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Almost one year ago I had the pleasure of meeting two Pinterest employees at Mom2.0, a conference for bloggers. A small group of us stayed after the session and had the opportunity to “get real” with them and chat about some things that were on bloggers’ minds such as stolen pins, rich pins, Pinterest best practices, and more.
This relationship has been an honest and open door that we have kept up since the conference and in light of recent Pinterest changes, I asked for some clarification and solid numbers for bloggers. As I’ve mentioned to Pinterest, bloggers will follow the rules if you give them rules–but you have to give them specific rules.
I have had multiple meetings with Pinterest over the last few weeks and given a lot of feedback to them from bloggers about some things that are happening at Pinterest. I feel that they are beginning to understand where we are coming from and as more information comes out, I’ll update this post for you.
I co-wrote this post with my Pinterest rep. Pinterest asked that I post this on my blog for bloggers to see–originally we discussed posting it in Facebook groups but decided it was easier to read and save if it was on a blog.
What is considered Spam on Pinterest?
Pinterest users are reporting that seeing a board with the same Pin multiple times (even if that is over the course of many months) is spammy, AND they’re reporting those Pins and boards.
In order to not be considered spam (and have your account shut down):
1. Don’t Pin the same Pin to the same board multiple times.
2. Click through Pins to make sure that you’re not Pinning a Pin that leads to a spammy site. You can also test to see if a link is spammy using these tips: (website removed)
3. Make sure the Pin image is relevant to the webpage it’s linking to.
4. Sites with pop-ups, sites that are very heavy on ads, and sites that have a slow load time are considered spammy.
Note: Account suspensions don’t happen with one “negative action.” There are usually several strikes against your account by the time your account is reviewed and suspended.
Are duplicate pins ok on Pinterest?
I explained that as bloggers with a ton of posts and Pins, we repin often. And of course, more repins = more website visits = more money for us, so more is better for bloggers and we really need specifics.
Pinterest explained that our boards should not have duplicate Pins. A few times is ok, but if a regular person would look at your board and notice the ‘same pin,’ then it’s getting risky. They will take into consideration things like Tailwind glitches (like when Tailwind Pinned duplicate Pins for all of us at the end of last year).
Approved Schedulers for Pinterest
This can’t be said enough: do NOT use unapproved schedulers. If the scheduler asks for your username and password, it is a security risk and you shouldn’t be using it. If it’s an approved scheduler, it’ll have a popup that brings you to the Pinterest site and asks you to approve the app (oAuth).
You can find a list of all approved Pinterest partner tools right here.
Long vs Short Pins on Pinterest
The tall giraffe Pins are slowly losing traction and are losing distribution. Anything longer than 2:3 will be in danger of being cut off (think about the tilted Pins on the business profiles–if it’s getting cut off there, it’ll also show up cut off in other places in the same way).
Pinterest gave us a warning about this way in advance (like, two years ago), so that we could change our image layouts. The changes are still in progress and the 2:3 aspect ratio will continue to be emphasized.
Do Pin and board descriptions matter?
Descriptions make your Pins and boards more useful to Pinners and help with distribution. We recommend adding descriptions to all your boards and Pins, along with descriptive titles.
Does categorizing boards help with SEO?
Yes, categorizing your boards does help with search engine optimization. To edit your board category, just click or tap the pencil icon in the lower right corner of your board, then select select the category that best represents your board.
How does Pinterest use keywords? Should I include them in my descriptions?
Yes! Good keywords will help your content get to the right audience and give helpful context to Pinners. Pro tip: Try out a search yourself to find out what results show up with certain keywords.
What’s the difference between keywords and hashtags? And when should I use each?
Both keywords and hashtags make your Pins easier to find. Keywords help with search and give important context about your Pins and boards to Pinners. Adding hashtags helps Pinners discover your Pins. Each hashtag you add automatically creates a link that Pinners can tap to see other Pins with that same hashtag. People can discover hashtags in places like search results and Pin descriptions. When you visit a hashtag feed, the freshest Pins are featured up top.
