What Content Should I Pin?
Every time I teach a Pinterest workshop or work one-on-one with a coaching client, I always get asked this same question, “That’s really cool information you gave me about Pinterest but I’m still a little stuck, what should I be pinning?”
Some of the experts will tell you to pin the content that’s on your top boards. Other experts will give you a list of steps to check your Pinterest analytics and find out what interests your followers.
If your followers are into cooking or doing things with their kids, they’ll suggest you set up boards to pin recipes or DIY craft projects.
And then start pinning stuff to these boards so your followers will connect with you more and think to themselves, “Hey, she’s into Christmas decorating all year round like I am. I’m going to follow her other boards to see if we have even more stuff in common.”
OK, so I get all that logic and reasoning. It makes sense as you’re using the expert’s advice when it comes to increasing your followers in social media.
BUT – and this is a big huge honking BUT! – don’t forget the reason you signed up for Pinterest in the first place. It wasn’t to pretend that you like something just to get more people to follow your boards.
Your First Pinning Session
Remember that feeling you had when you first logged into this visual social site? You set up your account and started collecting the things you love.
Or you discovered how to research ideas for a staycation in your hometown for Spring Break. Or maybe it was getting some ideas to make something quick and easy for those nights when you didn’t feel like cooking.
Whatever your initial reason was for joining Pinterest, keep doing it. Keep pinning for yourself. It doesn’t hurt your ability to reach more Pinners if you have boards that show your personality.
In my honest opinion, I think having personal boards where you can pin the things that you love can help you more than hurt your chances to reach more people on Pinterest.
I believe that when we have boards with things that interest us, we go into Pinterest more often to pin to those boards.
Here’s what I’m talking about
I have a board called Dreamboard for My 2016 Goals. I love pinning to this board! It’s full of motivational quotes and reminders of where I am in my life.
I even add in monthly markers { I pin images that say “Hello January” or “Welcome March” } into my board so I can see what I was thinking about, dealing with or things I was overcoming at that time of the year.
It’s a great way to document how my year is moving forward. It’s like a year-long vision board Pinterest style.
The thing is – working on my Dreamboard has nothing to do with growing my business or generating traffic to my website.
I do it for me. I do it because I love creating a view into my world and finding these quotes that remind me of where I am at that point in my life.
So if you love pinning recipes or planning birthday parties, do it! Pin what want, collect those images that make you happy because the irony of this is that the more you’re using Pinterest, the higher you’re being scored in Pinterest’s content guides.
And the higher your score, the more your content will show up in Pinterest’s feeds to people who are not following you.
Growing Your Pinterest Boards
But what about finding content to grow your boards?
So now you get the idea about pinning for the sake of just the pure enjoyment of pinning. But what can you do to find more content to help you grow the followers of your boards?
If there’s anything that you remember from this Pinterest post, I hope that it’s this: It’s important for you to view each of your pinboards as its own destination.
As you’re looking to grow the number of followers to your boards, think about these questions, “Why would someone want to follow this board?’ and “What makes my board different than the other boards with the same topic?”
Think about the answers you came up with and write out some ideas to pin to your boards.
Because it really comes down the content that you pin to that board. Your boards should be a resource to your followers. A place that if they’re not seeing your pins come through their feed, they’ll click on your profile to see what you’ve been pinning.
There are two things that you can do right now to find great content to pin to your boards:
Find new boards to follow:
When you run a search in Pinterest, you can search for Pins, Pinners and Boards. Use specific key words in the search line on the top of the program and click on the Boards button.
See the example below:
Follow Topics:
Previously called Interests, Topics is a feature that allows you to follow a specific topic and Pinterest will automatically set up your interests as a pinboard.
To start following Topics, you can follow these pinboards on mobile as well as your desktop. Personally, I find it easier to find new Topics on mobile by following these steps:
- Click on your Following button.
- You’ll see a list of the Boards, Pinners and an option to find Topics.
- To find Topics to follow, click on the Add button and then type in your key words for the Topic you’re looking for.
Pinterest will pull up a pinboard with pins for your Topic.
To follow the board, just click the Red Follow button. You’ll also get Related Topics as an option to follow as well.
To find Topics on your desktop, click on the Categories button that’s located to the right of the search feature. Please keep in mind that these categories are pretty generic so you may have to click around the different categories to find your specific Topic.
As an example – I was running a search for social media and I had to click on the Everything Category to find related Topics. I clicked on Digital Marketing to find this Topic:
After you’ve found and followed several content-rich boards and Topics that are connected to what you’re looking for, spend some time during each of your pinning sessions in your Topics boards to find new pins to add to your own boards.
It may take a little time for these boards and Topics to show up in your Pinterest home feed. So for the first couple of weeks, you’ll need to click your Following button and go directly to these boards and Topics to find new content.
The more you pin from these resources, the more Pinterest will see your interest in this content and will start adding these pins into your Pinterest feed. Eventually, you’ll see pins with the words Found In { name of Topic } and you’ll be able to click on your new content when you log into Pinterest.
PS Want more tips like this to grow your Pinterest followers and turn Pinterest into one of your top marketing tools? Click here to grab your FREE copy of ‘How I Grew My Pinterest Account to over 10,000 Followers‘.
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