Pinterest strategy for bloggers and marketers is changing right now. Adopt a new approach to save your website analytics. Hint! Use video and animation tools.
Why Your Current Pinterest Strategy is in Danger of Damaging Your Traffic
Now that Pinterest strategy is changing, we will need to adapt as well. Pinterest has long been requesting creators to add fresh content. In the past, a standard pin could be rendered “fresh” simply with swapping out images, preferably with unique images but more often than naught stock photography. We will all have to up our game as the algorithm is getting more sophisticated.
This month, Pinterest has taken another step further by favoring video over standard pins and limiting impressions for the same pin on multiple boards. It has actually thrown the Pinterest community and scheduling tools like Tailwind into the midst of a massive shift. Yes, every time a platform shifts its algorithm, there are plenty of complaints and outrage but realistically, all you can do is develop as a creator.
Here’s what is absolutely certain though, you are not alone and there are a lot of really smart marketers out there working on this. In the days and months ahead, we will all be learning rapidly which does seem like a theme in 2020.
Our best advice? Adapt! Period. Full stop. Get over it. Figure out what you need to do. Put your energy into getting ahead of the curve instead of falling behind.
How A Pinterest Strategy Is Different
Do you sell something? Are you being paid passively by driving traffic to a blog? Safe to say, driving traffic to your website is the primary reason you are pouring energy into Pinterest, right?
Even though you may be branding appropriately, developing great content, and employing good SEO practices to drive organic searches on Google, promoting on other platforms is necessary. You also already promote on social media like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Tik Tok.
So why devote so much energy to Pinterest? It’s actually a huge part of most bloggers’ traffic. It’s free (unless you pay to promote) and incredibly popular with the exact audience bloggers and sellers need to attract. From travel to recipes to fashion Pinterest is driving consumer online spending according to a lot of research.
On top of that, it’s both a search engine and social media platform which is rather unique. In actuality, that may be why they have had so much trouble creating the perfect scenario for creators and consumers in a single space.
Why Things Are Changing & Why the Pinterest Strategy is Changing Too
Pinterest has actually been quite clear they intend to improve the user experience on their platform. And, while everyone can hear something, not everyone has been truly listening. Here are a few complaints of users that may be driving some of these changes.
First, the user experience Is highly repetitive.
Users see many of the same pins over and over again in their feed. Not only that, but many different pins lead to the exact same articles, recipes, and products. I understand how that can be a frustrating experience. Totally get it! I would love to see a greater variety of creators with a variety of content.
Second, Pinterest users are fed up with spam and misleading headlines.
How many of us find an awesome pin with a great graphic with an equally appealing description? It’s exactly what you were searching for! You click and it takes you somewhere entirely different with none of what you thought you’d be seeing.
In fact, it scares many users as they believe they may now be phishing targets. Even if it brings you to a site where the product may be similar but is it really what the pin described? Links are often applied to other pins created by entirely different sellers. With all that and more, the Pinterest experience is eroding by bad actors and spammy strategies.
Third, the frustration of Pinterest and creators with stolen content is very real.
If you have poured your heart and soul into a blog with terrific content, why is it so easy to have it all hijacked and redirected away from your profile and website? If you have created an amazing product, spent timeless energy on recipes or tutorials, only to be targeted by bots, you may actually consider removing your items from Pinterest altogether, right? I know I would!
It takes a rather significant part of my week to put content out on Pinterest. While Pinterest has been empathetic to the plight of legitimate creators, it has been unable to remove the fraudulent practices of these bad actors altogether. Worse yet, sometimes the users reporting the stolen pin are penalized. The problem is massive!
The Pinterest Strategy Changes, Summer 2020
So now we understand that Pinterest really does want quality, original content to serve up to their community. How can they do that with these algorithm changes? Simply put, Pinterest is demanding more from creators in exchange for greater reach and audience targeting. No, that doesn’t mean even more pins for existing content. It’s actually different formats of pins for new or fresh content.
Video Content is King with the New Pinterest Strategy
Whether it is video or an idea pin, the animation factor is huge. Especially with younger demographics obsessed with Tik Tok, Snapchat, or stories and reels on Instagram, creativity is expanding exponentially. While conjecture on my part, I suspect Pinterest wants to offer something comparable to its audiences. From make-up tutorials and short recipes, they are serving up videos like every other platform and encouraging creators to jump on board. Just look at YouTube and you can see why this might be a part of the new direction that started in 2020.
The Idea Pin is Good News, Bad News
If you could target an audience interested in California road trips with your reviews, packing tips, best places to stay, or what to avoid why wouldn’t you do it?
In the past, you have had to depend on keywords and flooding Pinterest with standard pins. Now, there is another option. The good news is the idea pin is free and will have greater reach (by design by Pinterest at the moment). The bad news? It’s a multi-step process for users to reach your website.
Strategic Content Creation Can Save Your Analytics
Pinterest has long been requesting creators to add fresh content. In the past, a standard pin could be rendered “fresh” simply by swapping out images, preferably with unique images but more often than naught stock photography.
