Pinterest Mistakes To Avoid when Driving Traffic to your Blog

Learn how to fix common pinterest mistakes and boost your blog traffic — You should start avoiding these 20 Pinterest mistakes. Pinterest has over 200 million subscribers. That makes it a powerful social media platform for business and social interactions.

Looking into bringing in more traffic to your blog from Pinterest? Make sure you’re not making these Pinterest mistakes first! Common Pinterest Mistakes and How to Avoid Them.

As social marketing is growing, there are still common Pinterest mistakes that we see people and businesses make when it comes to using Pinterest to grow their business

You’ve tried it a few times, but still doesn’t seem to be working? Don’t give up, Pinterest works! It’s my main source of traffic so far and I don’t know what I’d do without it.

So, you’re probably missing out on some things, luckily I am here to share a few Pinterest mistakes you might be doing and how to solve them.

Mistakes I’ve done in the past, and if I am completely honest with you, I am still doing some of them.

As part of marketing resolutions this 2022, we will share the common mistakes that we see among the marketers Pinterest world to avoid this and improve the growth of your business. Pinterest Mistakes To Avoid when driving traffic to your blog / website.

Pinterest Mistakes You Might Be Making & How To Avoid

1. Pinterest Mistakes To Avoid – Not Doing Niche Research on Pinterest Beforehand

It is prime to have a specific niche on Pinterest for your business and what you provide. Be sure that your boards, as long as they are visible, fit into your business niche.

Also, make sure your Boards are completely aligning with your brand and can fit into your brand message as a whole. It involves having a strategy and setting yourself up with a business profile on Pinterest.

2. Pinterest Mistakes To Avoid – Treating Pinterest As A Social Media Platform

You might know that Pinterest is not a social platform, it’s a search engine. It works like Google – you use it to find things. In order to find things on the platform, you need certain keywords.

This takes us to the second Pinterest mistake.

3. Pinterest Mistake – Not Pinning Pinterest Friendly Images

Pinterest prefers a ratio of 2:3 when considering the size of the image to post. You cannot just post an excessively long or wide image and hope that it’ll work.

The best photos on the social media site are on a scale of 600 by 900. These images look the best on Pinterest and fit the best with customers, catching the eye quickly.

4. Pinterest Mistake – Not Pinning Consistently

Pinterest loves fresh pins. Make sure to add fresh pins to one of your Pinterest boards daily. Do not post all at once in one setting since other pins might not get noticed by your audience.

You may even put the same Pin on different boards to ensure that your target market is seeing what you want them to see.

Whole Foods Market has over 4,100 pins, showcasing that they pin consistently. They get over 2 million viewers every month, so this must prove that they are doing something right.

5. Pinterest Mistake – Using Keywords Incorrectly

Because it’s a search engine, you need to be found. People will use certain words or groups of words (aka keywords) to describe what they are looking for.

3 Things To Avoid: Keywords Pinterest Mistakes To Avoid

a). Not Using Keywords At All

I get it, sometimes we are in a hurry and we just want to get the task done. If you want to be successful on Pinterest, you must make time for it.

Pinterest’s algorithm won’t know where to put your pin, whom to show it to. This is something you can’t go back and edit.

That’s how the algorithm works.

b). Keyword Stuffing

This refers to adding lots of nonrelevant keywords. It not only will make you look spammy, but it will bring you the wrong kind of traffic.

You absolutely want to focus on the right audience, because these are the people who are going to come back to your website for more, these are the people that will become your customers.

c). Short-Tail Keywords Or One-Word Keywords

Another huge mistake! Why? It’s too broad, so your content is almost impossible to find.

Try niching down, be more specific and find long-tail keywords and use them in ALL the places I mentioned above.

Example:

Short-tail keyword: blogging. Long-tail keyword: how to make money blogging

6. Pinterest Mistake – No Links on Uploaded Images

In posting the Pins, always link back to the product’s landing page so that people can always click the link and visit the website.

The benefit is if people are interested in the content, they can easily click the website and be potential leads for the business.

One company that does a great job of linking back to the landing page of each of their products is H&M.

