How to Grow Your Pinterest Account

February 27, 2021 Pinterest Tips

There have been a lot of changes over at Pinterest in the last six months. An overly aggressive spam filter resulted in many accounts being incorrectly flagged as spam, there was a massive algorithm shift and in January 2021 Pinterest changed their metric reporting. We’ve had Idea Pins come and go. Pinterest has been saying for years that it wants to focus more on “fresh” content as opposed to pinning other user’s content, and finally it has happened! If you want to grow your Pinterest account in 2024, you’ll need to take these changes into account within your Pinterest marketing strategy. So, what does this mean for content creators now?

This post was updated on 1 February 2024. 

Wondering how to grow your Pinterest account in 2024?

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Essentially, now Pinterest wants you to focus on quality, fresh content.

It used to be that the more you pinned, the more your account grew, but this isn’t the case any more. Gone are the days of repinning 50 pins a day (thankfully!). It’s recommended to pin no more than 10-15 pins a day now. These pins should be pinned to the most relevant boards only. If I have a pin titled “How to Grow Your Email List on Autopilot” it should be pinned to my How to Grow Your Email List board, not my WordPress Websites board or my Self Care board! File the pins away on the right boards. This way Pinterest knows what your content is about, and can show it to the right people.

Pinterest is encouraging users to publish new, original content. This means pinning more of your own content as “fresh” pins. A fresh pin is one that hasn’t been pinned before, which means making multiple pins for each blog post or URL. Get some templates set up, and you’ll save yourself so much time. Don’t pin too many pins to the same board from the same URL. Below an example of how different pin images can link to the same URL. These would all be classed as fresh pins.

The big question – are group boards still worth bothering with? My answer (helpfully) is “it depends”.  They seem like a great idea – a group of people all pinning together and sharing each other’s pins in a way that helps all the accounts to grow their following like happy little Pinterest unicorns. Unfortunately what tends to happen is people don’t reshare, the boards get messy, off topic and become less and less valuable. Your pins end up lost in a sea of irrelevant pins and the whole board becomes less and less visible as the message is diluted. A Pinterest board needs to be keyword rich, specific and full of valuable content and unfortunately this isn’t always the way with group boards. I would only participate in a group board if it was very niche specific and had very active users.

So to recap, to grow your Pinterest account in 2024 you should:

• Pin less
• Pin fresh content
• Pin your own content
• Pin valuable content
• Pin to less boards (max 10)
• Don’t bother with group boards
• Use the new pin formats
• Be consistent
• Give it time

So there you go – a quick guide on how to grow your Pinterest account this year. The platform is always changing and evolving, and to make the most of it and really grow your account you have to change with it. Go with the flow, and give Pinterest what it wants.  Anything for an easy life, am I right?!

If you want the ultimate easy life, check out my Pinterest Management page. I can sort all your Pinterest for you, leaving you free to do whatever the heck you want that’s not Pinterest management.