5 Pinterest Mistakes You Could Be Making That’s Hurting Your Business Growth
We all want to learn how to get traffic from Pinterest to our blogs, websites, services page or product page, but what I notice is that a lot of businesses are jumping on the platform without a proper Pinterest growth strategy.
So, as what a lot of people would do, they hop on the platform, pin a few (or a lot!) of content to their boards, and sit back, hoping for the best (aka, their Pinterest account to blow up and go viral).
Then after some time, you will hear people often say that Pinterest is a waste of time or that they just don't see the point of using it if their social media account growth is doing so much better.
Well, that’s why I’m here, friend. I’m going to fill you in on some important points when it comes to SEO for Pinterest and proven Pinterest traffic strategies that WORK.
In this blog post, I'll share with you 5 common Pinterest mistakes business owners are making with their Pinterest accounts that may not result in the growth they’re hoping for.
I want you to learn from my mistakes when I first used Pinterest & give you the practical pieces of advice on how you can avoid making the same mistakes that could prevent you from having a successful flourishing Pinterest account.
You’re Not Thinking of Pinterest as a Search Engine
Now let me preface this to say that I am NOT an SEO expert (search engine optimization) but a blogger and a person who is on social media quite often (as much as I try my best not to be on all the time!), I've built quite a bit of knowledge when it comes to search engine website traffic.
And my platform of choice, hands-down is - PINTEREST.
Many people are probably wondering why I would even say Pinterest, I mean, isn’t it a place where people mainly go when looking for a recipe or needing home decor inspiration?
While all of this is true, I will fill you in on why Pinterest is one of the most under-utilized platforms for your business and this highlights one of the most common Pinterest mistakes people make.
Pinterest is one of the big three when it comes to search engines (Google, YouTube, Pinterest) and boasts an amazing 450 million-plus active users on the platform every day.
Pinterest has grown in a lot of popularity over the years, especially since the pandemic when everybody was home and needing some form of inspiration.
Pinterest has seen an incredible jump in its usage as people are now discovering how to bake bread, cut their own hair at home, and homeschool their children.
People go to Pinterest to be inspired and learn new skills, hence why I believe many business owners make this common mistake of not thinking about Pinterest as a search engine (like Google) and they think of Pinterest as social media.
If you are a business owner who is looking to increase your business reach, I'm talking directly to you: start treating Pinterest as a search engine if you want to get more traffic to your website, sell more products, or have users read your blog content!
The more you start treating Pinterest as a search engine and optimize your content and your Pinterest profile, you will start to see the return on your investment (ROI).
But let’s dig a little deeper and not only start thinking and treating Pinterest as a search engine but let’s also dig a little deeper and think about how search engines all work together to help our content reach our intended audiences.
If you own a business, I want you to think about how you can use Pinterest, Google and other search engines to propel your business and your marketing efforts.
When we think about search engine traffic, most of the time we think about Google, and why not?! Since June 2021, Google has dominated the search engine landscape, maintaining 92.47 percent market share!
That is huge in my opinion.
Why is this important?
This is important because search engines are continuously scouring the internet for content and indexing/categorizing our posts and pages so they can send the right information to the right people searching for our content.
One of the most important reasons why I want you to start looking at Pinterest as a powerful search engine is if a blog post you wrote a few months ago goes viral on Pinterest, it actually can send social signals to Google on your behalf.
Yes that’s right...Pinterest will not only send high-quality traffic to your website or product page but they can also help boost your authority and overall SEO ranking on organic search.
Now tell me if you are getting that from any Instagram or Facebook post? Mmm.. I’m thinking probably not, my friend.
What a lot of businesses don’t understand much of is that Google looks at your traffic.
Now I will preface this to say that even though Pinterest is a great avenue for brand awareness, it is a slow burn and may take up to 6 months for your content to be properly ranked and categorized.
But, that doesn't mean you still can't make great strides with Pinterest. When I managed Pinterest accounts for small businesses, depending on their niche, we would start to see the steady gradual growth of their account and website traffic within 3 months.
So if you use Pinterest well enough to grow your online visibility, you will start to see a massive change to your analytics and business.
Your Pinterest Profile is Not Optimized
I see this far too often, mainly because a lot of people don't know what or how to optimize their Pinterest account.
I remember when I first started on the platform, I made a ton of mistakes and this one here was no exception for me, too.
