Q&A with Pinterest and Tailwind

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Pinterest and @tailwind recently collaborated on a Facebook live to discuss some of the most-commonly-asked questions about what works on Pinterest today. There were lots of great questions asked throughout the live stream, so we compiled a Q&A to address what's been top-of-mind for Pinterest creators. Let us know if you found this information helpful by rating the article below! ⭐️

Why have my impressions and clicks dropped dramatically recently, despite my following best practices?

Helping creators succeed is important to us here at Pinterest. The variation in impressions could be related to a number of things, starting with changes and fluctuations in user behavior. Pinterest sees natural ebbs and flows with content distribution, similar to other organic distribution platforms. It could also be related to errors with our spam blocker. We work hard to make sure the experience for Pinterest users is a safe one. Sometimes our system is overly cautious and mistakenly flags the wrong content. Finally, we encourage new publishing over saving others' or your own already-pinned content. Pinners come to our platform to find new ideas and as we continue to update our service, we'll prioritize new original content published by creators over Saves. Learn more about publishing your content in our help center. Be sure to check out our recent post addressing this.

Do Pins now have a shorter lifetime?

In terms of seasonal content, we’re actually seeing people searching for holiday ideas on Pinterest this year earlier than they ever have before. Months earlier. Why the shift? Read our holiday guide to find out and learn how to reach your audience first. Join our webinar on July 1‌6th where we'll break down how to tap into the holiday trends that are already increasing. Register now!

Do Idea Pins allow for clickable links?

Pinterest does not support external website links within Idea Pins. Idea Pins are designed to help you tell your full story on Pinterest, with multiple pages of video, images, and text in a single Pin. This format was designed to give creators like you everything you need to bring an idea to life entirely on the Pinterest platform without the need for external links. This new immersive, action-oriented format is something Pinners love, which translates into better engagement and growth from your on-platform audience. Be sure to check out our Idea Pins best practices for more info. 

Do Hashtags matter?

On Pinterest, we've worked to build a visual search platform that makes it easy for users to discover your content without using hashtags.  For more information, be sure to check out our Community guidelines. Hope that helps and let us know if there's anything else we can assist you with. 🙂 

If you're consistently creating new Pins for older, popular content but your traffic numbers are still going down, is that because you need MORE, newer content as opposed to creating new Pins for older content?

Having a few different images for a piece of content can be an effective way to test creative performance. We do not encourage creating an excessive number of Pins for the same idea, or recipe, however. When we talk about fresh content, this really refers to new ideas or pieces of content.

Is there any update on Pinterest accounts mistakenly being classified as spam? My traffic is still down, despite following best practices.

The best thing you can do is continue to follow our best practices. To get inspired for what content is trending on Pinterest, visit trends.pinterest.com, and check out our recent post about the Pinterest Trends tool.  If you have specific questions or concerns about your account, please reach out to our support team and they'll be able to assist you.

Do categories matter for boards?

Update 8/25/2020 - Board categories have been deprecated as a feature and are no longer available.

Are video Pins preferred by the Pinterest algorithm?

Video is growing on Pinterest with views of organic video Pins up 240% year over year—particularly driven by food, beauty, DIY, entertainment, and home decor. We encourage creators to create video content (either video Pins or video in Idea Pins).The more your content is engaged with on Pinterest, the more it will be surfaced for millions of others to discover.

What makes it a unique Pin? the image, the text, or both must be unique?

A fresh/unique Pin is new content published directly to Pinterest. Ideally, fresh Pins are new ideas you’re bringing to Pinners. While you can create new images for your existing content, we recommend publishing new ideas with new images, titles, and descriptions to provide Pinners with the best possible experience. Providing value to Pinners is the best way to improve your performance over time.

Does it hurt, help, or not matter at all to archive my own Pins that are not performing well (have little to no views, clicks, saves). 

Archiving boards with old Pins will not have any impact on the performance of your other Pins. The archive Pins will simply not receive any distribution.

Is it true that repinning other Pins does not help our account? Is it now strictly about growing our own pages with our own fresh Pins?

Pinterest encourages creators to publish new, original content on a regular basis as the best way to build an audience on Pinterest. We encourage new publishing over saving others' or your own already-pinned content. Pinners come to our platform to find new ideas and as we continue to update our service, we'll prioritize new original content published by creators over saves.

Do Pins linking to Instagram or other sites get fewer impressions than those linking to blogs?

We encourage you to post content that’s fresh and original. It’s totally fine to link to websites that aren’t blogs. In general, don’t link to websites that are unsafe, deceptive, untrustworthy, unoriginal, or that facilitate or encourage spam. Be sure to check out our tips on how to make your content stand out.