The best ways to grow on Pinterest

Growth on Pinterest can take many shapes. That could mean starting your presence from scratch, building on your existing momentum or reaching a deeper level with your audience. Pinterest works differently from other platforms, letting your ideas take the lead and giving your content the opportunity to reach people who are interested in what you’ve created. Lean into what makes Pinterest—and your own content—unique to help you steadily grow your reach, audience, metrics and earnings. 

Grow your reach

Pinterest is a visual search engine, which means that content from across the platform reaches people searching within a specific niche. To help increase your content’s visibility and distribution, while engaging new and existing audiences, add relevant keywords to the title and description of all Pins. Embracing these and other SEO tactics can help to make sure that your content is easily discoverable. Make sure you incorporate best practices by creating strong visuals that are optimised for vertical, visual-first feeds, posting frequently and consistently and experimenting with different content formats. 

Create content around timely trends and subtopics—the more specific the better—that speak to your niche. Then curate your content into themed boards, adding board sections to break it out even further. For example, if you’re a fashion creator, curate by weather, style, trend or even item. This will add context to your Pins that can help them to appear in search results and make it easier for people who view your profile to sort through your content. Like Pins, add topic-specific keywords to your board titles and descriptions. Make sure you save your Pins to any relevant, existing board that has already gained engagement, too, so they appear where people are already looking. 

Grow your engagement

Unlike other platforms, content on Pinterest doesn’t rely primarily on followers to be discovered. Instead, factors such as the topics that you cover, keywords, the kinds of imagery you use and more can influence when your content shows up in people’s feeds. Developing a consistent and recognisable tone can help people on Pinterest to recognise your content, entice them to engage and give them a sense of who you are and why they should follow along. Creating content series also lets audiences know when and what kind of content they can expect, and helps to keep them coming back for more.

Creating actionable, savable content is another key way to promote engagement. Content that reminds them to revisit, asks a question or gives straightforward next steps can let your audience know how to engage. Saves are one of the most meaningful ways that audiences interact with your content, because it means they want to come back to it later or use it as ongoing inspo. Plus, when people on Pinterest save your Pins, more of your content will appear to them, driving more impressions and more opportunities to engage with your content in the future. So encouraging saves can help to generate engagement both now and in the future. Responding to comments can also be a great way to engage with your audience. Answering questions, adding more info and even just thanking your audience can help you to build rapport and keep them coming back for more.

Grow your earnings

There are multiple ways to make money on Pinterest, all with one thing in common: authenticity. Your audience wants your advice, including your product picks. Lean into shoppable recommendations by rounding up your favourite products and curate them into individual Pins (collages) or collections of Pins (boards). Make sure to include links to all products, use shoppable formats such as product tags and product Pins and add any affiliate links where relevant.

For creators and publishers, brand partnerships can be another great way to make money on Pinterest. Use the paid partnership tool to team up and share the honest opinions behind your top picks. Create new content together or find opportunities to partner in promoting your existing content.

Focus on metrics that matter to you

Seeing as performance on Pinterest doesn’t depend on followers, success metrics differ a bit, too. In addition to saves, metrics such as impressions, i.e. the number of times your Pins were on screen, help to signal that people are actually inspired by your idea and might want to try it in real life. Impressions can be a great indicator for reach, awareness and audience growth. Another key metric, Pin clicks, represents the total number of times that people tap on a Pin to see the full-screen view. This can help to indicate that audiences want to learn more and engage further with your Pin. Keep an eye on these if you’re focused on growing engagement and an engaged audience. Another type of click, outbound clicks, shows how many times people take actions that lead them to a destination off Pinterest (think clicking on a Pin link or product tag). This is one to watch when you’re working on driving traffic or conversions. 

Use your metrics to help meet your goals by leaning into content topics or formats that perform best and drive results that align with your goals. Add strong calls to action in the description or in the on-image text encouraging people to comment, click or save. Then, to measure your success, focus on main metrics such as saves, impressions, Pin clicks and outbound clicks, and view followers as more of a supporting metric or nice-to-have.