They have men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing all displayed on their Pinterest. Each with an evergreen link to the specific webpage of their products.

7. Pinterest Mistakes To Avoid – Not Following Other People

It is important to follow other individuals and boards on Pinterest to increase your network. Follow other businesses you look up to and your competitors.

You could even follow other users who are part of your followers. It will help the experience feel much more personalized to them, increasing the likelihood for lead generation.

Rachel Hollis, for instance, one of the top social media influencers and authors. Follows her businesses, other businesses that she can draw inspiration from, and even other users.

A few of the individuals she follows can be seen in the image below.

8. Pinterest Mistake – Deleting Pins From Your Account

Did you do it before? Well… it’s time to stop! Pinterest can penalize you for it. So what’s the solution?

Create a secret board and chuck everything in there and nobody will see it, besides you of course. I have tons of secret boards and they work just fine.

9. Pinterest Mistakes To Avoid – Not Completing the Profile

Make sure to sign up for a Pinterest business account first and foremost. This allows you to prove yourself as credible, and it will make the profile look much more professional.

Be sure every section is filled out, including the Description section. Provide a link back to your website as well in order to allow customers to explore what the business is all about.

10. Pinterest Mistake – Creating Boards that are Not Optimized for Search

Make sure to have at least 15 to 20 Pinterest Boards with the right Board Title and descriptions of what the business offers. Be sure that each of the boards is specific to the information customers will want to find.

This will involve utilizing the relevant keywords that your target audience would likely use in a search engine.

The Knot, for instance, has specific boards, each utilizing the keyword that is related to weddings so that these will appear when someone will search for an idea related to weddings.

They created boards that are specific for the Summer and Winter seasons to classify according to what their target audience might search for in relation to weddings.

11. Pinterest Mistakes To Avoid – Unattractive Pins

I see lots of mistakes when it comes to pins, so here are just a few things to consider when creating a new pin:

Make sure it’s the right size – this changes from time to time, but The recommended pin dimensions are 600px by 900px or if you want to use a different width, just make sure to keep it at a 2:3 ratio.
Use vertical pins only – they stand out more and won’t get lost when people scroll through their feed
Choose the right color palette – a very important aspect of any pin is choosing the right color. What do I mean by this? It is easy to read? Are the colors too bright? Is the right color combination?
Choose a font that people can actually read – I get it, those fonts are cute and look great, but are they easy to read? This is what encourages people to click through your site. Sometimes less is more.

Examples:

I’ve added some of my pins I created in the past, just to show you the difference between a bad pin that’s ugly and hard to read and a good pin that’s easy to read and catches your eye.

Ugly & bad pins – at a glance these don’t necessarily look ugly, but they are very difficult to read because of the fonts and color I was using.

When scrolling your feed on Pinterest, the pins are small, so you want them to stand out and be as easy to read as possible.

Good Pins – see the difference here?

I am not saying these are perfect, but they are definitely much better than the first ones. When scrolling through the feed, they catch your eye and make you stop scrolling to take a look, plus they are much easier to read.

Here are a few things to consider when designing a new pin:

Use up to 2-3 fonts and make sure they complement each other and they are easy to read
Use the right color combination when it comes to text and background. Don’t use a yellow text on a white background. Contrast is everything
Don’t overdo it – sometimes less is more and the simpler the better
Use big and bold size for the fonts

12. Pinterest Mistakes To Avoid – Not Using a Business Account

Using a business account has already been mentioned throughout this article, but it is worth noting again.

Business accounts truly set you apart from other Pinterest users and help people know about the business.

13. Pinterest Mistake – Select the Wrong KPI’s for Market Success

Key performance indicators, or KPI’s, are indicators of how well is the performance of a Pinterest account.

It provides information if the business is generating leads and successful conversions from doing Pinterest marketing.

Pinterest created these tools to help marketers determine if their efforts are successful. The image below gives detailed information on what Pinterest analytics provides to users.

Be sure to use the data provided to improve the performance of the Pinterest account.

14. Pinterest Mistakes To Avoid – Not Posting New And Regular Pins

Pinterest loves fresh and new pins!

