredith 16:53
Oh, no more hashtags.

Jillian Leslie 16:55
Oh, wait, what? No more hashtags. What happened?

Alisa Meredith 17:00
They don’t work. And they’re not recommended anymore. So, it’s recommended just use one or two sentences of keyword rich material in your description. Not to keyword stuff, just to write in a natural manner. And hashtags are out again.

Jillian Leslie 17:14
Wow!

Alisa Meredith 17:15
I know. It’s back and forth.

Jillian Leslie 17:16
Every thing is always changing.

Alisa Meredith 17:19
I know. And let me just clarify because we had so many studies going it’s hard to remember which was which. So, it was this month, we looked at pins sent by Tailwind members, January 1 to march 12.

And that’s where we found 73% of those saves are happening from that first pin. And the other ones are 27%. So, those repins are getting 27%.

Make Multiple Pins for One Blog Post

Jillian Leslie 17:43
Do you still then believe that you create let’s say a blog post, and that you should create multiple pins for that blog post, but that each one speaks to a slightly different audience?

Alisa Meredith 17:57
Oh, totally. Because when we’re talking about when we found that original pins like that, first time out accounted for 73% of the saves. We’re talking about the image; we’re not talking about a blog post or a product page. It’s the image itself.

So, creating a brand-new image starts you all over again. And if like you were hinting at, you create a new image that speaks to a different audience maybe uses different keywords. That can open you up to a whole new audience, which is really exciting.

Because the other thing you don’t want to do is to make 25 pins for the same blog posts that have all the same text on them. That looks very spammy to Pinterest and to pinners.

But what you do want to do is figure out okay, and what are their context in what other season? And what other event or interest could this product or idea be applicable? And how can I put a little spin on how I talk about it to reach those people in those moments?

Jillian Leslie 19:04
Now, what about the idea that Pinterest was wanting new blog posts and not so much going to your older content and making new pins?

Alisa Meredith 19:16
Yeah, totally. That is the best thing that you can do is to go out and make the most engaging, most interesting, inspiring, new piece of content you could ever come up with.

We should still be doing that for sure. But you can still get mileage out of your still relevant content by making new images for them.

Jillian Leslie 19:37
Let’s say I have limited amounts of time.

Alisa Meredith 19:39
Oh, really?

Jillian Leslie 19:41
Shocker, isn’t it?

Alisa Meredith 19:42
Yes. And that’s the thing with all these changes, like we want more we want fresher. Oh, now we want videos and stories. Mm hmm.

Jillian Leslie 19:50
Exactly. So, let’s say I’m a blogger. Let’s say I’m a food blogger, and I’m wearing a lot of hats.

Alisa Meredith 19:58
Yes.

Jillian Leslie 20:00
Let’s say I have a pie. What percent of that pie would you spend creating?

Alisa Meredith 20:08
Are you mixing metaphors?

Pinterest Strategy Recommendation for Allocating Time

Jillian Leslie 20:09
Sorry. I think I am. Okay. Let’s say I’ve got like 100 units to use $100. How many dollars should I spend making static pins? How about videos? How about stories? My first priority is to get traffic to my blog.

And then my second priority is to grow my followers and grow my kind of reputation on Pinterest.

Alisa Meredith 20:39
Wow.

Jillian Leslie 20:39
I know.

Alisa Meredith 20:40
You ask the hard questions. Okay, so first priority is traffic. So, we’re still going to do a mix. But we do need to have things that have links on them. So, we’re going to have to create some static images, and also some video pins.

Jillian Leslie 20:58
Video, though, you can put a link and explain the link on video pins.

Alisa Meredith 21:07
Can you say that again?

Jillian Leslie 21:09
Explain how the link works on video pins versus static pins.

Alisa Meredith 21:17
So, you can still add a link to video pins, and we get quite a lot of traffic from our video pins. I know some people feel like it’s kind of hard to find the link on video pins, but I don’t have that problem that I’ve noticed.

You can also like give people a hint that there is a link in your video like links over there, the links over there. But they do bring in quite a bit of traffic for us.

So, question of our 100 units. How many are we going to put towards video pins, static pins, story pins? Is the other option out there creating fresh content, like new content on your blog?

Jillian Leslie 21:57
Yeah, let’s put that in there. Let’s make it harder. Go.

Alisa Meredith 22:01
Okay. And when we’re saying creating that fresh content for a blog, is that including also creating pins for that or it does that need to come out of the other section?

Jillian Leslie 22:11
Let’s say that comes out of the other section.

Alisa Meredith 22:14
Okay, that’s easier. So, we’re going to create new content, let’s spend 60% of our time on fresh content?

Jillian Leslie 22:25
Hmm. I didn’t expect you to say that. Okay.

Alisa Meredith 22:30
And the reason for that is because you can use that all over the web. It’s not just Pinterest, we have to think about our other marketing as well. Alright, so 60% is there. Let’s do 20% of video.

Because we know it’s going to get more distribution usually. So, it’s going to get more and it can bring in traffic. Now we have 20% left. Oh, boy, this is hard. I guess it’s going to have to be 10 and 10.