They take the “fresh” approach a step further by favoring video over standard pins and idea pins even more! The platform also stopped rewarding pins added to multiple Pinterest Boards over time. By limiting the number of people seeing any creators’ standard pin after the first board and pin they are essentially demanding new content from creators. You can no longer pin the same link, image, and text (the basic content of any pin) to multiple boards and see the results you have in the past.
But, contrary to all the people who believe the sky is falling, there are upsides, especially if you develop a strong strategy immediately.
Waiting to see how this all shakes out could be a disaster. I don’t say this to shock you but to warn you as the algorithm continues to impact analytics in just the past. If you can understand what is expected, how to create the proper content and execute you’ll save your analytics both in the short term as well as the long term.
Buckle Up Kids! We’re Diving Into the Deep End!
Your New Pinterest Strategy Requires a Branding Lesson
Branding Versus Promotion
A representation of your company, its products, and its content is branding. It targets a specific audience with messaging which influences the look and feel of every single communication. A brand will typically be representative of a specific set of values, quality of product, celebrity associations, or a host of other factors, including service levels.
Promotions are the actual advertisements, sales materials, and sales funnels created. They are created in support of the brand. If on target, they enhance or reinforce the brand messages. If off message, sales promotions can destroy a brand rather quickly.
Why get into this? This will be a key difference between a video pin and an idea pin. If you need help developing your brand, start with branding boards. We detailed the process with examples and a template in our post, How To Use Branding Boards.
Branding In Your Pinterest Strategy: The Purpose of the Idea Pin
If you struggle with maintaining a brand identity because Pinterest has long demanded lots and lots of pins with different images, you may sigh in relief as this may be changing. A single idea pin linking back to your profile may drive more than one pin, much like a brand drives its identity back to a profile or website.
Granted, it may take a few extra steps for users to find content and links to go through to your site. The open-ended question is whether users will go to the trouble to click through to your pins and boards and ultimately your website. This is an entirely valid concern for creators.
Let’s face it, without a direct url, Instagram has also severely limited the ability of small accounts to sell a product or direct users to their resources. The exception for direct links is Instagram accounts with 10,000 or more followers.
Savvy Cali Girl Branding In Our Own Pinterest Strategy
Whether it’s beaches, palm trees, Disneyland, or any other number of iconic images, we will be incorporating them into our Story pins. We also focus on a clean look so our fonts and layouts will reflect that also. Why do we mention these details?
You’ll see in our examples below how to stay on message in your design of video and idea pins. Just keep these in mind when checking out our content.
Get Acquainted with the Types of Video Pinterest Pins in Use Today
First, we added the basic specifications below for both the video and idea pins (formerly story pins) according to Pinterest resources. Second. there are certain aspects of videos that are different and you’ll need to get up to speed. Third, there are limits on characters, descriptions, etc.
Video Pins
A standard pin we are all familiar with is an image, usually with text to entice someone to click. Most creators also include their logo in order to promote their brand. The actual specifications from Pinterest are below.
- File type: .mp4, .mov or .m4v
- Max file size: Up to 2GB
- Video length: Minimum 4 seconds, maximum 15 minutes
- Aspect ratio shorter than 1:2 (width:height), taller than 1.91:1. Recommended making videos square (1:1) or vertical (2:3, 9:16).
- Title: Up to 100 characters. If you don’t fill out a title, people will see your Pin description instead.
- Description: Up to 500 characters. The first 50-60 characters are most likely to show up in people’s feeds, so put your most important info first.
Idea Pins
The advent of the idea/story pin with Pinterest is new and certainly a work in progress. The technical specifications from Pinterest are listed below.
- Aspect ratio: No restrictions for image or video
- Character length Android and iOS: Titles must have a minimum of 1 character and 42 characters maximum …… Web: Titles must have a minimum of 1 character and 100 characters maximum
- File size: Android and iOS: 16mb recommended …. Web: 32mb maximum for images and 50 mb for videos
- Types of Images: .BMP, .GIF, .JPEG, .PNG, .TIFF, .WEBP
- Video File Type: .MP4, .MOV, .M4V
- Image Resolution: 300×500 pixel size minimum, 1200×1800 pixel size recommended, 2000×3000 pixel size maximum
- Video Resolution: 1080p maximum (1920×1080 pixel size) Note: There is no maximum pixel size on Web
- Length: Between 2-20 seconds
Video Pins Have to be a Key Part of Your New Pinterest Strategy
Video Pins: More Work, Better ROI
When I say work smarter, not harder you may believe I’m steering you in the wrong direction with video pins. After all, why do even more work on video pins when you’re already overwhelmed with standard pins?
You’re devoting time to your social media like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, etc. You’re creating blog posts, making products, or otherwise working hard in your niche. The reason why I say invest a little time to learn video is that Pinterest is truly rewarding video within their algorithm changes.
