Now more than ever, your Pinterest success is determined by how often you’re creating brand new URLs (blog posts and products) for your blog or e-commerce online shop. But fresh Pinterest pins (new URLs) aren’t the only way to generate traffic to your website. In this guide, I explore 3 levels of Pinterest pin freshness and why they’re all essential to your Pinterest marketing strategy.
Holy cow. This year we’ve seen a whirlwind of activity from the brilliant minds at Pinterest. From algorithm updates to the introduction of video and story pins and much more.
Most recently, Tailwind went live on Facebook to acknowledge and offer advice to those of us who are seeing our Pinterest traffic drop (I’m not one of them, friends!). If you don’t have time to watch the video, here’s a 2-minute comic strip summary I made that contains the pertinent details. Check it out!
They also confirmed my suspicions that fresh pins are no longer defined as a new image/text overlay for old content. Why the change? As I understand it, we marketers, began gaming the system.
We created tons of new pins for our old content but didn’t alter them enough to differentiate them from all our other pins leading to the same URL. It made our home feeds look spammy and created a poor user experience. Alas, this is why we can’t have nice things.
However, creating new pins for old posts isn’t dead in the water just yet. It can and does still work to generate Pinterest traffic, but maybe not as effectively as we previously thought.
I put together this helpful guide that outlines 3 essential levels of pin freshness and why you should include them all in your Pinterest marketing strategy.
Pinterest Pin Freshness Level #3: saves
In the olden days of Pinterest, we continuously repinned our blog posts and products so that they’d show as close to the beginning of a pinner’s feed as possible.
We didn’t make new pins for old content and we pinned the same Pinterest pin over and over again to any board we fancied.
With Pinterest’s home feed no longer in chronological order, it’s important for us to understand why we’re repinning our Pinterest pins here in the present.
Resaving best practices
If Pinterest implemented a rule today that we could no longer resave our Pinterest pins, their platform would be in trouble.
It would be unsustainable for marketers to fill their Tailwind queues with enough pins to meet that impossible standard.
Luckily, they haven’t entirely told us to stop resaving just yet. Whew!
BUT, they do want us to resave our Pinterest pins to the most relevant boards possible.
A while back, they suggested that we not resave to more than 10 boards, but that didn’t mean resave to ANY 10 boards willy-nilly.
For instance, if I resave my chocolate cake pin to my healthy recipes board, Pinterest will learn my chocolate cake is healthy when it’s not.
With every personal board you pin to, Pinterest learns a little bit more each time about what that pin is about.
How to resave effectively
When you resave your Pinterest pins effectively, you’re giving them the best chance they have to go viral on Pinterest.
Start by asking yourself these key questions before you resave your Pinterest pins to a board:
- Is this board relevant to what my pin is about?
- Does this board help Pinterest learn what my pin is about?
- Is it the first time I’ve pinned this pin to this board?
If you answered yes to all of the above, woo hoo, you should totally resave your pin!
If you answered no to any of the above, it’s time to make some changes to optimize your pinning strategy.
Here are some steps to take:
- Go through all your boards and update their titles with specific keywords that give context to what your pins are about. Be as detailed as possible. If it’s a chocolate cake recipe Pinterest pin, make a Decadent Chocolate Cake & Dessert Recipes board to pin it to (assuming you have lots of chocolate dessert recipes, of course).
- Make sure your boards have a clear, detailed, keyword-rich description relevant to your board’s title.
- Don’t repin the same exact pin to the same exact board more than once! Pinterest’s algorithm considers this to be spammy behavior.
- Resave to ONLY the most relevant boards. Pinterest said resave to no more than 10 boards, they didn’t say you had to repin to 10 boards.
Pinterest Pin Freshness Level #2: new image/text overlay pins for old content
Marketers took advantage of what constitutes a new Pinterest pin and made very minor changes to existing pin design templates to crank out as many new pins as possible.
The problem is that when you make too many pins leading back to the same URL and they’re all similar in design, it can look spammy through the eyes of a pinner and ruin the user experience.
How to pin new image/text overlay pins for old content effectively
This one should have been a no brainer, but based on how many people have missed the mark on creating new pins for old content, I guess it needs to be explained more clearly.
If you’re not sure whether or not your new pins look too similar to each other, here are some helpful questions to ask yourself before pinning them:
- If I were a Pinterest user and saw these pins next to each other, would I think they look spammy?
- Do my new Pinterest pins offer the pinner a new idea about the same piece of content?
- If I were a Pinterest user would I think these pins were unique from each other and not recognize that they all lead to the same URL?
If you answered those questions honestly and determined your pins seem spammy, then they probably are.
Here are the steps to take:
- Design and create eye-catching Pinterest pins with the user experience in mind. Don’t just slap on a text overlay with one word changed and call it new. Change it up! I use Canva for making pin-worthy Pinterest pins.
- Give each pin a new, thoughtful idea. Get creative with your text overlays and keywords. Is your chocolate cake post a hit around the holidays? Mention how it’s the perfect holiday dessert in your post and design a pin to match!
Pinterest Pin Freshness Level #1: brand new URLs
Here it is. The freshest of the fresh Pinterest pins are those that lead to a brand new, never before seen URL!
While consistently pinning fresh pins (brand new URLs) is the best way to generate traffic back to your website, it doesn’t mean it’s the only way to go about doing it.
It’s simply unsustainable to expect content creators to keep up with such a demand. That’s why supplementing with repins and creating thoughtful new pins for old content between fresh pins is the way to go.
Consistently pinning brand new URLs help create trust between your blog and Pinterest. It means you’re not spamming their users with repins and repeat URLs and they love that.
What’s more, Pinterest will give your fresh new ideas more exposure on the platform thus increasing your reach and ultimately click-throughs to your website. Woohoo!
How to create fresh ideas effectively
- Popularity — Have a blog post idea you’d like to write about? Search Pinterest for it to see how popular your topic is. If it’s really popular, ask yourself how you can make your content on the same topic unique or improve upon what others have done.
- Keyword research — Find keywords on Pinterest and Google relating to your topic and incorporate them into your post and pins.
- Offer quality content — Be sure to create quality content that solves your target audience’s problem.
- Pin-worthy pin designs — Create quality, Pinterest pins that stand out in a sea of pins about the same topic.
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Well written and organized. Thanks for the article. I wish to scale my Pinterest too.