For my descriptions, should I use full sentences or only keywords?
People are reading these, so sentences work best. But remember that robots are also indexing these, so make sure to include strong keywords.
There’s a new “Creators” landing page with case studies and tips. Good overview for anyone getting started: https://business.pinterest.com/en/creators. You can also email Creator support at Creators-Support@pinterest.com.
Tailwind Tribes
Look to join and maintain smaller tribes with good quality control. Tribes that are helping to distribute spammy Pins are becoming an issue–don’t assume that because you see a Pin in a Tribe, it’s “safe.” Look for familiar URLs and click through the Pins you don’t recognize to see if it leads to a spammy site or a quality one.
How many times a day should I be Pinning?
Pin a handful of times or a lot, it doesn’t matter as long as you’re following the spam rules and doing it authentically (not blindly). Pinterest understands that a smaller blogger with less posts/Pins is going to Pin less than a larger blogger with 1,000 posts/Pins. The most important thing is to save ideas consistently and steadily, rather than in one single flurry.
What’s the deal with Group Boards?
While group boards are a great way to collaborate with friends and family, they are not good mechanisms for getting distribution. The ones that follow Pinterest’s wishes are small group boards that are all Pinning about a small handful of related topics (healthy recipes and fitness; kids crafts and recipes, etc). Go find a few bloggers that are similar to you and have great content and create a niche group board. Pinterest wants collaboration, not group boards that hack the distribution of Pins/algorithm. <— this was stressed many times during our phone calls.
What I’m doing different
I manage my own Pinterest account as well as a few accounts for brands and bloggers. I’m changing the way all of the accounts are managed due to these changes.
Personally, I’ll no longer be adding duplicate Pins to boards. I’ll be evaluating where my Pins link to very closely and paying more attention to Tailwind’s little ! warnings that say “you’ve Pinned this Pin to the same board.”
I’ll be creating more new Pins for posts so I can still share my newest and more popular recipes in ways that don’t look as spammy. Right now, I create 4-6 per post and each focuses on a different category of the post (Weight Watchers, Healthy, 21 Day Fix, cooking method, etc). I’ll be making at least 2 Pins for each of these categories now.
I’m leaving any tribe that isn’t managed by someone I know or has ANY spammy looking Pins. I’m also creating a few tribes and hiring someone to check them weekly for rule following and quality links. My assistants will have lists of “safe” accounts to Pin from.
I’ll be Pinning more from bloggers I know and less from unknown sources. If I Pin about a certain topic, I’ll be creating tribes to help fill my boards and filling those Tribes with high quality bloggers.
Hmm, this is super interesting. I have been pinning less, and that seems to help. But to NEVER pin a pin to the same board again seems hard….
Thanks for sharing! A few questions:
1. How many times does an account need to be reported for spam before it’s taken down? Can anyone report any account? Is Pinterest personally reviewing accounts before closing them down?
2. Can we get some clarity on this comment about group boards? “not group boards that hack the distribution of Pins/algorithm” – How does one hack the algorithm…how do I know if I’m unintentionally in a group that is doing this?
3. So we should probably not pin from the actual Pinterest feed then, if we are supposed to be clicking through every link to confirm its authenticity. Am I reading that correctly? I’m better off pinning from the same handful of bloggers that I trust?
4. How many duplicate pins are too many? Is Pinterest using the images/text on a pin or looking at the URL to consider it a duplicate? So for example, if I create four pins from a post using different pictures and text on each one…is Pinterest going to think it’s spammy since the URL is the same? Or is it only spammy if a user reports it (in which case, I would think that pinning several different pins from the same post would be ok if they look different…am I understanding that?).
5. How many hashtags does Pinterest want in a pin? Will they ding us if there are too many?
WHY are we having to worry about whether or not one extra pin will get us shut down for “spam” when there are THOUSANDS of stolen pins floating around sending people to actual spam sites?!?! No one, I mean NO ONE has time to individually report 10,000 pins, but “report all” just hurts the content creators. I’d love to see all REPINS of a reported pin also get pulled down. Break the chain of spam and stop hurting the actual content creators that BUILT Pinterest in the first place!
