Pinterest is like any digital platform, it’s always changing and adapting and in the last couple of days, they have released new guidelines that anyone marketing on the platform should pay attention to. My guess is that these changes are coming out ahead of the election to avoid spam and false or misleading news, basically, they are cleaning house! As a Pinterest manager, it’s my job to keep up on these things, but I thought it would be helpful for any Pinterest marketer to understand and apply these changes to their marketing strategy. So here are the 5 main things you need to know!
Pin more fresh content.
Fresh content is the key change for 2020. Pinterest wants an emphasis on FRESH content, not just the same pin over and over again. According to Pinterest, pinners like new pins that are either seasonal or applicable to what they are looking for.
So what qualifies as “fresh content”? This just means a new image or graphic. It doesn’t mean you need to be posting a new blog post every day, but that you need to keep the graphics for your blog posts fresh.
For example, if you have a blog post that you wrote a couple of years ago and it still brings you a ton of traffic, you can simply create a fresh graphic for that blog post to keep it new and inline with Pinterest best practices.
Update your legacy content.
Along with keeping your pins fresh, you’ll also want to make sure the links that connect to your pins are updated and an accurate representation of the pin. You probably have a couple of blog posts that are performing best on Pinterest, go through each of them and make sure the content is current. For example, if you had a post about how to market on Instagram that was written in 2018, you can go through that blog post and update it with new information that applies to 2020. This is also a great way to get more mileage out of your blog posts!
Focus on quality over quantity.
Spending your time to create quality blog posts, opt-ins and pins will go along the way this year on Pinterest. If you’re repinning the same pin from 2 years ago, it’s time to stop and create a new one. This may mean you have to cut back on the number of times you are pinning per day, but Pinterest would prefer you do that rather than fill up the feed with outdated and worn out pins.
Don’t spam.
In a nutshell, this is what it comes down to. Don’t pin like a robot! Experts are saying you shouldn’t pin the same pin to more than 10 boards in a period. Don’t pin the same pin back-to-back and keep your TailWind Smart Loops fresh, they shouldn’t be set-it and forget it!
Use TailWind Smart Guide.
Using TailWind for your scheduling can help you stay in line with Pinterest’s best practices. They have added a Smart Guide Feature that will alert you if they see spammy behavior on your account (with all these new guidelines in mind). Every account has it and it can be a great tool for applying these changes. Tailwind is a Pinterest partner so you can trust the info you get from them!
Follow Pinterest updates.
Pinterest is great at communicating their policies and guidelines. They provide a resource for businesses to stay in the loop, get advice and understand trends. Pinterest also has a fabulous best practices guide for making sure you’re creating pins that fall inline.