This doesn’t mean that you have to write new content every single day. You just have to create new and fresh pins to add to your profile on a daily basis.

I learned this the hard way! Stopped adding new pins to my Pinterest account and I also stopped using Tailwind scheduler.

Therefore, my monthly views dropped significantly. It’s a lot of work to get back up, but not impossible for sure.

15. Pinterest Mistakes – Not Integrating Pinterest with your Website

As mentioned, it is important to have a link in your about section on Pinterest back to your website.

It is also important for product and service pins to have links back to the service or product page of your website.

You should also have a link on your website to your Pinterest. This will help you in forming a deeper connection with your customers.

An example, Birchbox created a Pin on the benefits of their product and attached a URL link on where can this be found on their website.

This way, the user will click the URL link added to know more about the product.

16. Pinterest Mistakes To Avoid – Only Focusing on Followers

It is vital to not just focus on the number of followers you have on Pinterest. Your level of success on Pinterest does not equate with the number of followers.

The amount of success is determined by the number of users who will click and visit your website. Do not waste money or time buying followers and focus on ensuring people are interested in your business.

To have more website visits through Pinterest, make sure to:

Complete the profile description with all the information needed.
Add website URL on the About section and in the Pins posted
Optimize Board and Pin descriptions with relevant keywords that people will likely use in the search engine.

Caribou Coffee may have a relatively low number of followers at only 8,000, but they have a high number of monthly viewers.

These monthly viewers are the potential people to engage on their pins and most likely visit their website.

Resulting in that they are one of the most successful coffee companies in the world though, despite this “low” number.

17. Pinterest Mistakes To Avoid – Ignoring the Use of Hashtags

It is recommended to use hashtags in every pin description. Be sure to add at least three to five relevant hashtags per pin that are optimized for search.

Besides, they are placed at the end of the pin description to make it more organized.

When searching for the hashtag, “#backtoschool” you can see that the second result on the page is from Kohl’s pin.

It proves that the hashtag helps businesses to be more visible in the search results of Pinterest.

18. Pinterest Mistake – Ignoring a Call-to-Action in the Profile

There is a high chance that Pinterest users will never visit the website if there is no Call-To-Action (CTA) on the profile.

Adding CTAs in your profile description encourages users to take the desired action. CTAs should always be brief, clear, and to the point. This is especially true on Pinterest.

19. Pinterest Mistakes To Avoid- Not adding categories

Many users either forget or don’t seem to realize that they can add categories to their boards.

Adding board categories, is something that should be taken very seriously as it can give your pins more exposure.

Usually only people who follow you or those browsing through your brand page can see your pins.

But when you add board categories, your pins will appear in the category the board belongs to and people browsing through that category can see your pins, thereby leading to more engagement and website traffic.

So make sure you add relevant board categories to your boards to help them reach a larger audience.

20. Pinterest Mistake – Not promoting your pins and brand page on other networks

One of the best things about Pinterest is that it makes it easy to share your pins across other social networks.

With a few clicks you can either tweet your pins or share them on Facebook. But I don’t see many people taking advantage of this.

When you share your pins on other networks it will help you attract new followers from there. So whenever you think your followers on Facebook or Twitter might enjoy a pin share it there.

You could also add the Pinterest app to your Facebook profile or page as it will be easy for people to find your brand page through Facebook.

Final Thoughts

These common Pinterest mistakes are avoidable if the tips mentioned above are applied.

Pinterest growth is an effective social media platform to leverage the marketing of your business. It helps in generating more leads that potentially becomes customers.

Make sure the pins are searchable and organized appropriately on specific boards. Build relationships by engaging with the target market.

Also, always make sure to have an appropriate description with a link to your website and a call-to-action (CTA) to encourage lead generation.

Following these steps above will help you leverage the growth of your business with Pinterest.

There you have it – 20 Pinterest mistakes you might be making. I hope you found this helpful. Don’t forget to start implementing some of these ideas to improve your Pinterest marketing strategy.

Feel free to comment down below what Pinterest mistakes you are currently making.