I remember when Pinterest first came out, you had to be invited by a friend to join and I totally didn’t get it. At first, I thought I was only going to pin things that were turquoise, LOL, silly me. I quickly realized it’s power when I started to see recipes, home ideas, craft projects, and wedding inspiration. I think I joined in 2012 and since then my team and I have honed a “pinning schedule” that allows us to make the most of the content we create and share on the platform. Here is exactly what we’ve done to build our Pinterest following to over 180,000 with over 10 million monthly viewers.

3x Is The Charm

In a nutshell, we pin all the content we create (including sponsored posts) 3 times over an 8 week period. The first time it gets pinned is the week it goes live on the blog. The second time it gets pinned is 3 weeks later. The third time it gets pinned is 8 weeks later. We don’t, however, pin ALL the images from each post 3 times. We pin an array of the images to different boards so that we aren’t spamming our followers or clogging up our boards unnecessarily. We found that slowly and constantly adding our images this way ensures maximum exposure for our content. By 8 weeks we usually see healthy pin interaction and the images that are most repinned, we then make a note of as well for the future.

How do we keep track of this you ask? We have an insanely detailed spreadsheet, similar to the screenshot below which contains the following:

• The name of the post/article
• A link to it for easy access
• The date it went live
• The next two dates it needs to be pinned
• A place to record that it’s been pinned 3x
• A place to mark the individual boards and the group boards
• A place to mark if the content was sponsored

Dedicated Editor

Shea is our dedicated editor that runs Pinterest and has for the past 5 years. We found that having just one person take care of this task was best. She’s on top of our editorial calendar, she fills in the spreadsheet, and does all the live pinning and scheduled pinning. Of the time she spends pinning each week, 20% of it would be live pinning and 80% is spent scheduling pins. Each week we try and add about 200 pins, about three-quarters of that ends up being our content and the rest is beautiful things we’ve found on the internet that week. Yes, we pin more than just our own content! Which is really important for your growth. Pinterest’s algorithm likes to see that business accounts aren’t just pinning from their own website!

Pin Scheduler

Shea here, resident Pinterest Manager. When I began pinning for ST, I really had no idea what a choreographed dance it could be. As a normal user, you pin what you like, simple as that. But as a content creator, you want to get your wonderful content that you’ve worked so hard on out to the masses while being careful not to bombard your followers or come off spammy. Insert Pinterest scheduling with Tailwind. It’s super user-friendly and as long as you have basic computer knowledge, it’s fairly simple to navigate. But, if you DO require a little extra assistance, they have so many wonderful user resources, my favorite being the informative videos. That’s personally how I learn best but if that’s not your thing, their blog is a wonderful resource too! And they’re not stingy with their knowledge, you don’t have to even be a member to access these resources. Go check them out if it’s something you’re considering. Not only does Tailwind help schedule pins for a later time, but they also take all the guesswork out by finding Pin times that are ideal for YOUR audience. How cool is that?? Between Jens original pinning schedule and wonderful tools like Tailwind, we are able to get the most amount of eyes on our content which is the goal for any content creator.

We Follow Our Fans

Each week we follow 5 new fans. Why? Because we want to see what THEY are pinning. We don’t use or look at our feed the way a typical user does, we use our feed like a brand. Following our fans means our feed is made up of what they are interested in. Which allows us to watch for trends and changes in our unique Pinterest community. We don’t just follow anyone, we qualify our fans. For us that means a few things:

• They have to be following us, so we find them in our followers
• They have to have a profile picture (obv. not a naked one, LOL)
• They need to appear to use Pinterest regularly
• They need to have a dedicated DIY board

This ensures that we aren’t following random people or potentially bots that aren’t real. This allows us to use our feed as a way of doing our own crafty market research. If you need a pretty feed, then sign up and create your own personal Pinterest and use it that way.

Group Boards

We love being a part of and pinning to (and from) group boards. Being on boards with like-minded bloggers and content creators not only expands the view of your content but easily gives you a pool to choose from when you’re looking to build your own boards. We LOVE re-pinning our blogger friends content and utilizing group boards is the easiest way to do it. If you aren’t taking advantage of this, you must.

Now Get Pinning!

I hope you enjoyed this short and to the point article. I can’t stand those posts that just don’t give you any meat, or if they do give you some good tips, you have to sift through a bunch of garbage for it. This is exactly what we did to grow our following on Pinterest, nothing more, nothing less. We are currently excited because for the fall we’re building our own group boards as we want to do more in our little crafting community. There is a wealth of information to be found on Pinterest, and we’re glad we get to be a tiny part of it.

xo, ~Jen