How I Grew my Pinterest Impressions to Over 1 Million in Two Months

Last Updated on December 13, 2020

When I started my blog a couple months ago, I heard tons of great things about Pinterest for growing traffic. So many of the successful blogs I followed had 10m+ monthly Pinterest impressions. While part of me thought I would never get there, I was determined to grow my Pinterest rapidly. In just two months, I was able to grow my Pinterest from 0 to over 1 million impressions per month using these strategies. Growth started slow, and then took off all at once. I did tons of research on Pinterest best practices and firmly believe that following these strategies was what allowed me to be successful. If you’re looking for how to get more Pinterest impressions, keep reading!

Before we get started, If you’ve found yourself here, I assume you know the basics of Pinterest ( what a pin is, what a board is, what Pinterest SEO is, etc.) If you don’t, I’d recommend starting by reading a bit more about how to use Pinterest for beginners.

Now, let’s take a look at my stats. Below you can see how my impressions on Pinterest grew from nothing to over one million in the two month period between August and October 18th.

In the following image, you can see my first month long period where I achieved over 1 million impressions. This happened from September 18th to October 18th 2020.

So what did I do to grow my Pinterest to over 1 million impressions in just over a month, and how can you do it too? Here are the steps I took to see fast results on Pinterest:

I Started Pinning Before I Launched my Blog

Many bloggers suggest launching all at once in terms of your Pinterest, blog, etc. But I took a different approach— I started creating boards and re-pinning other peoples’ content before I had even launched my blog. Why? Because when you start publishing posts and marketing content on Pinterest, you have to have relevant boards to put them on or else they will not circulate at all. Do not forget that a large part of using Pinterest is about sharing other peoples’ content and in general being a good “user” of the platform. You can’t just create an account, publish some pins to your blog, and expect it to take off.

By creating and pinning to these boards in advance of launching my blog, when I did launch, I saw some pins get immediate traction. In fact, even today, my most successful pins are ones that I created boards for way in advance. I believe this is because it takes boards & pins some time to gain traction on the platform.

As we know, it’s not just Pins that rank on Pinterest search, it’s also boards. While I don’t know the ins and outs of the Pinterest algorithm, I can suspect that a Pinterest board needs some time to gain traction in its ranking. I think having these boards created in advance really helped my pins take off when I started uploading my own content to Pinterest.

When I did Launch my Blog, I made sure my Pinterest was Optimized for Success

There’s a few super important things you should do before sharing your original content:

1. Set Up a Pinterest Business Account

Make sure you have a Pinterest business account with a verified site & rich pins enabled. Okay, that’s a lot of stuff. If you’re lost, check out this guide to how to get everything set up correctly on Pinterest. Basically, having a business account with a verified site lets Pinterest know you are using Pinterest to drive traffic to your website, and allows you to see more in depth analytics about your pins. Rich pins are pins that show an article title or product name with them, to encourage people to click. This is key to driving traffic to your blog.

2. Use Keywords on Your Profile & Boards

Make sure your profile and boards have relevant descriptions using keywords that will attract your audience. You should put text anywhere you can on Pinterest. Many people overlook board descriptions because Pinterest doesn’t ever prompt you to fill them out. You still should, though. Write descriptions using natural language that accurately describe your content.

I Prioritized Fresh, Original Content

So here’s the thing… Pinterest knows when you create a new pin that uses an image already on the site, and they don’t like it. Can you imagine if you logged onto Pinterest and saw the same images over and over again? It’s no secret that Pinterest wants its creators to create fresh, new, and quality content.

Why Has this Become a Problem?

With an influx of new blogs turning up on the web, sadly, many have resorted to just copying other bloggers’ content and images from Pinterest. The other thing is that, over time, much of the content on Pinterest has become dated. Pinterest needs to stay up to date with the trends and pace of other social sites, so they cannot have the same images circulating over and over again. I cannot stress how important it is not to simply copy others’ content for a few reasons:

1. It’s not very fair to your fellow creators (not to mention, potentially illegal)
2. It’s unlikely you’ll be linking to the original image source if you’ve stolen the image from someone else
3. Based on what I’ve seen so far, Pinterest is highly unlikely to circulate your pin if there’s already a dozen exact copies of it on Pinterest.

Essentially, you’re wasting your time. Pinterest flat out tells its creators to “Focus your energy on creating great content that’s tailored to your audience’s interests and needs.”

