This is one of the questions that I get asked so much. I see it in my Facebook group PinTips, via email, and in my courses too. It’s the age old question to which there are, it seems, a million answers. Why are there so many answers? Well let’s dig a little deeper into this and see if we can come up with something that works for you. How many pins should you be pinning each day?
There is no straight forward answer I’m afraid. Every niche and every account is different. It will depend where you are in your pinning journey, how long you’ve been pinning and how your account is doing.
But there are ways to start and to analyse your results so let’s talk about the options.
Pinning Options:
Ok, so if you’ve read other articles, chatted to people in Facebook groups or discussed at conferences or with colleagues, you’ll know everyone has a different opinion. Some people pin over 100 pins a day, whilst others are pinning under 10. Both will tell you they get good results and if they change that strategy it affects their stats and clicks.
Personally, I think it’s highly unlikely that you need to pin anything more than 50 a day. In fact, Tailwind suggests (and they should know as they have access to 100k accounts) that over 50 a day and you’re damaging your account.
Follower growth generally increases as you Pin more, but will flat line somewhere above 50 Pins per day. Pinners going above 50 Pins a day see a large drop off of Repins. Engagement drastically suffers above 50 pins.
There are diminishing returns in extremely high volume Pinning. It appears that penalties begin to occur at high Pin rates, which decrease the visibility of your Pins and profile.
You can read more about this, and other Pinterest myths in this video and article on the Tailwind blog.
So that’s a good start right, you know you don’t need to pin more than 50. Phew. Let’s all breath a sigh of relief, because maintaining that level of pinning would be exhausting. I’m all about balance. I’m about making this work with the rest of your promotions on social media and beyond, so it’s good to know this is manageable.
Where Should You Start?
If you’re quite new to pinning, I’d recommend 10 per day. Use a scheduler like Tailwind* and spend an hour a week filling it with your 70 pins. Yep, that’s all it takes. Just an hour a week will be enough (after all the initial setup) to get your pinning off to a flying start. That’s nothing. Imagine all those hours you’re spending on Instagram (which drives you very little traffic) and how you could sneak away just one hour to develop something on Pinterest that will send new readers, and potential customers, to your site.
Monitor your results through Tailwind analytics, or Google Analytics if you have it set up. If it’s going well, start to increase your daily pins. Do this until you see a plateau or until it drops off slightly. You’ll know then that you’ve hit the sweet spot.
If you’ve been pinning a while, like me, you might have seen a drop off this year. I suspect, and I’ve SEEN others mentioning the same, that Pinterest is giving more weight to fresher, newer pins. Older viral pins are starting to wane now, so you really need to up your game, make your pins look the best they can be, add great descriptions and be on top of your keywords. It gets a little more complex, the longer you’ve been at it, but it’s still possible to get really good results. You just might not see the results you used to have.
Spread Your Efforts:
That just reminds us though that Pinterest should be part of a wider strategy to promote your blog and your business website. If we rely on one source for too long, when that source changes we risk losing our traffic and audience. That’s why I always recommend converting your Pinterest viewers to ‘customers’ and encourage them to join your email list. It’s the only thing you own and the only thing that you fully control. Whether you’re a blogger or a business, you should be offering something free and interesting to your audience in exchange for signing up to your list. It’s called an opt-in or lead magnet and usually gives lots of value and relevant information for free to your readers. In exchange for accessing it, you get their email address.
You’ll notice I do this on the site here, in fact I have a whole Resource Hub of free information which readers can access if they sign up (go and check it out if you haven’t signed up already!). I don’t spam them of course, usually they get just one email a week, and I tell them about up and coming courses or training about Pinterest that I think would be relevant to them. It’s a win win.
So if you’re reading this, and you’ve come from Pinterest I hope you’ve found it useful and feel like sticking around and joining me on the list.
In Conclusion:
So let’s sum up.
- You don’t need to pin anything more than 50 pins per day
- Pinning over 50 pins per day can be detrimental to your efforts
- If you’re relatively new to Pinterest start with just 10 pins per day
- If you’ve been pinning a while, make sure you’re pinning consistently and maybe increase pins to 20-30 per day
- Use a scheduler like Tailwind* to manage your pinning and monitor your results.
Good luck! If you have questions or comments please leave them below.
Jen x
This is an affiliate link. I am a Tailwind affiliate and will make a small commission if you sign up.
Hi Jen,
Thanks for this article. I had one really popular pin for 8 months but now it is hardly getting any traffic and my blog stats have taken a hit as well.
What is a good balance between pinning your own posts and those of others?
Thanks
Rachel
Hi Rachel, this is a common problem now I think and many people are experiencing it. The pinning ratio is a tricky one to answer, and will depend on what you’ve pinned in the past and your niche. Many start at 20/80, some do 50/50 and others are at 80/20. I’d say build up, test some ratios for a month each at least, and see what works better.
Great article! When I started pinning I was pinning a lot – and not noticing much happening in terms of traffic. When I started to pin LESS (like you suggest) I saw an increase!
That’s great to know Dana, sometimes you just have to experiment to find your sweet spot!
As a new blogger, what do you suggest that I pin? Would the pins be links to my website?
Yes Samantha, pin images from your blog posts to your Pinterest boards and they will have links back to your website.
Thanks for your helpful post. You recommend pinning up to 50 times per day. What boards am I supposed to pin all these pins to? Wouldn’t I fill up all my boards with duplicate pins?
Hey Josh, they’d be a variety of pins, not the same ones, although you will pin the same one to duplicate boards. Hope that helps.
Hi Jen, thank you for the insight in this post. I am starting managing a new estate agency blog, who have never used pinterest before. If they only have a few blogs for the first few months, would repinning other content from other sites be beneficial to keep their pinterest engagement up? Many thanks in advance!
Hi Lucy, yes that’s definitely a good idea, and make lots of new, different pins for each of the blog posts and pin them too. Good luck!