I know it isn’t very Christian-like to say I hate something but Pinterest is the worst!!
I think it is safe to say that most bloggers have a love-hate relationship with Pinterest! It can turn from being your best blogging friend to your worst enemy in the blink of an eye with the never-ending algorithm changes. UGH!
I’m almost positive that Pinterest and boxed hair color are in cahoots with each other (the more stressed out we are over Pinterest, the more we need to color those gray hairs!)
That’s why I’ve decided that this year, I’m going to spend significantly less time on Pinterest and more time doing things that matter (and cause me less stress!).
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Pinterest WAS Awesome But…
When I first started blogging, Pinterest was seriously my best friend. Before I even knew what SEO was, Pinterest enabled me to reach people organically with my blog content. Kingdom Bloggers launched on December 3rd of 2018 and by January 3rd (30 days later), Pinterest had referred over 500 visitors to the site.
By June 3rd (6 months after going live), Pinterest had referred over 34,000 visitors!
But that success was short-lived. By the end of the first year, my Pinterest traffic hit a plateau and organic visitors (people being referred by Google and other search engines) had had taken the first place referral spot.
AND….although Pinterest traffic stayed steady and/or had a decrease, my organic traffic was more each month than the prior month. Organic traffic just kept growing!
Unfortunately, over the last year or so, Pinterest has become more of a headache than anything else. Every day I see post after post in other blogging groups with complaints about Pinterest.
Thing like
- accounts being suspended
- sudden drops in traffic
- stolen pins
- much more.
I decided last year that I was going to somewhat step away from spending extra time trying to make Pinterest happy. And, more recently, Pinterest has finally admitted something that you really need to take seriously!
#1 Pinterest is Needy
Pinterest is great, but it requires quite a bit of your time.
- Repin others’ pins
- Add new content
- Make new pins for older posts
Pinterest is like a spoiled rotten child crying “play with me” all day long!!!
In order to keep your Pinterest traffic from taking a nose-dive, you need to constantly be sharing pins and adding new pins for older content. This can easily take away a good chunk of your blogging time each week!
#2 Pinterest is Unstable
You’ve worked hard on creating all those great pins and scheduling content to boards and Tailwind Tribes. Things seem to be going well, then – NOSE DIVE! You wake up one morning and your Pinterest stats seem to have tanked overnight! Why? Because Pinterest did yet ANOTHER algorithm change!
Like seriously! Stop messing with what isn’t broken.
Next thing you know, you are spending an entire day or more trying to figure out the newest “way” to go about Pinterest and making the necessary changes. But that is after you spent several hours in blogger Facebook groups trying to figure out what was going on (time you could have been writing more great content).
#3 Thieves Hang Out on Pinterest
Second only to “has anyone else’s Pinterest traffic tanked?”, the next most common complaint among bloggers is the issue of stolen pins.
You spent all that time and effort creating all those great pins and sharing/scheduling them to boards and tribes and suddenly certain pins stop generating traffic. Why? Because someone redirected your pin image to their site.
- You spend time complaining in blogger groups.
- You spend time trying to track down the culprit.
- You spend time reporting it to Pinterest.
Even though you report the stolen pin (or an entire account of stolen pins), you don’t get the traffic back and chances are, if Pinterest even does anything about it, they’ll just create a new bogus account and continue stealing your pins!
All this time that you spend dealing with pin thieves – you could be writing more great content!
#4 Pinterest is Changing Its Platform!!
I saved the most important reason for last!
Pinterest has finally admitted that everything they’ve been changing and messing with over the last year has a purpose. Pinterest is slowly moving away from its current model (a visual search engine) to be more like other popular platforms such as Instagram and TikTok.
You may have heard of the newest thing Pinterest wants you to do – Idea Pins. Yes, if you add them, you will see more engagement on your profile and your idea pins will get a TON of impressions (shown more) than your regular pins.
But here is the thing. Idea Pins do NOT click through to a blog post. They are just videos that keep the user ON PINTEREST.
Since Pinterest has gone public, they want users to stay on their platform and not click away to another site. That means that no matter what you do to make Pinterest happy, you are going to see a continuous decline in Pinterest traffic.
SEO is Better Than Pinterest for Long-Term Growth
While those early days did see month-to-month growth as far as traffic from Pinterest, that traffic eventually hit a plateau where the actual month-to-month growth was less significant. I still get some traffic from Pinterest, but it is almost exclusively from pins that are over a year old. And the monthly traffic from Pinterest has continued to decline each month.
Related: 4 Reasons SEO is More Important than Pinterest for Christian Bloggers
SEO, on the other hand, results in much more traffic each month (when compared to the month prior). And the best thing about getting organic traffic from SEO is that it is almost a set-it-and-forget-it kind of thing. I publish the post and once it is indexed by search engines, the traffic keeps coming. I don’t have to continue pinning it or making new pins for it. The traffic just keeps coming!
SEO (organic traffic) accounts for over 85% of the 100K sessions I get every month.
Spending My Time Where it Matters Most
I’m all about spending my time where it matters most. After spending way too much time last year trying to keep up with Pinterest’s neediness, I’ve decided that this year things will be different. I’m not giving Pinterest up completely. I’ll still create a pin for each post and pin it to my blog board.
Things you should no longer take time out of your blogging schedule to do:
- Cancel Tailwind
- Stop regularly making new pins for older posts
But I’ve canceled my Tailwind account. That is a huge financial savings – but also one less unproductive thing to worry about each week.
I encourage you to take a deep look into your traffic analytics to see exactly where your traffic is coming from. Then take a look at where you are spending the bulk of your time and ensure that you are getting a good return on that time investment.
As for me, Pinterest and I are more of an acquaintance these days and I’ve found a new, deeper relationship with my new friend – SEO.
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