5 Pinterest Mistakes You Might be Making

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Looking into bringing in more traffic to your blog from Pinterest? Make sure you’re not making these Pinterest mistakes first!

GUEST POST by Kinga at Kingascorner.com


pinterest mistakes you might be making

You’ve tried it a few times, but still doesn’t seem to be working? Don’t give up, Pinterest works!

It’s my main source of traffic so far and I don’t know what I’d do without it. 

So, you’re probably missing out on some things, luckily I am here to share a few Pinterest mistakes you might be doing and how to solve them.

Mistakes I’ve done in the past, and if I am completely honest with you, I am still doing some of them.

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Pinterest Mistakes you Might be Making

Pinterest Mistake 1 – Treating Pinterest as a Social Media Platform

You might know that Pinterest is not a social platform, it’s a search engine. It works like Google – you use it to find things. In order to find things on the platform, you need certain keywords.

This takes us to the second Pinterest mistake. 

Pinterest Mistake 2 – Using Keywords incorrectly

Because it’s a search engine, you need to be found. People will use certain words or groups of words (aka keywords) to describe what they are looking for.

These keywords must be on your account in order to be found on Pinterest, in front of the right people.

Therefore, you must put keywords everywhere you can think of:

  • Your profile description
  • Your boards’ description
  • The pins titles and descriptions
  • The actual pin image 

3 Things to avoid:

1. Not using keywords at all

I get it, sometimes we are in a hurry and we just want to get the task done.

If you want to be successful on Pinterest, you must make time for it.

Pinterest’s algorithm won’t know where to put your pin, whom to show it to. This is something you can’t go back and edit.

That’s how the algorithm works. 

2. Keyword stuffing

This refers to adding lots of nonrelevant keywords.

This not only will make you look spammy, but it will bring you the wrong kind of traffic.

You absolutely want to focus on the right audience, because these are the people who are going to come back to your website for more, these are the people that will become your customers.

3. Short-tail keywords or one-word keywords

Another huge mistake! Why? It’s too broad, so your content is almost impossible to find.

Try niching down, be more specific and find long-tail keywords and use them in ALL the places I mentioned above. 

Example:

Short-tail keyword: blogging 

Long-tail keyword: how to make money blogging 

Pinterest Mistake 3 – Deleting Pins from your account

Did you do it before? Well… it’s time to stop!

Pinterest can penalize you for it. So what’s the solution?

Create a secret board and chuck everything in there and nobody will see it, besides you of course. 

I have tons of secret boards and they work just fine. 

Pinterest Mistake 4 – Unattractive pins

I see lots of mistakes when it comes to pins, so here are just a few things to consider when creating a new pin:

  • Make sure it’s the right size – this changes from time to time, but The recommended pin dimensions are 600px by 900px or if you want to use a different width, just make sure to keep it at a 2:3 ratio. 
  • Use vertical pins only – they stand out more and won’t get lost when people scroll through their feed
  • Choose the right color palette – a very important aspect of any pin is choosing the right color. What do I mean by this? It is easy to read? Are the colors too bright? Is the right color combination?
  • Choose a font that people can actually read – I get it, those fonts are cute and look great, but are they easy to read? This is what encourages people to click through your site. Sometimes less is more.

Examples:

I’ve added some of my pins I created in the past, just to show you the difference between a bad pin that’s ugly and hard to read and a good pin that’s easy to read and catches your eye.

Ugly & bad pins – at a glance these don’t necessarily look ugly, but they are very difficult to read because of the fonts and color I was using.

When scrolling your feed on Pinterest, the pins are small, so you want them to stand out and be as easy to read as possible. 

Good Pins – see the difference here?

I am not saying these are perfect, but they are definitely much better than the first ones. When scrolling through the feed, they catch your eye and make you stop scrolling to take a look, plus they are much easier to read. 

Here are a few things to consider when designing a new pin:

  • Use up to 2-3 fonts and make sure they complement each other and they are easy to read
  • Use the right color combination when it comes to text and background. Don’t use a yellow text on a white background. Contrast is everything
  • Don’t overdo it – sometimes less is more and the simpler the better
  • Use big and bold size for the fonts

Pinterest Mistake 5 – Not posting new and regular pins

Pinterest loves fresh and new pins!

This doesn’t mean that you have to write new content every single day. You just have to create new and fresh pins to add to your profile on a daily basis.

I learned this the hard way!

I stopped adding new pins to my Pinterest account and I also stopped using Tailwind scheduler.

Therefore, my monthly views dropped significantly. It’s a lot of work to get back up, but not impossible for sure. 

Avoid using and scheduling old pins, because it’s a waste of time. Pinterest’s algorithm sees them as old content.

So it’s best to use that time to create new pins for your existing articles and manually add them to your profile. Pinterest will love you for that!

Also, if you are using a scheduler, like Tailwind, make sure you don’t overdo it and you do some manual pinning as well. 

Conclusions

There you have it – 5 Pinterest mistakes you might be making.

I hope you found this helpful.

Don’t forget to start implementing some of these ideas to improve your Pinterest marketing strategy. 

Feel free to comment down below what Pinterest mistakes you are currently making. 

ABOUT KINGA

Hi, I am Kinga! The founder of KingasCorner.com. In real life, I am a wife, a stay-at-home-mum to a beautiful toddler and a huge coffee lover. One of my biggest desires is to help other first-time mommies out there to “survive” their new life with a baby. Recently, I decided to add content about blogging and business. And because I’d like to make your life much easier, I’ve created a few free resources that can help you along the way. Come and check them out. See you there!

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