How I grew my Pinterest account from 31 to 185K followers in 8 months
Can I be honest with you?
I have resisted using Pinterest to market my business for nearly two years.
TWO. WHOLE. YEARS.
It truly pains me to say and admit this knowing what I know today and experiencing the tremendous growth on my Pinterest account from 31 to 185K followers in 8 months and 147,000,000 impressions in 2021.
There are four things I did to grow my Pinterest account from 31 to 185K followers in 8 months.
- Lean into video content; specifically, idea pins
- Post Consistently
- Not afraid of trial and error
- Solve ideal customer’s problem or challenge
I didn't understand Pinterest
If you’re anything like me, Pinterest was a bit of a mystery.
For nearly two years of my business, I did not dedicate any time to a Pinterest strategy.
Instead of leaning into the platform in the early years of my business I started out marketing my business using social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok and later SEO strategies with Google.
Now, here’s a little more honesty.
There is one big reason why I didn’t choose to add Pinterest for my organic marketing efforts.
It wasn’t because I didn’t have time or that I was a solopreneur and adding one more thing was overwhelming and daunting.
This is embarrassing to share, but here I go.
I did not use Pinterest marketing to organically grow my business because I didn’t understand what Pinterest was and how to use it.
Yikes. That’s hard to admit, but that is the truth. I did not understand Pinterest at all.
Sure, I had used it for personal reasons, but only to get inspired on home décor or to save my favorite vegan food recipes.
Using it in this way to save images for my next home project or next vegan meal made sense to me, but to extend the use of the platform to my business did not make a lick of sense.
I was at a complete loss on how to use the platform for business marketing. This gap in understanding stood in the way of marketing my business. It became a hurdle that I put between me and my ideal customer.
My ideal customer is on Pinterest
In April of 2021, as I started to feel very comfortable with my marketing efforts on Instagram and TikTok, I decided to give Pinterest a real shot with actual strategy.
At that time I began to understand how Pinterest is a visual search engine with elements like a social network.
I wanted to show up for my ideal customer because I knew she was an active user on Pinterest.
My ideal customer avatar is most definitely on Pinterest. She is on the platform gathering ideas for her next big project, just as I was, but I personally couldn’t see the connection to how my business and offerings could be marketed to her.
It wasn’t until I took messy action that I started to learn and grow on Pinterest. It took action. Plain and simple.
Strategically use video to attract my ideal customer
In today’s environment, talking about Pinterest goes hand in hand with the discussion on Idea Pins (formally Story Pins). If you’re not yet familiar with Idea pins, this is a new pin format introduced by Pinterest in the summer of 2020.
Through one or up to 20 frames, a creator can add a static, or still image or a video to the pin to share an idea or concept to their audience. It’s another way to inspire your ideal customer with an idea to better their lives or share something new for aspirational living.
My explosive growth on Pinterest was partly because of the Idea Pin content I shared on my account. While the content I shared for Idea Pins was a mix of photos and videos, I heavily leaned into videos in most of my published Idea pins.
This particular strategy worked in my favor for a few reasons.
Pinterest indexes the Idea Pin content differently than other pins
Pinterest invested heavily in the Idea Pin technology. Additionally, Pinterest indexes this pin type differently than other pin types. This new indexing methodology allows for Pinterest to quickly index pin content on Idea Pins to share with the right audience quickly. Instead of indexing the content over days, weeks, months and years, Idea pins undergo rapid indexing that can take minutes.
Pinterest favors Idea Pins instead of Video Pins
Idea Pins are the hot new feature on Pinterest and Pinterest pushed this new pin type heavily. While video pins still exist at the writing of this post, this pin type is being phased out in favor of Idea Pins. Video is here to stay on Pinterest, but in the form of Idea pins.
Post consistently on the platform
My personal growth strategy on Pinterest is based on consistently posting on the platform.
Long gone are the days where I would post once and then show up weeks later to see near zero impressions.
Once I committed to using Pinterest for marketing my efforts, that also included posting pins on a consistent and regular basis.
What does it mean to be consistent? Posting consistently is different for everyone. What I decided was to find a cadence of posting pins that felt right for myself and my business. This cadence is something that I wanted to keep up over time. After some trial and error, my personal cadence is 3-4 pins on a daily basis.
Let me also share that my consistency has changed shape during the past eight months as I learned more about the platform. In the beginning I posted 1 pin daily.
I share more on this in my next point.
Use trial and error to refine my strategy
From the beginning, my personal approach to learning Pinterest revolved heavily on throwing spaghetti on the wall. I repeatedly threw idea after idea in the form of content out there to see what would stick.
I tried posting one piece of content, then waited to understand how the pin performed. I continued this practice for nearly three months before really understanding how Pinterest users responded to my content and why.
The use of trial and error is how I learned the platform and refined my personal strategy. Only through this practice did I evolve in my strategy and pivot when something did not work. Truth be told, I continue to apply this strategy today whenever I create new content that deviates from my core content.
This practice will continue to have a place in my strategy because it works.
Solve a problem that is a challenge for your ideal customer
In each and every piece of content I create or produce for Pinterest I am thinking about my ideal customer and how I am solving her problem.
As a business owner, I know that I serve my audience by solving a problem.
Whenever I do not create content for this purpose, my audience and the platform is quick to tell me when I got it wrong.
The numbers will always reflect when I am not adding value to my ideal customer.
The problems I solve are not always earth shattering or problems that change the world, per se, but my solutions do solve challenges in my idea customer’s world. Each time I’m able to inspire my idea customer avatar I’m helping to better or change her life.
My ability to understand and connect with her adds to the like, know, and trust factor and I start to build a community of raving fans. This community is built one by one, just like the bricks of a home.
Conclusion
As a business owner, committing to doing these four things will pave the way to seeing noteworthy changes in your Pinterest account and allow you to reach your ideal customer to help solve their problems.
If you have more questions and you’re wanting to learn more about how to use Pinterest for marketing your small business, I invite you to grab this free checklist that includes all the things I did to develop my own personal Pinterest strategy.
It’s the exact strategy I used to grow from casual recipe re-pinner to an expert Pinterest educator with proven business growth.
If you’re new to Pinterest and want to use it for organically marketing your small business, let me be your guide. I was in your shoes, not too long ago, and I will share all my learnings with you. Come along for the journey!
Southern California based Professional Organizer, Sandy Park, owner and founder of Tidy with SPARK shares her joy of organization with her clients.
She serves clients in Orange County as well as the hundreds of thousands of followers on her combined social media platforms.
Connect with Sandy through her website or by connecting through her social channels.