Although I wish I had a little more for the image pins, but okay, and you’re going to think I’ve planned this, but I did not really. So, Tailwind Create with that 10% of the time you have, honestly, I did not plan it this way, can get you an incredible number of great pins.

Jillian Leslie 23:26
Talk to me about Tailwind Create. Oh, no, we didn’t plan this, but I was going to mention it.

Alisa Meredith 23:33
Okay, so Tailwind Create is a really easy way to create social media images, for your social media. When we looked at how people were making them for Pinterest, people were spending an average of 1.8 minutes to make an image in Tailwind Create for Pinterest.

And that was compared to in surveys and calls we did people usually would take 15 minutes to make a pin. So, that’s about a 90% savings. What I like to think about is, if we could make a Tailwind Create for house cleaning.

It would take like 14 minutes to clean your house instead of two hours. If they can please come out with that. That would be amazing.

But yeah. I think that would be realistic, 60% of your time creating content, 20% on video, 10% on static images which totally doable with using Tailwind Create. And 10% on story pins.

Jillian Leslie 24:33
Interesting. That makes sense.

Alisa Meredith 24:36
Let’s not write this in stone because I just came up with this on the fly, but I think it would be something to start with.

Jillian Leslie 24:43
Interesting. So, my old strategy was create a pin, focus on where I’m putting it in the first board but really think I’m getting it all out there by repinning but you are saying repinning becomes less important but is still important?

Yes, Repin Your Content, Especially Seasonal Content

Alisa Meredith 25:02
Well, if you think about it, like when your daughter comes home with a 73 on her test, would you rather that she had 100?

Jillian Leslie 25:13
I would. Yes.

Alisa Meredith 25:14
You would, right?

Jillian Leslie 25:16
Yes. Yes.

Alisa Meredith 25:17
So, if we’re never resharing and it’s probably too much like a causation to lean on that closely. But there is benefits still to resharing.

Jillian Leslie 25:33
And that’s where like a scheduler comes in. Because I would never want to be manually pinning those pins into different boards.

Alisa Meredith 25:41
Right. And even is really important with something like Tailwind Create, where you’re like, Okay, if I know that my pins tend to die off after a couple months, which we did notice that, like, what we call the half-life of a pin, has become shorter, in general.

Jillian Leslie 25:58
Interesting, okay.

Alisa Meredith 25:59
We probably all have those old pins still do really, really great. But in general, that half-life is closer to around two months now, where it used to be more like four.

So, if we thought like, alright, every two months, I’m going to look at my blog posts that are doing well on Pinterest, and I’m going to put a different spin on it.

I’m going to look at Pinterest Trends, and figure out what is going on now that I can work into my pin for this content. And you’re going to do like every two months, so you could do it now.

You could look at Pinterest trends for what’s going to be coming up in two months and create it, schedule it and thank yourself later. Well, gift to future you.

Jillian Leslie 26:43
And by the way, you can back into this in terms of the content you’re creating, like when I’m thinking about creating content. Now, I’m thinking about, can I dress this piece of content up in different ways?

Alisa Meredith 26:57
Oh, yes.

Jillian Leslie 26:59
So, after I’ve made the content going, okay, now I need to kind of come up with a new spin for this content. Is there a way within the content to tackle how I could use let’s say, this craft for a variety of different holidays?

Alisa Meredith 27:12
Yes.

Jillian Leslie 27:12
And maybe write that in the post, then I can pull that same post out for different holidays, and it’s relevant?

Alisa Meredith 27:21
Yes. That’s the other thing. If you’re going to use existing content, to talk to a new audience, you need to make sure that what you’re talking about is actually in the pin. It’s a good thing to do for Google too, to go back in to update your content.

Just make sure what you’re promising on Pinterest is actually on there. For example, our Garden Cherry Bourbon Smash, which is the official pin of Tailwind Create, it seems. Thinking about, okay, we can market it as just a cocktail.

And it’s beautiful, and people love it. Or we can also share it on Pinterest as 2021’s signature wedding cocktail. But you need to make sure that when people get to that blog post that it mentions something about how it would be great wedding cocktail.

Jillian Leslie 28:12
Right.

Alisa Meredith 28:12
Otherwise, there’s a total disconnect. But to make it easier to brainstorm those ideas, because it’s like, you have a formula, you take your product or your idea, you add your context or your interest or your trend or your season.

You come up with a new way to talk about it. That can be overwhelming. I did put together a little PDF, which is not gated, and it’s just Bit.ly/Pinterest-Formula where Pinterest and formula are capitalized.

You can grab those. It has all kinds of lists of things you could work with.

Jillian Leslie 28:48
Oh, that’s great. And I will definitely put that in the show notes.

Alisa Meredith 28:51
Thank you.

Jillian Leslie 28:52
Again, if I were to make you all knowing, what do you see changing? What are you kind of noticing in terms of what Pinterest is communicating to you guys are communicating to the world?

As a creator, how do I stay prepared? What do I need to be thinking about?

Alisa Meredith 29:15
They have not been shy about saying what they want, and kind of where they’re moving. So, maybe in the show notes, you can share that Creator Festival video where they talk about the new direction of Pinterest.