Dovetailing on that-I personally don’t use hashtags anymore because they were too easy for spammers to steal all my pins at once. If I search my hashtags 90% of those pins are junk. I’m sticking with keywords for now.
I agree with this 100%. It is ridiculous that Pinterest is threatening the bloggers that built it with suspension but completely ignoring the hundreds of spam accounts that pin stolen images linking to the same garbage sites full of ads.
This makes me feel like Pinterest is working against the average blogger. One who can’t afford assistance to create multiple pins for every post is at a disadvantage. The way I read this is that I should literally create 12 pins for each evergreen post to avoid duplication on a single board.
That’s a lot of time invested (1 hour per pin) in the gamble that Pinterest will show my pin(s) to the intended audience.
Makes me want to reconsider using Pinterest as a prime source of syndication.
And why would I pay for Tailwind if I can’t utilize it to repin my posts? I feel like this strips the value of that program.
No one loves spam or looking spammy. I get that. But never duplicating a pin on a board could also mean we create hundreds of boards instead of multiple pins. How isn’t that spammy? But by these guidelines it would be ok, right?
are average users now going to boards? Because for the past two years we’ve been told they are not. That they are using Pinterest as a search engine and rarely visiting an actual board.
If this has changed, I’d appreciate stats on it.
I am considering stopping pinning, letting what I have in the system ride the wave and focus on other platforms.
I will also be working on SEO and let Google show my content in search. Google told us how to be found in search, gave us specific guidelines instead of generalizations. I am a rule follower and will follow the rules. It is hard to follow when they change without announcement or are subject to interpretation.
I also have to consider my time. I am a one woman shop. I don’t have photographers, writers, content creators, assistants or a team. I use tools that I believe will utilize my time such as Tailwind. Having to create a Pinterest optimized pin from image, to keyword text to hashtags to choosing the board to place it… and then have it placed ONCE per board in its lifetime….not sure the ROI on that one.
I understand that Pinterest cares about the user experience. BUT what about the creators who create the content for that experience.
What consideration has been extended to us?
Pinterest use to drive 60% of my traffic. Currently I am looking at 34%.BUT organic search traffic is up 235% Jan 19 over Jan 18.
I am not cutting out Pinterest completely, as of today, but will consider where I put my efforts more carefully.
I’ll probably take the duplicate pin mention to heart as I trust Becca in her knowledge. She is well informed.
My issue with Pinterest is that they seem to change their “tips” every few months. I’ve literally heard different things nearly every quarter since I first heard them speak at Food Blog Forum in 2015.
I am with Sarah that I might begin putting my efforts elsewhere since the ROI is questionable with one pin.
I think it goes best with continuing to study your analytics and understand them. Clearly, algorithm changes nearly daily that even Pinterest can’t keep up.
I am with Patty on this. Personally, I never go to someone’s boards. I scroll through the feed and pin things that catch my attention and that are relevant to me.
Not being able to pin a pin multiple times hurts bloggers since our old pins are probably not going to be shown in the current feed. It makes using Tailwind smart loops against the rules unless we have hundreds of boards about the same thing but named differently.
So many thoughts. This seems to me to be another example of Pinterest just not understanding the blogger and content creator perspective and making rules that make NO SENSE for us.
Repinning the same image to a board again revives pins for me and brings me traffic. I don’t do it as often as some people, but maybe I’ll do it every other month or so for my fast moving boards. I also do it to revive a seasonal pin when the relevant time of year comes around again. I cannot make 10 different pin designs for every blog post just so I don’t repeat images to the same board. I’m a one woman shop. It’s not sustainable for the vast majority of content creators. And Tailwind’s Smartloop is BUILT around this principle. Did Pinterest just eviscerate the value of a product that one of their most valuable marketing partners has been working on for years? If I were Tailwind, I’d be beating down the door right now.
