Before we get started, let me tell you that Pinterest was a hard nut for me to crack. I used to really struggle with gaining relevant followers on that platform. Once I figured it out, I was easily getting 1,000 new relevant followers each month.
1. It is better to pin from the source, not from the Pinterest feed.
FALSE. You can grow a relevant following quickly and never pin anything from the source. In order to grow a following on Pinterest, you need to pin a lot. Pinning directly from the Pinterest feed is the easiest way to do this.
2. Join group boards for more followers.
PROCEED GROUP BOARDS WITH CAUTION. Group boards that consistently have a high repin count AND have content that is in sync with your brand are dreamy. When you join boards like those, your content will be introduced to people who are looking for are your target market. It’s a match made in heaven. HOWEVER, if you are joining Pinterest group boards willy nilly and the content posted there doesn’t represent your brand…don’t do it. Your feed will get clogged with a bunch of pins that aren’t relevant to you. This will reflect badly on you and will slow you down because you’ll have to sift through a lot of nonsense before you get to the good stuff.
3. Leave lots of comments to get people to follow you.
FALSE. If you leave a bunch of comments on various pins, Pinterest will think you’re a spammer and freeze your account. Yikes. Nobody wants that. If you want to thank people for pinning your stuff, just click the little heart. You don’t need to write a long drawn out comment instructing people to visit your shop for more merchandise. Ick.
4. If you delete a board, then you will lose followers.
TRUE. If a follower is only following that specific board and none of your other boards, then your total following count will decrease by one when you delete the board they are following. That sentence was so long, but thank you for powering through it. This is a big problem for people who convert from a personal account to a business account. After converting to a business account, you may want to get rid of personal boards that aren’t relevant to your business. You may lose followers by doing so, but if the topic doesn’t relate to your business, then who cares.
5. Include a specific caption for each pin.
FALSE. (SORT OF) When you are pinning your own content from your website, you absolutely need to include a description that is rich with keywords. I NEVER change the caption when I’m repinning other people’s content and I’m still able to get 1,000 followers in one month. If you change the caption for every single thing you pin, it will take a million years to pin just a few things. I don’t have time for that and neither do you.
6. Pin your own content more than once.
TRUE. So, if you aren’t pinning your own content over and over on Pinterest, then wtf are you doing there? Ladies. You need to promote your own stuff! 10% of the content you post should be your own. That means if I pin this blog post on Monday to my Little Farm Media Blog board, then I can pin it again two weeks later to my Social Media Tips board. Why two weeks? I don’t know, BUT if you’re pinning a ton of content and have at least 500 new followers coming in every two weeks then you will always have a new set of eyes on your boards.
7. Vertical pins get more repins.
TRUE. I don’t care how good the article is, I will never pin it if there isn’t a nice vertical image to go with it. Vertical images stand out more on Pinterest than small, horizontal images. Why should you care about repins? Pins with more repins have a greater chance of being shown in searches because Pinterest will identify you as a Pinterest Badass. The more pins you have with a high repin count, the more followers you will get.
8. Use hashtags in your caption.
FALSE. Hashtags don’t help AT ALL. When you click on a hashtag on Pinterest, it will bring up a ton of content that doesn’t even relate to the content of the hashtag. This article from moz.com explains it way better than I ever could.
9. Delete pins with a low repin count.
TRUE. I never give advice on this blog that I haven’t tried myself, but I heard from two reliable sources that this worked for them. I read about it on Erika Madden’s blog post, Pinterest: The Ultimate Guide To Getting Followers + Repins, and saw Melyssa Griffin, of The Nectar Collective, post about it on her Instagram. I decided to go straight to the source and asked Melyssa and Erika to explain why. They both agreed that eliminating OLD (6 mos.+) pins with a low repin count would help Pinterest recognize you as a power pinner. Pins with a low number of repins make Pinterest think nobody cares about your content. If most of your pins have a high number of repins, Pinterest will think you’re important and show your pins more.
