How do you gain Pinterest followers?
When I embarked on The Pinterest Project in December 2015, I did it with one goal in mind: I wanted to gain Pinterest followers.
I gave myself one year to hit my goal, and got to work. At the time I had been blogging for years, but was just coming off the tail end of a ten month break. I had been neglecting my Pinterest account for even longer: the strategies I used to rely on were wildly out of date, which left me standing there with my (metaphorical) dick in hand.
Even though I knew my social media renaissance had to start with Pinterest, I wasnât sure what my strategy looked like beyond that. It was clear to me, even then, that Pinterest was the most important tool I would be using when leveraging my content online, but I wasnât sure how to actually apply that concept.
I also faced a secondary problem: there was a lot of conflicting information floating around (in fact, the great pin deletion debate still rages on in 2016), and because of it, I didnât know which strategies to implement, and which to avoid.
My solution quickly became: creating my own strategies.
After attending a handful of Twitter chats, reading up on Pinterestâs algorithm update, and eating case studies like blocks of shame cheese, I cobbled together my own game plan to gain Pinterest followers.
It worked. It wasnât fast (at first), but I saw growth. First one new follower, and then another. In the first month (December 2015 to January 2016), I saw an overall growth of +14 new followers.
For ME, that was good. Up until that little bloop, I had been stuck in the mid-300s for actual years.
By the end of January I knew I was on the right track, and it made me hungry for more – what I was doing worked, but I wanted it to work better. I redoubled my efforts and implemented phase two.
Between January and February 2016, I had a net gain of +59 new followers. February is a short month, too, so it equaled out to something like 59 new followers in 29 days. 59 delicious, completely organic followers.
Weâre currently in the first week of May, and my Pinterest account is sitting at a comfortable 1,020+ followers:
So letâs talk about THAT number for a second. My goal was to double my Pinterest followers before the end of 2016, and I tripled them within half that amount of time. And I want to be very clear, here, too: I did not buy my followers, participate in follow for follows, or spam giveaways.
What I learned was: there are three things you must do to see growth and gain Pinterest followers.
Loop and repin your pins – A pin with just one repin is more valuable than the same piece of content pinned ten times over. The more popular your pin becomes, the more value Pinterest will see in it. When Pinterest finds a valuable pin, that pin will show up in more peoples Smart Feeds than a pin with low/zero repins. Leverage a tool like BoardBooster to do your looping and repinning for you.
Post good content, consistently – Pinterest users love evergreen content and pinners who pin multiple times a day. The sweet spot for pins seems to be in the 15 to 30 pins per day range, depending on your audience. The more (QUALITY) content you post, the higher your repin and follower counts will be.
Optimize your board + pin descriptions with keywords – As we go into 2016 and 2017, a strange thing is happening: more people are using Pinterest as a search engine than a social media network. The only way Pinterest users who donât already follow you will discover your content through search is if you be sure to include rich descriptions in every pin and board.
Because I love a good case study, I put together a cheat sheet with EXACTLY what I did on a monthly basis for five months to gain Pinterest followers. I documented ev ery thing because I knew I was onto something good.
The end result is this cheat sheet⌠and itâs a meaty one.
You guys know how much I hate buzzwords.
If you want IN on these badass Pinterest strategies, enter your email below. And – if you’re looking for even more – make sure you check out my free email class, Pinterest Magic.
I am really trying to grow my Pinterest right now. I need to go through and optimize my boards:)
I’m currently using up my free trials of board booster, Buffer and Tailwind, but soon I’ll have to p pick one, bite then bullet and hand over some cash for a scheduler. They work though! I kind of wish they didn’t, but Pinterest moves so quickly and I can’t pin all day long (although I’d be happy to, I have a job)
These are great tips–I’ve been trying to keyword my pins and clean up my boards. I wasn’t familiar with the tool to loop and repin, so I’ll be checking that out asap. Thanks!
Thanks for sharing this! I’m off to work on my Pinterest game.
This is awesome! BoardBooster has been so helpful for me over the past few months.
xoxo, Jenny
These are great tips, thank you! I’ve been putting more of an effort into my Pinterest account of late but there is still much to do. Your post gives me hope đ
Great information here! I am also working on Pinterest strategy and will be utilizing some of these great tips, thanks!!
This is awesome. Thanks.
This is some really great information
Thanks for the great tips.
You are doing great with this. Thank you so much for the great tips. God Bless
Thanks for posting such an detailed and organized list. The dog is so cute.
Wow… 600+ followers in 90 days. its awesome. đ
Thanks for sharing this..!!
Great tips! We really haven’t used Pintrest at all but it’s on our radar. Facebook and Twitter has been where our readers seem to gravitate towards. It’s great to see the similarities in strategies.
Hi. Thanks for the tips, but I tried to download the checklist and it didn’t work. Can you hep please
Great advice on how to grow your Pinterest presence. Great stuff thanks for giving some great advice.
I just went from 2000 views to 20,000 views. So how do you optimize your boards and pins?
I started using Pinterest in 2016 and have been in love with it ever since. My posts werenât getting enough views in the beginning, and there were days when I hardly gained one follower a day. This made me turn to the best Pinterest automation tool, http://PinPinterest.com. Its sophisticated artificial intelligence never pins irrelevant content, and the scheduling pins feature has helped in maximizing the number of views per post. Moreover, it is mobile optimized and runs on the cloud, hence erasing the possibility of virus attack threats.