Also hoping this is just a major misunderstanding. Pinterest has had a history of putting new “rules” out there into the world but getting it totally wrong in explaining it and even in several rounds of purported clarification (remember first 5?!?!).
This is frustrating as pinning multiple times to boards has been what we have been told to do for years. If you can’t then how is Tailwind smartloop even a thing?
Changing how pinners must act while ignoring the vast problem of falsely accused accounts and rampant theft of pins seems to be focusing on the wrong thing.
I read another comment that said “Changing how pinners must act while ignoring the vast problem of falsely accused accounts and rampant theft of pins seems to be focusing on the wrong thing.”
I couldn’t agree with this comment more. The “spam” issues on Pinterest are not from the legitimate, well-intentioned bloggers in Becca’s audience. My home feed is FULL of actual spam that has killed my appreciation of Pinterest as a normal user.
The spam I see comes most often in three varieties. 1) Images created by bloggers which are being directed to sites of a completely irrelevant nature. IE a hamburger recipe linked to a gardening affiliate site with no mention of food. 2) Great blogger pins that have been added to other websites which have zero original content, only round-ups using pinnable images without permission. 3) Images that don’t link to anything and have zero attribution
Seeing the same image in my feed multiple times hasn’t been a user issue I’ve experienced since the “smart” feed replaced the chronological feed. Although sometimes for days on end ALL the pins in my home feed are the same they were the day before, same order, etc. Perhaps the “spam” the users are reporting could be a smart feed glitch?
Maybe if less of my pin images were stolen and then outranking me in search, therefore stealing my traffic, I wouldn’t need to pin the same content as often?
I agree that pinning the same image multiple times a day to the same board is NOT a great approach.
However, I’m gaining 500+ new followers each week. Those new followers have not seen the content I’ve produced in the past. It makes no sense to never bring the favorites back to the top of the board. I’m conservative in my approach and almost always allow 30+ days between repinning to the same board (longer for less active boards). I can’t fathom anyone reviewing my account and finding it spammy, but according to these guidelines, it would be.
Additionally, only a TINY fraction of my followers are seeing most of my pins. So if a reader follows only board A, and the algorithm only sends that pin to less than 1% of the followers, why wouldn’t I pin it again at a different time the next month to reach a few more of the followers who pushed a button saying they WANTED to see my content?
I’m also confused that much of this advice is different than what was taught at the Pinterest Creators event last year. I spent a lot of money to make sure I was getting info straight from the source. I was willing to make the investment to make sure I could have a mutually-beneficial long-term partnership with Pinterest.
I expected that what they shared would have been relevant longer than 6 months OR that they would reach out to us directly in advance of any changes.
I get that we’re not going back to the chronological feed and that as businesses, Pinterest and I have separate goals (they want people to stay on their site, I want them to visit mine).
For years now, we’ve co-existed by helping each out. We provide free content that allows the platform to exist, and in turn, users are directed to us for more details beyond the pin. It feels like each month, there’s a new power grab to shift the balance in favor of Pinterest and make it more difficult for us to use the platform successfully.
I hope they’ll hear all the concerns from these comments, and maybe even follow up with all the concerns and suggestions that were taken away from the conference last year.
Fingers crossed we can return to the days of loving Pinterest!
So this makes it sound like Smart Loop in Tailwind is spammy…pinning the same pin to the same boards over and over at intervals. How is that different and why would I keep paying for Tailwind if Pinterest views that as spammy?
What is definited as slow load time or too many ads? I create content as a source income, so I can’t remove all ads. It’d be nice to know what they consider too many ads or too slow.
No duplicate pins on boards? I just don’t see that working. And I HATE it. No spammy sites, pinning content you know, etc makes perfect sense, and that I already do – and thankfully I’ve never been a fan of the super long pins so don’t have many/any of these, but I’m really concerned about the no duplicate pins part. And sad that Pinterest is moving that way.
