Pinterest Manual Pinning Strategy & Spreadsheet: is manual pinning important?
In short, manual pinning is more important than ever. This is because Pinterest likes you to be active and engaged on the platform and community, not just scheduling your posts. Manual pinning is important because it can save you money, surprisingly save you time and does not allow you to set a lazy ‘set and forget’ approach. This leads to much greater engagement and referrals. Following the tips in this Pinterest manual pinning strategy and spreadsheet is a great start to success.
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Pinterest Manual Pinning Strategy - Contents
• What Does Manual Pinning Mean On Pinterest?
• How To Manually Pin On Pinterest
– Method 1: Pinterest Browser Extension
– Method 2: Click the + icon on Pinterest
• How Do I Convert My Personal Pinterest Account To A Business Account 2021?
• Why Manual Pinning Is Still Important On Pinterest
– Reason 1: Pinterest Is Rewarding People Who Spend Time On The Platform
– Reason 2: Manual Pinning Saves You Money
– Reason 3: Manual Pinning May Actually Save You Time
– Reason 4: Scheduled Pinning Can Encourage A Lazy ‘Set & Forget’ Approach
• Pinterest Manual Pinning Strategy 2021
– Manual Pinning Strategy Tip 1: Stay organised With Spreadsheets, Folders or Google Sheets
– Manual Pinning Strategy Tip 2: Post At The Right Time Of Day For Your Audience
– Manual Pinning Strategy Tip 3: Printing Off Your Timetable
– Manual Pinning Strategy Tip 4: Setting Reminders On Your Phone
– Manual Pinning Strategy Tip 5: Update Your Pins
– Manual Pinning Strategy Tip 6: Spread Out The Times You Pin
– Manual Pinning Strategy Tip 7: ALWAYS pin to your boards first (then re-pin to others after)
• Manual Pinterest Pinning Spreadsheet
• How Do I know If My Manual Pinning Strategy Is Working?
• Pinteresting Strategies
• Pinterest Manual Pinning Strategy: Final Thoughts
What Does Manual Pinning Mean On Pinterest?
Manual pinning is the process of actively sharing a pin to your Pinterest account. Manual pinning is also referred to as ‘live pinning’ because you are not using a tool, such as Tailwind, to automatically pin your pins.
How To Manually Pin On Pinterest:
There are two main ways you can manually pin on Pinterest:
Method 1: Pinterest Browser Extension
The easiest method is to download the free browser button onto your browser, whether that’s Google chrome, Firefox Microsoft Edge, for example. Pinterest have put together a help document for downloading this pin button.
When using this extension, if you come across an image online, or want to pin your images from your own website, you can easily click on the image and manually pin it to Pinterest.
Method 2: Click the + icon on Pinterest
Go onto the page displaying your boards. Click on a board you want to pin to and select the + button that sticks to the bottom of the page. See below:
Once you click on the +, you can upload your image, fill in your title, description and destination link. It is vital you fill in this destination link to the homepage the image is from, for example, a blog post. If you do not know what al text is, check out this article detailing the importance of alt text for your SEO and how to write it effectively.
Then, you just pin to the board you want. It is important to have a Pinterest business account for both manual and scheduled pinning as you can see your analytics.
How Do I Convert My Personal Pinterest Account To A Business Account 2021?
A business account is vital for Pinterest success. Pinterest themselves have put together this document detailing how to ‘create a new business account’, ‘link a business account to your personal Pinterest account’ and how to ‘convert your personal account to a business account.’
Why Manual Pinning Is Still Important On Pinterest
To those of you new to the Pinterest game, you may be thinking: ‘what other form of pinning is there besides manual pinning?’ Well, it’s almost impossible these days to read an article about Pinterest and it not mention Tailwind.
Tailwind allows you to save time by scheduling your pins to go onto Pinterest at desired times and boards without you having to manually pin every day. Yes… it is great. But manual pinning is still important and here’s why:
Reason 1: Pinterest Is Rewarding People Who Spend Time On The Platform
Why would a platform just want to be filled with users who don’t actually spend any time on it? All they do is use Tailwind which schedules their posts and they don’t interact or engage with any other content.
If you actually spend time on Pinterest’s main feed, search function and boards in live time, Pinterest will reward you for being immersed in the community. Even though Tailwind is perfectly fine and in teamwork with Pinterest, it’s almost like filling the system with a load of bots who just focus on their own work and don’t care about anyone else’s content.
So, manual pinning is still important because it encourages you to increase your time spent on the Pinterest platform which Pinterest rewards.
SIDE NOTE: this may just be me, but manual pinning always reminds me to add the ever so important alt text to my pins. Alt text is vital for image SEO and to get your pins to even more people on Pinterest. If you don’t know what alt text is, check out this alt text for image SEO useful guide.