Optimizing your Pinterest account means quite a few things but focusing on the basics here is what matters the most.
When you are first starting your Pinterest account or even cleaning up an existing one, you need to do a few things but most importantly: add in keywords specific to your niche. This will help your search engine optimization (SEO) when users are looking for your specific content.
So for example, if I am a holistic nutritionist looking to use Pinterest to gain traffic to my website, I would start optimizing my Pinterest account by focusing on these important areas. Check out my examples below where I make sure to highlight the keywords used in each description.
Profile Name:
Your profile name should tell your audience, clients, or visitors to your account who you are. If you are the name of your brand (i.e. you use your own legal name as your business), then make sure to add your name as this will most likely be what people would type into the search bar when looking for your account or content.
If you are operating under your business name, make sure to include keywords to your profile name that can easily be searched for by your ideal client on Pinterest.
Eg.
Ashley Reynolds - Holistic Nutritionist
Profile Description
This area is where you are going to describe to your audience what your business can do for them. For example, you want to list in more detail your business, what you offer, and how you can help them.
Eg.
Ashley Reynolds - Holistic Nutritionist
I help women who need a better solution when it comes to their issues with PCOS, fertility & trying to conceive, and other female hormonal imbalances.
When I managed Pinterest accounts or conducted Pinterest Audits & Strategies, I would see this area not utilized well for SEO. If you are serious about using Pinterest for your health, wellness, or lifestyle business, make sure to conduct thorough keyword research for your niche and keep a record of your keywords for quick reference.
Some tools I like to use when it comes to keeping a keyword bank for myself and clients are Google Spreadsheets and Notion, but you can also use other tools such as Asana, Trello, ClickUp, or even a plain old Google Doc sheet.
Bonus Tip
When you are optimizing your profile description, please do not add in URLs or hashtags.
The addition of a URL or hashtag will not increase the likelihood of your profile being found, nor will it increase your user's experience.
URLs and hashtags you add are not hyperlinked (clickable). Use the limited real estate you have here and focus on including the most relevant information you want your audience to know about your brand.
It's best to continue to focus on adding specific keywords to your profile description that you want to rank for.
You Have Too Many Personalized or Random Boards
Oh man, this used to be me so I’m going to put myself out there.
Because I was a home decor blogger, I had a lot of my audience follow me for home decor related content.
When switched my entrepreneurial path and became a Pinterest consultant, I noticed a huge drop in my Pinterest reach because the people who originally followed me for home decor were probably not that interested in Pinterest marketing (a difficult thing for me to come to believe but it was true!).
I had so many random boards on my account at that time: recipe boards, crafts boards, things I love boards, places I want to travel boards - the list goes on and on, and on.
Not only were these boards not what my audience was interested in, but the amount of random, too personalized boards I had, I’m sure it stunted my growth.
I’m sure you’ll find people who may say that random boards or boards that show your interests show no evidence in Pinterest account growth (and it’s true, there is no real evidence towards it), but one has to think if the amount of random boards and categories you have on your account could potentially not help in attracting your ideal audience on Pinterest.
Because when a user lands on your Pinterest account, they want to see more content that relates to your business, not random boards or boards that are personalized to you.
Do you want to know what happens to visitors when they are confused? They end up leaving your account without engaging with your content at all.
This is something that I see A LOT.
Please my dear hard-working entrepreneurs: make sure to curate your boards specific to your audience, niche, or industry. If not, you will find your account may not grow in the area of followers (something all the business owners want) because as much as your business is a slight reflection of you, your business is primarily about them - aka. your client, customer, or audience.
If you haven't read Donald Miller's Building a Storybrand, I highly suggest you read it. It's a game-changer.
You need to shift your mindset about your Pinterest account and look at it like an extension of your business, your website, and your brand.
For example, if I was to walk into a wellness clinic, I wouldn't expect to see home good products there (although one could argue that home goods is such a broad term and these items could in fact be found in a clinic depending on what it is).
But, if I was to walk into a wellness clinic, I would expect to see wellness products and other products that would support their products being sold in the clinic.
If you are needing/wanting to create boards for your Pinterest account, I suggest you pay attention to the keywords that are auto-populated in the search dropdown or take a look at your Audience Insights that’s located in the upper left hand bar dropdown.
When you pay attention to your keywords or Audience Insights, it gives you more information on what your audience is looking for, and you can then start brainstorming or creating boards that align with these auto-populated search terms are beneficial for your account or not.