I really hope that Pinterest rethinks this decision, because ya’ll just gave me a heart attack. In years past, it was recommended to to pin and repin over and over onto one board. Old pins are rarely seen, but repin it and a bunch of traffic comes over to read the posts. So this feels like it will tank our traffic in a big way.
I agree that it might not look awesome to see the same pin on a board – but who is looking at people’s boards anyways??? This also sounds like we will need 8-12 boards on the same topic, just said differently, or niched differently. Then to have that many pins per post or recipe – it feels like overkill.
Pinterest is business for me, but also so much fun… it’s my favorite platform. With this change it will cause more stress as I try to remember where that one post was pinned so as not to repin it to the same board. I really don’t want Pinterest to equal stress and anxiety, which in this moment with this change, it does.
I used to love Pinterest as both a user and a blogger, now I hate it. I don’t find it spammy to see multiple pins for the same post. I find it spammy to be searching for something (since Pinterest claims to be a search engine) and getting 50 results that all look different, but point back to the SAME post that didn’t solve my problem the first time I clicked through to it. Encouraging us to make more pins for the same old stuff makes it look new on Pinterest, but it also makes me go use google instead. For now, im sticking to my three pins per post and hoping this rule follows the first five at midnight UTC time rule straight into the trash.
This is a potential nightmare for every genuine creator who has invested time and energy into Pinterest. My account is years old and over time, as each season comes and goes, has probably accumulated dozens of duplicates for each of my 100’s of posts.
And since TW is an approved scheduler, where do we stand with Smartloop?
I was told that there is a meeting set up with Tailwind to get these answers for us. I’ll update as soon as I hear.
1) by pinning the same pin to a board, are you referring to pinning the same URL, or are different images but the same URL ok?
2) I was a user before a creator, and I never once looked all the way through a board.
I don’t think it’s spammy for a brand to push out their content. So even if I did see that, I would understand they are a brand and probably are just trying to get everyone to see their stuff.
I feel like Pinterest’s “big video” advertisement is spammy because I see it all the freaking time, but I know it’s just you guys getting the message out….
Stacy, they said pinning the same images–not URL.
I have the exact same question re: Tailwind Smart Loop.
I’m with the majority. I don’t see how NEVER pinning the same pin again is possible. Or even having the time to be able to pay attention to if we’ve done it or not. COME ON!
What about as a user? My personal account is my blog account because it just ended up that way. I USE Pinterest a lot! Not as just a blogger for my content.
Am I at risk if I end up pinning the same on to a board? How does that help the user?
I can see putting a cap on it, but not leaving at Pin once and not again to the same board. Seems impossible.
I’m so disappointed, it seems like in an effort to better the user experience Pinterest has just been squashing creators.
Without creators who posts content for users?
It is so stressful to be constantly hearing of or worrying about Pinterest changes that take such a toll on our livelihood.
I can imagine I’ll get a ton of crap for saying this but….. At this point I’d pay a creator subscription if it meant Pinterest started going to work for us and valuing what we provide.
So hard. Every day. Sad tears. Pinterest I love you but you’re killing me.
This is so disheartening. After years of repinning pins to the same board, it’s suddenly not OK? I repin seasonal pins yearly. Otherwise things get buried. I don’t mind following best practices but Pinterest changes those drastically every few months. It’s almost not worth my time. I don’t have time to check if pins I’m repinning are spam. That’s not my job. That’s Pinterest’s job to get rid of actual true spam.
This!!!! “I don’t have time to check if pins I’m repinning are spam. That’s not my job. That’s Pinterest’s job to get rid of actual true spam.” Amen!
I agree with most of the comment here about the duplicate pins. It seems logical that if you went to one board and saw dozens of the same pin over and over it would be spammy. But as a content creator, a “simple” over arching rule that you can’t pin a duplicate pin to the same board twice, ever makes zero sense. If the content is good content then how are you suppose to continue refreshing that in your feed and getting it in front of new users?