Reason 2: Manual Pinning Saves You Money
Using tools such as Tailwind cost money. If you’re a new blogger just starting out, it can be difficult to splash out money every month. Especially when you don’t have that much content!
Manual pinning allows you to save that money and get an equal, if not better, engagement and traffic on your pins if you follow a pinning strategy.
Reason 3: Manual Pinning May Actually Save You Time
So many people think they’ll get Tailwind and, boom, their traffic will spike without any work. That’s not really how it works… especially at the start. You still have to manage, edit, adapt and add to the automated pin queue. You have to fill in what that pin should be pinned, what time and how often. Sometimes it’s just easier to use a manual Pinterest pinning spreadsheet.
You may think managing an automated pin queue is better than manual pinning, and that’s okay, it is for some people. But, it can lead to a set and forget approach which leads onto reason 4.
Reason 4: Scheduled Pinning Can Encourage A Lazy ‘Set & Forget’ Approach
What do I mean by this? You may be saying ‘I’m not lazy, I just want to focus my time on writing quality content.’ I completely get that!
But sometimes, when we use tools like Tailwind we put our pins on, set it all up and then think okay I can forget about that now. By not actually being on Pinterest and manually pinning, sometimes we completely forget to look at our analytics to see if things are working.
If you are manually pinning, you are on likely on Pinterest daily and can clearly see increases or decreases in traffic by seeing the monthly viewers on your Pinterest page. This will encourage you to look at your analytics and see which pins are working, which are my best boards and what should I change to reach more people. With Tailwind, you may not remember to check if your scheduling pattern is effective.
Pinterest Manual Pinning Strategy 2021:
Manual pinning takes organisation. If you’re serious about growing your Pinterest or driving traffic to your website, you need a manual pinning strategy. Here are some top tips:
Manual Pinning Strategy Tip 1: Stay organised With Spreadsheets, Folders or Google Sheets
Staying organised with these methods ensures you do not post a pin with the SAME URL on the same day. If you post multiple pins with the same URL to a specific post the same day, this can be viewed spam by Pinterest and you may get a warning.
There are three major ways you can keep on top of all your pins:
1. Excel Spreadsheets (My personal favourite method of organised manual pinning).
Spreadsheets are an amazing way of keeping track of ALL your pins and ALL your boards. What has worked for me is putting all my available pins on the left column and my boards on the top row. I have made a basic outline of this process below:
I put links to my pins on the left where ‘pin 1’ is, for example. This means I can click this link and very quickly pin the content to the board required. If there is an ‘x’ it means I need to pin that pin to that board.
In the image you can see my manual pinning schedule is split into days. This ensures that I never pin the same pin to a board twice, and that I never pin the same pin two days in a row or on the same day. If you pinned to the same board twice, or the same pin more than once a day, this can be viewed as spam by Pinterest.
I’m sure you can pin the same pin more than once a day, however, personally I don’t just to be safe. But you do what you feel is right!
This is a very simplistic view because in reality you’ll have LOADS more pins and hopefully lots more boards. See below under ‘Manual Pinterest Pinning Spreadsheet’ to get a copy you can put your own pins and boards into!
2. Creating Folders
Folders are another GREAT way at keeping organised. Create folders on your computer for every board you have on your Pinterest.
Inside each folder, upload all the images that could be relevant to that board. This means when you want to pin to that board, you can quickly click on an image and pin it to Pinterest. After you have pinned that image, delete from the folder so you can never pin it to that board again by mistake.
The benefit of this method is you can continually be adding new blog post pins into each group board folder. If you write enough content, you’ll never run out of posts in each folder.
3. Google Sheets (Airtables)
An airtable allows you to also keep track of all your pins. You can monitor what posts you have pinned and when. This is just another option to stay organised with your Pinterest manual pinning strategy.
Best Practices When Organising Work
• Only pin the exact same pin to 10 different boards, then give the pin a new image
• Only pin 15 – 25 pins per day
This is just some personal advice but you do you! It does seem to backed up by this article on Pinterest best practises (granted, it was written by Tailwind who schedules posts instead of manually posting).
Manual Pinning Strategy Tip 2: Post At The Right Time Of Day For Your Audience
I cannot stress this enough. Try to pin at times when your audience is MOST active.
You can use your analytics dashboard to see when people may be most active. If you click on your analytics on the top of your Pinterest page a menu will drop down. Click on audience insights. This will give you an idea of what country your followers are from.
If you are from the UK and the majority of your followers are from the USA, there is no point trying to post when they are asleep. Try to find an overlap when you would both be awake. This is just an example of how you can use your analytics. Check out this link written by Pinterest for how to review your pin stats.
You can also check out this article written by Louise Myers detailing the best times to post on Pinterest.
