#065: How to Keep Your Pinterest Account Growing and Out of Trouble with Alisa Meredith
For most bloggers, Pinterest is one of the top tools in our arsenal for getting traffic to our blogs. So it’s important to know how to keep your Pinterest account growing and out of trouble.
The main question is how can we be active on the platform by staying within Pinterest’s good graces, and not be accused of spamming and risk getting our account banned.
In today’s episode, I have my good friend Alisa Meredith here to talk about Pinterest and how to remain in good standing on the platform.
Alisa is a Pinterest consultant, strategist, and the content marketing manager at Tailwind (affiliate link).
Table of Contents
Defining Spam on Pinterest and How To Avoid It
One of the reasons people are concerned about getting their account marked as spam is that that can cause their account to be suspended.
Pinterest has shared on its website five different behaviors that can be interpreted as spam and get you in trouble on the platform:
- Porn
- Violence
- Self-harm
- Hate speech
- Misinformation
If you take someone’s image off of Pinterest and you link it to your own content, you will get flagged for that.
You could also be sharing stolen pins without knowing it, so be sure to click through the link to see where it leads. This prevents you from accidentally contributing to this problem of stolen pins, which is super prevalent right now.
Tailwind tribes are a good way to share content from people you know so you don’t have to worry about bad links.
Just remember that any tool is subject to people who want to use it in a bad way, but if you’re in a tribe of people you know and trust, then it’s helpful to not have to click through on every link.
Pinterest is monitoring what they call “unnaturally high-volume behaviors.” This includes:
- Commenting on too many things in quick succession
- Following too many pinners in a short period of time
- Saving too many pins from one website too quickly
- Sharing the same pin to the same board over and over
Any of these behaviors can result in your account being suspended. Pinterest is looking for behaviors that a normal pinner wouldn’t engage in.
HELPFUL TIP: Use common sense rather than looking for some kind of hard and fast rule. If you had a friend watching you pin over your shoulder, would they think you were being spammy?
If not, you are probably okay.
HELPFUL TIP: Look at your recent pins option for your cover photo and if it’s too repetitive, you need to change your strategy.
How Many Pins Should You Pin Per Day?
The most important numbers are the ones you test yourself.
The problem is when people think they have to pin fifty pins a day and they just pin anything.
Some people are spending more time on that than creating their own content to pin.
There is nothing wrong with sharing other people’s content, but the biggest benefit to using Pinterest is sharing more of your own content.
The best practice for bloggers using Pinterest is to always be creating new pins.
In the past, Pinterest stated that you could change the description or hashtags for an added distribution benefit but that has changed now.
Now that the descriptions are being cropped, those aren’t showing for the end user.
Pinterest users see images, so you need to make new pins rather than changing the description on an old pin.
To Make More Pinterest Content, Take More Photos
Quantity is key here. You have to be creating more content on a regular basis.
When you write that blog post, take more photos. Use different angles, use different lighting, anything to make it different.
You do not want to stack your blog post with photos that all look similar. That is a pain for your readers who are looking at your site on mobile.
Save some of those photos to use for pins by using a plug-in that allows you to hide those photos within the post.
Create images with text on them because Pinterest reads text on images.
Pinterest wants the experience to be fresh and new every time someone logs on or searches for something. If you are making new content for the user, it makes a great experience for them.
If Your Account Has Been Flagged
If you have been flagged as a spam account, there is something you can do.
You can email Pinterest. Go to the “Help” page and there is an option to say that you have been suspended and you want it to be reviewed.
If you haven’t done anything to actually be suspended, Pinterest has no interest in shutting down legitimate accounts.
They will reinstate you if there was a mistake.
Videos On Pinterest
Pinterest is really pushing video right now. They would like to see that take off.
Alisa has found that her videos received a lot more impressions than her static pins immediately, but got few click-throughs and the impressions dropped off fairly quickly.
You need to create videos that tease people into wanting to click through to see more.
You may see tons of views at first but not a whole lot of click-throughs unless your video leads them to want to see more of what you’re offering.
New Ads for Pinterest – Conversion Ads
Conversion ads are something you can use only if you can set up your event tracking.
It will allow you to say, “An email sign-up is worth three dollars to me. Go out and get me email sign-ups for three dollars.” Pinterest will go out and get them for three dollars.
They have it set up so you can say, “I only want it to count within one day of a click. No talking about impressions or engagements, I just want to know that within one day of clicking through my ad, they became a new email sign-up.”
You pay per impression. So because of that, you have to go all-in on it. It can take a while for Pinterest to figure it out.
They recommend you waiting several weeks for them to figure out how it best works for you.
Another recommendation is to set it up so there are three conversions for a day’s budget.
If I want to sell sign-ups for three dollars apiece, then I need to have nine dollars set aside so they have room to figure it out.
They are trying to optimize those three dollars per conversion. You’re paying for impressions, while they figure out how to get conversions.
It’s working better right now for E-commerce, but anyone can use it for email sign-ups.
One of Alisa’s favorite features on Pinterest Ads is “Act Alike Audiences.”
If you find that your email list converts really well to customers, but after a while, you exhaust that audience, you can try to create fresh ways to hook your audience, or just gain a new audience.
You can use “Act Alike” to get a fresh audience.
Alisa says that if you compare what you’re paying to target people on Facebook with what you’ll pay to target them on Pinterest, you will likely come out ahead on Pinterest.
For retargeting, you’re going to come out far ahead on Pinterest.
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TIMESTAMP
- Intro
- 2:17 Defining Spam and How To Avoid It
- 14:22 How Much Should You Pin Per Day?
- 21:08 Make More Content, Take More Photos
- 25:28 If Your Account Has Been Flagged
- 26:30 Videos on Pinterest
- 29:28 New Ads for Pinterest
