Do you know what feels like that worst thing ever? To put your blood sweat and tears into designing 30+ beautiful pin images, scheduling them out consistently, and investing so much into Pinterest growth- just to hear CRICKETS.

I’ve been there, and it’s not a pleasant feeling. Have you?

Well, I’m going to let you in on a little secret about the one thing that WILL turn things around, and it’s the number one mistake most people are making on Pinterest.

The Problem is that You are most likely targeting the wrong audience

I regularly perform free audits for potential clients to help them identify where they need support in their Pinterest marketing efforts.

Many of the business owners I meet are already established on Pinterest, have thousands of followers on Pinterest, and once had a very good stream of traffic coming from Pinterest that has since declined. The problem is that 95% of them are targeting the wrong audience.

An Obvious example:

I recently did an audit for a life coach that focuses a lot on mental health. One of her boards was labeled “Journal Prompts.” Pretty self-explanatory, right?

However, her board was being categorized under “writing prompts.” So what was the problem with this? The reason her pins about journal prompts were getting low impressions is that this interest is very common for authors, who are looking for creative writing prompts, how to develop characters, etc. She wasn’t reaching people who had an interest in mental health, and self-discovery, she was reaching people who wanted help writing books.

A Less obvious example:

Other examples are a little less obvious. One business owner I recently worked with had a board about healthy food to help your hormones. Her board was being categorized under “easy recipes.” That sounds like a relevant interest because they are both about recipes, right?

It’s not that simple. This audience is interested in recipes, but aren’t necessarily looking for healthy recipes. Most of the pins in this sections were pizza rollups, creamy casseroles, etc. There’s a chance that this audience could have some interest in her content, but she wasn’t targeting the most specific audience she could.

If you’re on Pinterest but are getting low impressions, you are most likely not targeting a specific enough audience.

The solution: Interest targeting

What is interest targeting, you may ask? Well, if you do a google search, you will most likely get a bunch of content about ads. But did you know that you can target a specific audience with your organic content using Pinterest too!?

Nobody talks about this!

Case study: interest targeting results

Each account had an almost 100% minimum increase in engagement right away
Multiple pins received thousands of impressions in the first 30 days
Many pins continued to circulate, receiving as much as 192k impressions on single pin images in 180 days.
Website traffic tripled in 30 days

Pinners are ready to take action, and Pinterest is the best platform to get your brand discovered by more people and drive long-term results. The thing you really need to know is that strategy has become more important than ever.

Pinterest has made many changes over the last year, filtering out spam and making a more positive user experience overall. But this means that Pinterest marketing strategies that once worked for you may need to be reexamined in 2022.

So get your notepad out and get ready for the 4 tactics you need to skyrocket your growth in 2022.

1. UTILIZE INTEREST TARGETING

If you’re familiar with Pinterest ads, you know that both keywords and interests are foundational to targeting the right audience. Many people don’t know this, but the same is true for organic strategies. Your account MUST be set up properly to target the right audience by their specific interests.

It used to be that you could manually select a relevant interest when uploading a pin, but now Pinterest has removed that feature and allows the algorithm to choose the interest for you.

Unfortunately, if your account and your pins are not optimized correctly for interests, they will often not get categorized under the most specific audience they could be.

In addition to your keyword research on Pinterest, it is ESSENTIAL to do interest research and targeting.

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2. CREATE FRESH PINS

Fresh pins are also an essential part of increasing your Pinterest growth. Pinterest has said that its algorithm prioritizes fresh pins and that they’d like to see 15-25 fresh pins posted daily.

However, I’ve found that consistency is more important than the number of posts. If you’re just starting out, choose a number, like 5 fresh pins per day, and do that consistently until you’re ready to add more for optimal growth.

In order to create fresh pins, you’ll need to make small changes to your pin images and descriptions. Read my post about repurposing content for Pinterest here to learn some shortcuts and strategies for quickly and efficiently creating new content for Pinterest.

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3. USE A MANUAL PINNING STRATEGY

Pinterest wants to get more users on the app and keep them there longer. Naturally, this means that manual pinning will boost your account. I’ve tested this out quite a bit myself, and manual pinning ALWAYS increases reach and engagement significantly. Fresh pinning strategies through tailwind are still effective, but if you’re looking to grow at much faster rates and have the extra time, try adding manual pinning to your strategy as well.

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4. UTILIZE ADS

I highly recommend trying Pinterest ads. There are many benefits to doing so. Not only is there less competition, and they are much cheaper per conversion compared to other ads, but it’s a much faster way to get a lot of information about how your message and sales pages are working with your audience.

Ads allow you to increase your visibility and send traffic to your website much faster, giving you a lot of data to work with. You can use heat maps and tools to measure your performance, and quickly and easily improve your messaging and sales pages. Once you do this, you’ll see better conversions with both organic and paid marketing.

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CONCLUSION

Pinterest marketing is going to be hot in 2022, especially when you’re using an updated strategy! I can help you rock your strategy and optimize your Pinterest account in 2022. If you’re ready to grow, check out my services, or book a call so we can see if we are a good fit to work together.