Manual Pinning Strategy Tip 3: Printing Off Your Timetable
Once you have developed your timetable, print it off and stick it next to where you work. If you just have an excel sheet on your device, you may forget about it or not look at it. This means you do not stay on top of your pinning schedule.
Therefore, by printing it and having it there, it’s a constant reminder to keep on top of things.
If you are creating content at great speeds, I mean at least 3-4 posts a week, it may not work to print off your schedule every time you add new pins. Additionally, printing the schedules can use quite a bit of paper and can be quite long… so you can decide if you want to do this point or now! (As a reminder you could just leave a colourful note on the wall where you work).
Manual Pinning Strategy Tip 4: Setting Reminders On Your Phone
If you have printed your Pinterest manual pinning schedule, it may even be helpful to have reminders on your phone. Set alarms for the times you need to manually pin so you never fall behind in your manual pinning strategy.
Manual Pinning Strategy Tip 5: Update Your Pins
Whilst this is also important for those who just schedule pins, keeping your pins fresh is so important. Pinterest does not want you just pumping out the exact same image over and over for years. Set aside a day every so often to re-vamp and design some of your pins! This can include the image, headline and description.
Changing the image, headline and description technically make ‘new pins’ which Pinterest will reward you for. I create 2 or 3 pinnable images when I create each of my articles so I always have a different image to post that links to the same URL. You may be thinking ‘I don’t have enough images for this...’. I’ve put together a really handy article (if I don’t say so myself) of the top 19 sites you can get copyright free images you can use for free for your blog posts and covers! If you haven’t done so already YOU MUST fill in your pins alt text. If you are not sure on alt text, check out this image SEO alt text guide.
Another useful article to read, written by FORBES, is these 10 do’s and don’t of Pinterest advertising. Whilst we haven’t be discussing advertising, they also give some great tips for your pins like adding keywords, call-to-actions and no horizontal pins as examples.
Manual Pinning Strategy Tip 6: Spread Out The Times You Pin
What is important for a manual pinning strategy to work is spreading the pins out evenly throughout the day. If you miss your reminders from your phone or forget the schedule, do not just dump all your pins onto Pinterest at the same time. This will look like spam and Pinterest will not appreciate it.
It’s advised to pin between 15 – 25 pins per day. This means posting around 3 – 5 pins every couple of hours.
Manual Pinning Strategy Tip 7: ALWAYS pin to your boards first (then re-pin to others after)
This is just my personal preference when I’m manually pinning on Pinterest. This is because the first time my pins grace Pinterest, they are on my personal boards and I can track where they are re-pinned and shared from there.
Many Pinterest users think the era of group boards is over. Personally, I still quite like them! If you are struggling to find boards to pin your blog posts to, check out THESE 25 easy ‘request to join’ boards for bloggers. They really make applying the boards easy and you can start promoting your content to more places today!
Manual Pinterest Pinning Spreadsheet
If you want my downloadable Excel spreadsheet, download it below!
It’s the starter edition – it will cover you for 20 blog posts across 10 boards resulting in 10 posts per day. If you have more or less blog posts you can simply adapt the manual posting schedule document to suit your needs (Although this can get quite tricky!). Or, you can make your own to suit your specific pinning needs!
Let me know if you want me to make a larger document that can fit more blog posts and boards.
How Do I know If My Manual Pinning Strategy Is Working?
This answer is short and sweet. Check your analytics at the top of your Pinterest profile.
Sure, similarly to scheduled pinning, you WON’T immediately see that massive spike in traffic that so many bloggers bang on about. But, over time you should start seeing a traffic increase in monthly viewers, engagements and clicks.
If you do not see any changes to your traffic within a month, perhaps re-think your Pinterest manual pinning strategy. Create new boards, create more pins, work on your titles and descriptions and overall SEO.
Pinteresting Strategies
Carly Campbell, renowned in the blogging and Pinterest world, has written an E-book titled Pinteresting strategies. It is a fabulous guide to manual blogging on Pinterest and really cements the ideas I’ve discussed through this article! Carly has written an updated article on her book Pinteresting Strategies here if you are interested.
Pinterest Manual Pinning Strategy: Final Thoughts
I hope you can see from this article that manual pinning on Pinterest is still so important. You really don’t have to go out and pay for tools like Tailwind.
I hope the pointers for making a manual pinning strategy were helpful. Hopefully they have given you a better idea of how to be organised when approaching what seems like a mammoth task!
If you want another article to read, why not read this article showing 37 types of blog posts you could write on your website. It’s great to keep your content fresh and keep viewers interested by mixing up your style now and again. Have a wonderful day! Or, even more useful to you, check out these 25 easy ‘request to join’ group boards on Pinterest for bloggers you can join TODAY!