What (and When) to Post on Pinterest

Pinterest is an amazing platform that allows content creators to share high-quality images that relate to their brand, inviting users to visit their sites and engage them in various topics. But knowing what to post exactly and when to post it, can be a trickier part of the content creation process.

What to Post BASICS

First and foremost, you need to make sure that you aren't spreading yourself too thin. If your brand focuses on health and fitness, then you shouldn't be creating content that relates to sewing. If your brand focuses on activities for toddlers, then don't create content about home renovation. If you are interested in creating content for multiple subjects, then you should have multiple Pinterest accounts so that users know exactly what they will find in your profile. However, there are some subjects that can overlap. If you focus on health and fitness, healthy recipes would be acceptable content. If you focus on toddler activities, then family friendly meals would work well with that niche.

Pinterest Trends

Knowing what your audience is searching for is going to be key to knowing what to Pin. Pinterest provides a free "Trends" tool to help you with this and it is simple to use. If you have a business account, it will even show you what your followers are searching for under "Growing Trends Your Audience Loves." This is a great way to see search topics and then get busy creating content for that topic or creating Pins if you already have that topic shared on your website.

screenshot of Pinterest Trends "Growing Trends" tool

You can also search seasonal trends, growing trends, monthly trends, and yearly trends. It will give you information on the growth rate for each topic and you can filter by keyword, interest, age or gender of user, and more. What I love is that you can even search for keywords and compare them. If you search for healthy desserts, you can compare that to healthy snack and see which keywords are searched for more often and how they compare to eachother. This allows you to know not only what content you can be creating, but what keywords to use in your Pin titles and descriptions.

screenshot of Pinterest keyword comparisons

You can access the Pinterest Trends tool at www.trends.pinterest.com. Play around with it and see what you can learn. The more familiar you are with it, the easier it is to use for your business growth!

Seasonal Trends

The easiest way to know what to Pin is to look at upcoming holidays. And I mean upcoming, not tomorrow's holidays. If the next holiday is Halloween, you need to make sure that you are creating content for that topic and getting it posted to Pinterest at least 45 days ahead of time. This is because Pinterest is a fluid search platform. People begin searching for holiday and seasonal specific content long before the holiday begins. Pinterest users are often "planners." Meaning, they plan ahead.

In addition to this, Pinterest is "slow" in a sense that it takes a couple weeks to a couple months to really see traffic increase. So if you really want your Halloween workout, your Halloween toddler activities, your Halloween party decorations, etc. to shop up in Pinterest searches right around Halloween, you're going to need to create and post that content before Halloween. As you get content out ahead of time, it really allows the Pinterest algorithm to assign relevant keywords to your content so it can surface at the right time.

Analyzing Data

While data and analysis is not always the "fun part" of content creation, it is absolutely necessary in understanding what content you're creating is actually performing well. There's nothing worse than spending time designing Pins that no one clicks on or sees. Understanding why that is happening is part of the data analysis process. On the business side of Pinterest, there is an analytics page where you can see which Pins are clicked on the most, which Pins are showing up in searches the most, how many times people have come to your profile and more.

screenshot of Pinterest "Analytics Overview"

I strongly recommend keeping a month to month tracker (I keep mine in a spreadsheet) to compare the ups and downs, ebs and flows, etc. of your account. By keeping track of your month to month data, you will be able to see what you can do on your end to improve traffic. Everything from the best perfoming Pin template to the topics/keywords that are being clicked on and viewed the most.

Takeaways

Whether you are new to Pinterest or have been using it for a long time, there are always things we can do to tweak our process and improve our performance on the platform. By using Pinterest Trends and month to month data analysis, you will be able to see what your audience loves and create more content that better relates to them.

Questions or need help understanding the trends tool or analytics tool on Pinterest? Let me know and I'm happy to help!

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