I strongly believe one of the reasons I was able to see such rapid growth on Pinterest was that I use fresh, new images for my pins. While some of them may have been uploaded to Pinterest before, it’s certainly not a majority.

I Used Tailwind to Schedule my Content

Tailwind has singlehandedly been the most important tool for my Pinterest success. I started with Tailwind’s free trial and quickly saw results. This prompted me to upgrade to Tailwind’s Plus Plan which I use to create & schedule pins, as well as view more advanced insights. It’s important to note, that these are just my personal results with Tailwind. Tailwind has transparently provided Typical Results of Tailwind for Pinterest Members to get an accurate view of average metrics. I checked this out before I started using Tailwind, and recommend you do too!

How Tailwind Adds Value

Pinterest recommends pinning content throughout the day as opposed to creating many pins in chunks. So, it’s better to create a single pin every few hours than create 20 pins at 10:00pm.
How can you achieve this? Well, you could get on Pinterest every hour and pin something, but this approach is just unnecessarily time consuming. That’s where Tailwind comes in. Not only does Tailwind allow you to schedule pins far in advance, but it actually optimizes the time’s which your pins go live to times that are most likely to see engagement from your audience. It’s pretty awesome, and I know it’s been a huge contributor to my Pinterest growth. Get started with Tailwind today.

If you’re not looking to make an investment into Tailwind yet, you have a couple options:

1. Use Pinterest’s native pin scheduler: Many people don’t know Pinterest actually offers its own scheduling tool for business accounts. With it, you are able to schedule up to 30 pins for up to 2 weeks out. It’s not as powerful as Tailwind, but it’s a good free option nonetheless.
2. Use Tailwind’s free trial: Tailwind is free up to 100 pins— so if you want to test it out and see if it’s really worth it, you can try it risk free. This is how I started, and by the time my 100 Pins were used up, I had seen enough growth that I was totally convinced.

I Utilized Pinterest Trends to Pick Topics and Keywords

This is a tip that I surprisingly don’t see a lot, and I think it’s a huge hidden gem for Pinterest content creators.

Did you know Pinterest has a site that tells us what searches are trending on the platform at any given time? Just head over to trends.pinterest.com and see for yourself!

There are two main ways I use Pinterest trends that have been significant contributors to my Pinterest success.

1. I Use Pinterest Trends to find Relevant Topics to Write About.

Now, you should not just write about the first thing you see on Pinterest trends because chances are there is already a ton of content related to that search term. But what you should do is think about how you can relate the topic back you your niche and content style and write a post about it.

Fun fact: ALL of my pins that have gone viral have been related to a topic I found on Pinterest trends. So, I’m convinced that this really works. However, you do have to use a little strategy on what to write about. That is because trends don’t last forever. So pick a trend that you think will last for a bit and get your content out quickly enough to see results, before it fizzles out!

2. I Use Pinterest Trends to Determine Keywords to Use in my Pin and Board Descriptions.

Another cool feature of Pinterest trends is that you can directly compare multiple keywords and gain an understanding of what is performing better. For example, take a look at the screenshot below. By comparing these keywords, I’m able to see the most popular search terms related to Thanksgiving and Christmas appetizers, as well as their popularity over time. I’ve been able to use this feature to include relevant keywords in my pin & board titles and descriptions.

I’m Only Just Getting Started…

It is with these steps that I have seen massive growth on Pinterest in just a month, and my impressions continue to grow! In fact, right now, I’m up to 1.6 million impressions in the past 30 days. Woohoo!

Here’s the catch— it doesn’t really matter. While most successful blogs have huge numbers when it comes to Pinterest impressions, having high Pinterest impressions does not guarantee your blog is super successful.

Let me get real with you for a second— Pinterest impressions are not the most important metric. I started this blog a couple months ago and am seeing about 4k monthly page views. The other thing is, I haven’t made a dime.

As of now, I’m working on growing my audience and content base. While I’ve seen my pins gain a lot of traction, I believe this is just the easy part! It is much harder to get people to click through to your blog and engage with your content. Even further, it’s incredibly challenging to build a brand that your audience wants to engage with over time. That’s where I’m focusing my efforts now.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you found this useful for growing your Pinterest impressions rapidly! When it comes to building a successful blog, we’re in this together ?

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