As a business owner, you probably have housekeeping tasks you run daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. If you use Pinterest Marketing for your business, consider a quarterly reminder to clean up your Pinterest marketing strategy. You need to continuously evaluate your Pinterest and Tailwind accounts to see if the Pinterest marketing strategies you are using are effective. Optimized boards attract the right kind of traffic to your site. I just finished doing this for my own business so I thought I would share with you my walk of how to clean up your Pinterest boards and Tailwind accounts as well as plan your content for the next quarter.
Why is it important to review and clean up your Pinterest marketing strategy?
1. Has your niche changed?
If your niche changes or the direction of your business, your ideal audience may have changed. As business owners, you think you’re going in one direction and then you pivot. You’re not focusing on the same customers or clients any longer. An example would be if you changed from health and fitness niche to DIY or stay-at-home moms. If your target audience changes, then you need to review your board strategy. You may notice a drop in your leads via an email sign up for example. You’ll continue bringing in your old audience so any new offers you create won’t match with what they will want leading to frustration.
2. Do you need to update your branding?
Last February, my branding changed which included my brand colors. I also changed from Karrie Marie to Karrie Marie Consulting. Therefore, I needed to update pins with my new colors and fonts. My business name changed so I changed it in the profile and I focused my keywords to a specific target audience. And no you don’t need to go back and delete pins. Just create new pins going forward.
3. Do you need to adjust for algorithm changes?
Just like Facebook and Instagram, Pinterest has algorithm changes too. The people at Pinterest will make different recommendations so you’ll then need to go back and take another look at your Pinterest strategy so that it is as effective as it can be. You want to follow Pinterest’s best practices so your account doesn’t get shut down and you can continue strategically driving traffic.
Cleaning Up Your Pinterest Account
4. Check your profile name and description
Does your profile still reflect what you do in your business? Do you have a call to action? Are you using keywords in your profile description?
5. Re-Assess your board strategy
Do your boards target your ideal audience? Update your boards with keywords in the title & description & create new boards to fit your niche if it changed or expand boards that are popular so you have more boards to pin your content to. Be sure to hide any boards that don’t fit your niche any longer.
6. Analyze your group board strategy
Do you still have content that fits the group board & is it in your current niche? Analyze where your pins are on the board. Is the board too fast-moving to get your pins shared? You can analyze your pins using Tailwind’s Board Insights to see how many of your pins are repinned & recent. I show you how to do this in the video walkthrough.
Cleaning Up Your Tailwind Account
7. Update your pin schedule
Review your weekly pinning schedule. Could you add more time slots? OR recreate your schedule for newly updated times.
8. Review Tailwind Communities
One of the key features I love about Tailwind is Tailwind Communities. They add the accountability piece that Pinterest group boards don’t have. Pinterest group boards are an old strategy and have become a dumping ground where people schedule their pins to share and then rarely share anyone else’s content. Communities have a scoreboard which I like because it shows you how many of your pins you have uploaded and how many pins you have shared so it is mutually beneficial because you know you are doing your part in sharing as much as you are uploading. But sometimes your content may not be getting shared as often as you had hoped and that’s why I look at the group effectiveness quarterly. If you are on the basic Tailwind plan, you get 5 communities and before you upgrade to get more, make sure you are looking at the statistics to see if it is performing. Are you getting shares and good reach? I keep analytics in a spreadsheet to review every quarter. If it’s not, then I leave and find another Community to join. There’s not an exact science to picking out good communities. You can only test and review.
9. Review Smart Loop
You will also want to review SmartLoop as you clean up your Pinterest marketing strategy. Do you still have content that fits the board & is in your current niche? Analyze your pins to see how many of your pins are repinned & recent. Could you update images and test again?
Check Your Google Analytics
10. Are you spending your time and resources wisely?
I look at my Google Analytics at least once a month. I recommend that you do too. If analytics isn’t your thing, definitely do it quarterly. Google Analytics can tell you a couple of things: which social media your traffic is coming from and what percentage of traffic. My website traffic primarily comes from Pinterest and the rest is Facebook. Instagram is barely a blip on the radar so I barely spend time on IG. From a productivity standpoint, focus on the platforms that are bringing you traffic. I don’t want to waste precious time on things that don’t bring a return.
11. Revisit your content categories.
Google Analytics will show which pins are performing well. If you have seasonal content, you can see if the particular seasonal content you created is doing well. Or if you have three to five different content categories that you create content for, you can look to see which categories are performing well.
If a category is doing well, it means your content resonates with your audience. You may want to continue writing on that topic or category. You can make more pins for the performing posts which will allow traffic to continue. This will free up time for you to focus on and create content for other underdeveloped categories or stop writing about those categories. You get to make that choice based on the numbers.
Quarterly Content Planning
12. Are you being strategic in your marketing?
As an added bonus, Pinterest can be used to help you plan your content for the next quarter. I suggest downloading the 100 Pinterest Trends for 2020 or the Pinterest Predicts Calendar 2021. Both are excellent guides that direct you to the best practices for Pinterest and to think seasonally. I have also written a blog post on How to Create Your Content Calendar Using Pinterest. Pinterest is a seasonal platform and can affect your account statistics, but it’s normal. If you know what to expect, you won’t stress out or you can plan your content to combat the seasonality by creating content around the trends and seasons that fit your niche. If you don’t normally have seasonal content, be creative to see if you can put a seasonal twist on your content.
It’s essential that you review your account quarterly, especially after you have put in the hard work to create pins and set up your boards to attract your audience. This will keep your messaging in alignment with your audience and the result equals leads to your inbox. That’s the whole reason you got started with Pinterest marketing in the first place!
Get a copy of my checklist and follow along with the video walkthrough to help you as you clean up your Pinterest marketing strategy. There are 12 different things that I look at from your keywords to your boards to your profile and much more! You’ll get the link to my Airtable base template where I hold my statistics. And BONUS, you can walk away with a content plan for the next quarter.
This shouldn’t take you more than a couple of hours depending on how much has changed in your business. You’ll want to be sure to add it to your quarterly to-do checklist too! Sign up now or if you would like me to do it for you, set up a time so we can talk about your business to keep those leads coming to your inbox!