Just be sure that when you are creating a board, you are adding in a board description (very similar to your profile description) with keywords specific to the content you will be adding to the board.
You’re Using Too Many Hashtags
Are you still using hashtags on Pinterest?
It's ok if you are, but I'm going to fill you in on a few details regarding the use of hashtags on Pinterest and what you can do instead.
Last year in 2020, it was mentioned by Pinterest that hashtag use on the platform will no longer be relevant or as important as our SEO keywords.
Yes, indeed friends. So now, you can stop filling up your pin descriptions with all the hashtags and start focusing more on adding relevant keywords you want to rank for instead.
Now, this doesn't mean you have to stop including them in your pin description, in fact, I still encourage you to do so - just of a limited quantity of one or two.
Why still use hashtags if they are no longer relevant, you may ask?
Because although Pinterest has encouraged us to use more SEO keywords in our content, hashtags are still being indexed and captured by Pinterest for coding purposes (although, this may change soon), so until they remove this from their indexing algorithm, I still say you should use a few but the choice is yours to include them or not.
Some content creators have not seen a difference in removing hashtags completely but I suggest you test it out with a few pieces of your content and see if there's a difference for you or not.
You’re Not Engaging with Your Pinterest Audience
Not engaging with my audience? What does that even mean?
Well, let me break it down to you a bit here because this is a question that I frequently see people ask in Facebook groups.
What does engagement even look like on Pinterest if it’s not social media?
Whether we love it or not, Pinterest is now becoming more and more social than it ever has been before.
Since the changes to Pinterest’s algorithm last year, we are now seeing more social media-like changes to the platform since the rollout of Idea Pins (do know that I plan to create a post about the use of Idea Pins soon!).
In case you were wondering what Idea Pins are, they are a great way for creators, businesses, hobbyists or publishers to create high-quality pins that do not link back to a specific URL or website content, as this aims to keep users on the platform longer, hence, keeping them on your Pinterest account longer too!
The use of Idea Pins have been a game-changer for some business owners and content creators and it’s something that I encourage you to start using.
Simply take some of your existing from your website, blog or social media account and turn it into a quick attention-grabbing Idea Pin to inspire your audience to take action.
When it comes to me talking about “engagement” on Pinterest, I’ll most likely be referring to engagement with your Idea Pins from now on because this newly added feature is where you will find most of your audience highly interested and engaged with your brand and content.
When you are signed in to your Pinterest account, the best place for you to look for your audience engagement is to navigate to the upper right hand corner and look for the megaphone symbol (it’s the best name I could come up with to describe to you!).
Once clicked, it will open up into a window where you will find all engagement your audience has made with your content. I’m talking about reactions, comments, some good, some bad - but whatever that engagement is, you will find it here.
Plain and simple: if someone leaves a comment to your Idea Pin, make sure to respond back to them! You don’t have to leave a long lengthy reply but do try to respond with a “Thank You” or “Glad you liked it!”.
Think of it like when you comment on someone’s post on Instagram and they didn’t respond back to you. How would that make you feel? Especially if you were a raving fan of the brand?
I’m sure it wouldn’t leave you feeling good at all, which is why you want to respond back to your audience and make them feel like you care.
Not only will this help for your brand to be recognized more on a humanistic level, but this could also help your account to grow with followers if they see you responding back to comments.
In Conclusion
These generally are a few mistakes I’ve noticed with some business owners when they are looking to use Pinterest as part of their marketing plan.
These mistakes are not having an optimized profile, creating too many random boards, not thinking of Pinterest as a powerful search engine, not engaging with their audience on the platform, and using too many hashtags in their pin descriptions.
Pinterest has transformed many businesses from receiving no traffic to their website, to in a few months, receiving hundreds to thousands of free, high-quality leads.
As with anything, if you take the time to understand the platform you use for your business, and really put in the effort to make it work for you, you WILL see the return on your investment.
Because I’m curious to know, have you made any of these Pinterest mistakes? If so, which one? Let me know what’s your biggest takeaway from this post in the comments section below.
PIN THIS TO YOUR BOARD!
If you’ve been feeling stuck in your business and unsure how to connect better with your audience through messaging and Pinterest, I’d love to help you out. I work specifically with health, wellness & lifestyle brands who looking for a new way of building a brand with purpose. Head here to contact me for a complimentary consult and we can discuss more details of working together.
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@cwillisandco