Don’t believe me? That’s okay, I didn’t believe it was worth the effort until I ran some tests. Yes, I am a true skeptic and just because someone says this is what works, I can’t ever take them at their word. Sorry, but had to test out Pinterest and their “story” about fresh content and video.
Our Results with Video Pins
While our standard pins have obviously been suppressed by Pinterest (my traffic dropped like everyone else of course in June 2020), our video pins are actually seeing greater reach. Even with an already used url (previously promoted blog post), the video is getting great traction!
As an example, our post from January on Julian, a quaint little town for a San Diego day trip, had nice engagement. The standard pins were only seeing a few hundred impressions and the second and third shares to boards were getting next to nothing. This was definitely worsening as May stretched into mid-June. Video pins, on the other hand, saw tenfold the number of impressions.
The proof? We’ve got a handful of examples on this post and are continuing to test. We’ve provided the link to our Pinterest boards here for you.
Savvy Cali Girl Video Pins & Cycles
Pinterest Strategy: Concerns & Observations with Video Pins
Note: A 2nd and 3rd cycle yielded severely poor results either because they weren’t spaced far enough apart or the image used is now consider “stale” similar to a standard pin.
Using the interval approach with Tailwind can help space out the time between pins with video the same as with standard pins. The ideal interval is under great debate but we currently do not post the same url within a month of the last pin no matter the format of the pin.
Pay Attention: Another factor is how Pinterest is serving up videos on mobile versus desktop. It does seem to suggest the next video to watch when you are on a mobile device. It appears within the video screen near the end. Usually, it is another video of my own account but there are other suggestions as well. Now, it isn’t happening 100% of the time or even on all the accounts we work on but it is a shift worth keeping an eye on.
How to Integrate Idea Pins Into Your Pinterest Strategy
Pinterest Story Pin by Savvy Cali Girl
Idea Pins Are A Mini Commercial For Your Pinterest Profile
If you can develop a set of templates, the Pinterest Idea Pin can actually become an easy mini commercial for your Pinterest profile and consequently reach a wide wide audience for more of your pins, links, and boards.
The idea pin here is all about summer vacation in California. As a travel and lifestyle blogger, it was important to give a look and feel for what to expect when they look at our profile. Make sure to NOT mislead the audience you are targeting. Why? It will damage your brand. Remember we talked about spammy links and off message pins?
This particular Idea Pin targeted the following when created on Pinterest: California, Northern California, Southern California, Summer Vacation, and Road Trips. The options are still rather limited by Pinterest but hopefully, that will expand as they gain experience with creators. I also chose California Travel as the Title on Pinterest to match the board (with the same name) that it was pinned to.
Our Results with Idea Pins
To be clear, Savvy Cali Girl is a new blog in its infancy. We are in the first year of creating content, developing a presence, and growing our social media platforms. We are not going to promise unreasonable results for bloggers or small businesses. It’s just not the reality most entrepreneurs experience as the learning curve is steep. The time it takes to be an expert and execute despite changing market conditions and platform algorithms sidelines many as frustrations mount.
That being said, it is rare for a platform change to benefit a small business or a new blogger. While an Idea Pin may seem pointless to those established, it is a blessing for those of us trying to grow in a crowded space. The Idea Pin here was created in less than ten minutes. I can now recreate versions in five minutes.
Here are the results over a 24-hour period.
- Within 5 Minutes of Posting: 1.18k Impressions & 21 Closeups
- 30 Minutes of Posting: 2.28k Impressions & 26 Closeups
- The 1st Hour of Posting: 2.6k Impressions & 29 Closeups
- First Three Hours of Posting: 3.62k Impressions & 41 Closeups
- Within Eight Hours of Posting: 5.2k Impressions & 56 Closeups
- At 24 Hours of Posting: 6.11k Impressions & 64 Closeups
Your Pinterest Strategy Is Unique
Stop Doing This Right Now
It’s truly time to stop pushing out stale content (repetitive standard pins) across your boards. Not only will Pinterest suppress impressions but perhaps down the road underperforming pins will be a drag on your profile. If you’re going to work hard at least make sure there is a return on your time and energy.
What You Can Do Right Now
Whether you are a fan of video or not, the writing is on the wall. In order to accelerate impressions, whether your account is big or small, start incorporating various forms of video content. Take a few test runs to learn what your particular audience is enjoying and what Pinterest rewards in their algorithm.
Even if you aren’t ready for video and idea pins, just start researching what appeals to you and your audience. Learn what’s out there and what is not.
Start learning! Video is not going away so start learning how to create them quickly, efficiently, and as cost-effectively as possible. I list various methods in another blog post recently published. The resources are all free and you can get started creating video content right now!
Lastly, your content, your audience, your video and story pins are wholly unique. You can do what I do but certainly do it your way, with your personality! What may work incredibly well for our team, may be a complete flop with your audience. If you’re edgy, your people will hate a vanilla video. Conversely, if you go wild and your people are conservative, they’ll likely stop following and definitely won’t engage with your new content.
