We see so many pinners achieving incredible success. They have tons of followers and more than 10 million viewers each month. You might think that their success is entirely the result of great products, viral pins, or a strong marketing campaign. The fact is that building a successful Pinterest account for your small business only requires a building plan and determination. This post will provide you with our best Pinterest marketing secrets for being a top pinner yourself, and direct you to a tool that can get you there with almost zero effort.
Note: Pin scheduler Traffic Wonker has sadly gone out of business, but owner and CEO Andy Fling has given me permission to share his useful Pinterest research and other information on my site. I jumped at the chance as Andy is the smartest guy I know when it comes to Pinterest!
How We Conducted Our Pinterest Marketing Secrets Study – How to Get More Pinterest Views
We searched for a variety of accounts to give a trustworthy overview of top Pinterest pinners, including the following categories:
Baking
Weddings
Pinterest Marketing Secrets
Cars
Photography
Dogs
Home Decor
Woodworking
Homeschooling
Architecture
Crafting
We recorded every stat that Pinterest publicly shares about each account and even counted the number of group boards owned by the pinner.
We also reviewed Pinterest accounts at four different levels of success to illustrate that monthly viewer growth is very much a marketing strategy. You simply set your eyes on your goal and then follow the “blueprint” building plan. On many occasions, it is only persistence that sets successful pinners apart from those who struggle.
The Results of Our Pinterest Study
Our study shows that Pinterest is following Google’s lead in the way they rank pins, boards, and accounts.
Google determines rank based on:
1) The size of the post (number of words)
2) The number of links/social shares for the post (social proof)
3) The size of the website/blog
Pinterest determines rank based on:
1) The size of the board (number of pins)
2) The number of saves (social proof)
3) The size of the account (total number of pins)
If you think about Pinterest as a business, which it is, you understand that their success depends on happy visitors. Happy visitors find great content and they come back again for more great content. To encourage return visitors Pinterest sends the most traffic to the pinners that have the most content. This way the visitor is sure to find something they’ll be interested in. This too is consistent with Google’s strategy to favor large and well-established sites.
Our study discovered that pinners with 10M+ monthly viewers have on average:
1) 64,500 Pins
2) 105 Total Boards
3) 24 Group Boards
While this is an average for these high profile accounts, there is considerable variation from account to account. The following points are offered as further insight into their Pinterest marketing secrets to success.
Number of Total Pins Overall
Pins per account at the 10M+ monthly viewers level ranged from 21K to 175K. If you reach the 64,500 pins mark and haven’t met your 10M+ monthly viewers goal yet, it may indicate that your niche is more competitive or these pinners discovered and shared pins that resonated with their Followers more often. You’ll just need to press on.
Owned Boards
Boards per account ranged from 39 boards to 309 boards. Some pinners created a diverse range of boards. Others concentrated on a more narrowly focused collection of boards. I recommend building as many boards as you need to be helpful to your customer, and then focus on filling your boards with pins. The most important point here is to remember that you are building points of entry to your account. In other words, points by which Pinterest visitors can find you. Your boards will add a hundred ways to find you. Your pins will add thousands.
Group Boards
Group boards seem to be on their way out and 23% of the pinners in our study didn’t have group boards at all. If you do decide to contribute to group boards, you might consider following their strategies.
1) Place group boards higher in your board’s list if you own the board.
2) Place group boards at the bottom of your board’s list if you don’t own the board.
3) Limit your pinning to group boards that you don’t own, as the pins you contribute aren’t counted in your total pins. You’ve done all that work and you’re no closer to your 10M+ monthly viewers.
Pinners at Various Levels of Success Compared to Learn their Pinterest Marketing Secrets
Now that you know the blueprint, let’s take a look at what pinners are doing at four levels of success, measured in monthly viewers.
We sampled pinners with:
1) 500K-999K Monthly Viewers
2) 1M-499M Monthly Viewers
3) 5M-999M Monthly Viewers
4) 10M+ Monthly Viewers
The following chart illustrates that it’s simply a matter of adding pins and boards to expand your reach in most cases. Once you have the pins, your followers will grow because you’ve provided them with far more ways to find you. In the short time since we started collecting data for this study, we’ve added 3K pins to our TrafficWonker on Pinterest account, and have seen a 40% jump in new followers over the previous month.
24K Pins = 500K-999K Monthly Viewers
30K Pins = 1M-4.99M Monthly Viewers
55K Pins = 5M-9.99M Monthly Viewers
64K Pins = 10M+ Monthly Viewers
What I came to understand as we collected the data and talked with top pinners is that more pins equals more monthly viewers, and building a top-level marketing strategy in your category is possible for everyone.
How to Get More Pinterest Views with Minimal Effort
As you can see, the path to a highly active account is very clear, but adding 25-50K pins to your account probably sounds pretty daunting. It’s doesn’t have to be. It’s a numbers game and once you realize some of the trips to get more Pinterest views, you’ll be on the road to marketing success.
Ready to see how easy becoming a top level pinner can be? All it takes are a few top Pinterest marketing strategies!
by Andy Fling
Founder and CEO of TrafficWonker.com
Here are some other posts from Andy that you might enjoy:
25 Growth Secrets for Pinterest
Use Pinterest Analytics to Rock Your Marketing
7 Ways to Go Viral on Pinterest
There are so many different viewpoints as to how to master Pinterest but data does not lie. Thanks for the transparent look at successful accounts.