The Beginners Guide To Get Started & Grow on Pinterest

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Ever wondered how people use Pinterest or how they even gain such large audiences? I was determined to get started on my Pinterest journey after reading a blogpost by a fellow blogger.

2020 Update:

The platform’s UI (look & feel) has changed a lot since I last wrote this post. However, I’ll be sharing an updated guide soon! So, follow & subscribe to my blog so you can get updates when the post is up!

I was unable to discuss my growth on my Instagram due to my hiatus (you should follow me if you don’t already 🖤). However, here’s the full guide on how I set up my Pinterest, grew to 4.2K monthly viewers in just two weeks, how the numbers doubled barely a week after and how the numbers are now at 49K in approximately one month of Pinteresting.

UPDATE (JULY 2020)

My metrics were never the same after this. My total metrics from January 2019 to now, stand at almost 7 Million impressions and I’m truly proud of how far my account has come. WATCH OUT for my post with updated knowledge on Pinterest.

Note: These steps are in no particular order but it’d help make a tremendous change in your Pinterest account!!

1) Set Up Your Account FULLY

Not just the basic name or profile picture, use your “social media username” which is the name you are already known with across other platforms.

Write up an interesting but TRUE bio and do not forget to include your website URL.

If you really wanna get serious, you have to set up your account as a business account. A business account allows you to directly connect your website to your Pinterest, view your analytics (your growth in terms of audience) and a whole lot of other cool stuff. I strongly advise you do all this with Pinterest web(on a laptop) and not the app, it’ll save you a lot of unwanted stress.

Don’t forget to confirm your website, follow through with ALL the steps required and you can always ask for help from the Help Center or from me (Visit my Pinterest here!).

2. Create and Populate your Boards

A board is a collection of pins and pins are visual content; pictures, videos, that can also link to another platform. It’s basically somewhere you can decide to put a collection of similar pins, like creating a moodboard. You’ll learn more as you grow but what you need to do after setting up an account is to create boards.

Your boards should sync with your bio description, your bio tells your viewers what to expect from you and your boards, so choose your words wisely and genuinely. For example, my bio describes what I do and my interests, so my viewers know the kind of boards to expect from my account.

After creating and naming your boards, populate them by exploring. Search on topics that pique your interest, save what you’d love for your boards and save appropriately. You shouldn’t save a picture of shoes in your “Clothes” board rather than your “Shoes” board.

An important tip is to use a board cover photo that highlights what the board is about. However, this tip only helps when people visit your profile and most times, this happens ONLY IF they found a very interesting pin from your account and would love to see more. So it’s not necessarily a step but it keeps your boards organized and good looking.

You should also set up your featured boards. These are the first boards users will see once they view your profile. There can be five featured boards, so make sure the boards basically summarize what your profile is about.

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3. Keep Pinning.

This is honestly the KEY to growing your audience. Now, please do not go around just pinning aimlessly, rather pin strategically. Find pins you love and know people would love, pins that relate to who your profile says you are.

Regularly Pin about 5-10 pictures on about 2-5 boards. There’s really no rule to this but when you find a pin that has a really interesting concept, related pins that are equally interesting come up and that makes it easy to pin several variations of that concept.

Change pin captions to something you’d want people to relate to(this isn’t necessary though), you can also upload your own pins and links to your website.

In summary, keep these three things in mind:

i) Have unique and distinguished boards;

ii) Pin interesting and appealing pictures;

iii) Stay true to yourself.

The last tip is keep you from going off rails. There are a lot of appealing pins out there and while it’s okay to create new boards and add them to your pins, always remember to stay true to your bio description and to YOURSELF.

4) Ask for Help

If something seems unclear or confusing to you, never hesitate to visit the help center or talk to an expert. I once sent out an email to one of their experts because I already set up my account completely but I still wasn’t able to view my analytics. I got a reply promptly and she was quite helpful. So never hesitate to ask for help.

5. Have Fun

One thing I’m starting to love on Pinterest is that it is not necessarily a “social media site” but a place to get inspiration & enjoy stunning pictures. I say this in quotes because I’m not working so hard to grow an audience, I’m not updating statuses or stories or really chatting and I don’t have to worry about likes or comments. It’s an outlet for me to really show my interests without being limited to a niche, it’s also a platform to publicize my other social media sites and still HAVE FUN.

Pinterest could really help you grow your audience in other platforms. Connect with people, join up collaborative boards(there are several of them relating to different professionals, e.g bloggers) and put your blog content or showcase your Instagram platform. I haven’t tried this tip but it’s logical that collaborative boards will definitely expose your content to a wider audience and ultimately, gain you more audience if you have quality and interesting content on your platforms. So Pinterest is NOT all play but WORK SHOULD BE FUN TOO!

So in summary, whilst it’s OKAY to want to be ‘Pinterest Famous’, do not forget to have fun with it.

I hope this guide turns out to be super beneficial to you. Please do drop your opinions of this guide and drop your Pinterest usernames.

Till Next Time,