Pinterest problems; my Pinterest is not growing

I’m not sure if I am the only one with this problem but my Pinterest didn’t grow for the longest time. After the initial bump from following people there just wasn’t anything new.

I have read a lot of post on how to grow your Pinterest but the truth is that there is a lot of luck involved. But that doesn’t mean that you can help your Pinterest profile a little.

Since I encountered this problem I have tried a lot of things.

Suddenly I did get a bump but it still isn’t much. So how do people grow their Pinterest to 1k or more?

This is what didn’t work and maybe worked. If you have any tips; leave them below in the comments for me and others that struggle.

What didn’t work; 

Joining all kind of group boards

Group boards are great but they aren’t magical places where suddenly all your problems will be solved (unfortunately).

When joining group boards, it is very important to look at the quality of the pins, the followers, the amount of contributors and the topics.

Joining 20 recipe boards as a fashion blogger is never useful. Try to go only for the best boards and don’t expect magic to happen.

Update one this; do not accept all invitations and leave group boards that are not working for you anymore. 

Pinning all day every day

Another one that is just not true. I pinned a lot for some weeks but the only thing that happened is that I started to pin things just for the sake of pinning instead of high-value content.

I’m sure my followers were not too pleased with me. 

Top tip/ update; Scheduling is a life saver. It is sad that there are no free Pinterest schedulers. 

So I sat down one time and changed strategies. 

What might have worked

Recently I started seeing a small Bump on my Pinterest account. Suddenly I woke up to 11 notifications instead of 1 and that being news.

I’m not an expert so I don’t know what it was exactly but I want to share with you the things that I did that might have worked.

Also, this has been a small grow so nothing very impressive.

(Update; the new algorithms (2016) make is super hard to track notifications) 

Giving new descriptions to pins.

I tried to do this one on some of the pins that had nonsense descriptions and 2 of them went very well all of the sudden. I’m quite sure this helped the amount of people who saw my profile thus my traffic.

This also help on your own underperforming pins I believe! SEO is super important on Pinterest as well btw. 

Pinning regularly

Don’t pin all day but do pin once every day and don’t forget your own content.

I used to pin a lot but I skipped over my own content. You want people to find you on your Pinterest. Having a lot of followers is nice but only if they are actually interested in your pins.

Pinning to specific group boards

Like I said when you find good group boards it can really help your traffic. Try to pin others their content as well and interact with others on the board.

One of my things is that I look at the amount of contributors and a number of followers. For some boards, those are almost equal which most likely means only the people who are pinning are following.

If this means high-quality pin board, then that is great. If that means dump board then it might not be the best place for your content.

Don’t waste energy on places where it doesn’t do you any good. 

Reorganising Pinterest

That might have been the best thing I did ever. I reorganised my whole Pinterest with only the boards that would be interesting to my blog and niche with some small exceptions.

This way my Pinterest has more overview and look more put together.

What I did was;

I made a list of my blog categories (in my case 4). For each of these, I took a board. For some these already existed, others I created from scratch.

Then I divided all my categories into sub-categories.

Any pins that I already had I divided among these categories and board that I didn’t need anymore I made secret. (So I could still save things for fun but so it didn’t get in the way of my brand.)

Visit Sofie Arts’ profile on Pinterest

I also recently installed rich pins which make my content look a lot better. I try to share a lot of my own content across group boards while supporting others by repinning theirs.

Things I might want to try

• custom covers; they look beautiful and maybe they will make my Pinterest look more interesting.
• Following more people; maybe I need to increase the amount of people I follow so more people know about me.
• Redesigning my Pinterest design; designing is the bane of my life, I tried to make a better design but maybe it is simple still not good enough.
  

Maybe one day my Pinterest will grow.

I do know now that all the tips posts are different and that you should do what feels good for you. Not everybody can be good at all the social media sites out there.

Find one social media site that suits you and start there. For example, for me, twitter works much better for some reason.

I would love to know if you have encountered these problems and if you have found the solution. Also, I would love for you to leave your Pinterest in the comments below so I can check it out.

Let’s help each other out here!