And then there’s a video on their YouTube channel where there are a bunch of them that really words like, we have 4 million searches for this search term. But we don’t need any more banana bread recipes.

Pinterest is Looking for New and Novel Ideas

It’s very clear that they’re looking for new and novel. And they’re also looking for more ways to get people to create content and engage with content on their platform.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t see a world where Pinterest is no longer a search and discovery engine. That’s just kind of how we use it. Who knows it could change and become a social platform? I don’t know.

But that’s what it’s built on is this search and discovery. So, I think there’s always going to be a place for that. And Pinterest will always need creators, even though yes, they’re a public company.

And they need to make money and there are going to be ads, but they can’t be all ads. And they can’t be all stories. So, there’s going to be a place for a lot of this out here.

But I feel like when they come out with something new, and they’re giving preference to it as they are with story pins, then I think we should at least try these things. And see how it impacts our overall marketing success.

Because when something starts doing better, something else is probably not going to do as well. So, it does pay to kind of go with their vision of the platform.

Is Traffic From Pinterest Decreasing?

Jillian Leslie 30:55
I think that is smart. But to be thinking that way. And to be thinking that Pinterest is seeing itself in a broader context than how we initially all saw Pinterest. Now, are people’s traffic from Pinterest, is it going down across the board?

Are you seeing some accounts where their traffic is going up and others where their traffic is going down? What kind of trends are you seeing when it comes to traffic from Pinterest?

Alisa Meredith 31:22
Well, I think a lot of people are saying that they’re getting less traffic. But they’re also saying things like, “I don’t understand why I’m not getting the traffic I used to I’m doing the same things I’ve always done.”

And it’s like, well, you kind of answered yourself. Because things change, platforms always are going to change on us. So, we have to keep up with what the platform wants in order to get the results that we want. And then everybody is happy.

It’s definitely not everyone. There’s always going to be people who talk about frustration, and I get it like, yeah, wanting more story pins, more video pins, it’s harder. Not getting the success you used to by just sharing and sharing over and over again.

It’s harder. Yeah, it absolutely is. But the potential is still out there. Especially, with the Pinterest audience growing so much. And with Gen Z growing by 40% in the past year, I mean, just new opportunities opening up for people.

But doing the same thing you’ve always done is not going to do it.

Do Pinterest Schedulers Hurt Your Exposure on Pinterest?

Jillian Leslie 32:27
Okay, one last question. Do schedulers hurt your pin, your success?

Alisa Meredith 32:34
I love this question. So, this question comes up on every network and the only one that I know for sure is that on Pinterest it does not matter.

So, we went to our partner team at Pinterest and asked them and they’re like, no, because they’ve told us this bunch of times, it doesn’t matter. We treat things the same way. But still we were hearing this from Tailwind members.

And we’re like, “Okay, but we want to see for ourselves.” So, we have run some tests. And what we have found is that Tailwind does not hurt your scheduling. So, we looked at when people would pin via Pinterest or via Tailwind.

And we saw no difference in the saves on those. And again, we’re looking at saves impressions is kind of a funny number. If you look at your own unpin impressions, you might see it go up and down.

But when we looked at okay, the first time your pin goes out whether it’s on Tailwind or via Pinterest, you did not see a difference in engagement. So, if you’re not getting distribution, you’re not getting engagement.

But when we looked at that second time you send out your pin, third time, whatever. So, saves published via Tailwind, or Pinterest. We actually saw slightly higher performance when they went out via Tailwind. I don’t know why.

But we looked at that for July through January of 2021. Also, we looked at January 2021 alone in case something had changed because we really like, what is going on. We wanted to know is Tailwind hurting? The answer is no.

I’m an exception. I know it’s hurting me. They can email us help@tailwindapp.com. And we have a way we can look at exactly what they’re sharing on Pinterest versus via Tailwind.

And we can see the saves they’re getting on each and compare and like help them figure out where they’re getting the activity and what’s going on.

Jillian Leslie 34:45
Oh, that is terrific. Well Alisa, I have to thank you again for coming on the show sharing what is new on Pinterest, things are always changing. I did not know hashtags were no more.

Having been on Pinterest for as long as I have, I’ve seen them come and go and come and go. So, I’m not surprised.

You are truly one of my all-time favorite guests. I hope you will come back on the show.

Alisa Meredith 35:15
Absolutely. It’s always so fun.

Jillian Leslie 35:18
To share and I love you. So, really Thank you.

Alisa Meredith 35:22
Oh, love you too.

Jillian Leslie 35:23
You can see why I love having Alisa on the show. She is just a breath of fresh air. I feel like now, we all know what direction to lean into with Pinterest stories and video and still making new original static pins, but with lots of intention.

So, please, just a reminder to do hopefully do me that solid and then go start using that term and see if you’re teen children cringe.

But really, if you are getting value out of the podcast, please head to iTunes. Give it five stars leave a short review so, other people can discover it as well. And if you leave a review, I’m going to read it in the intro of my next episode. And I will see you here again next week.

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