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Over the last year or so Pinterest schedulers burst on to the scene and it was amazing. All of a sudden the chore of consistently pinning your content became easier. And don’t get me wrong, I love these schedulers! I actually use both Tailwind and Boardbooster in my business. But I haven’t turned my pinning over to these schedulers completely, and neither should you.
Why? What’s so bad about completely automating your Pinterest scheduling? And what does it mean for your blog?
Why Too Much Automation Can Be a Bad Thing for Your Pinterest Account
Pinterest Rewards On-Site Users
Pinterest is a business. And as a business they want everyone to use their platform. When you use a automate Pinterest completely you are no longer getting on Pinterest and your reach can suffer because of it.
Pinterest rewards other businesses that are active on their site. That means pinning from your smart feed, searching, pinning from websites, etc. Basically you need to act like a real Pinterest user, not just a robot blogger on autopilot.
Do you use Pinterest personally? Think about how you pin and interact on Pinterest when you are there searching for another craft for the kids. Then act that way for your business too.
Group Boards Suffer
Group boards were responsible for the huge growth of a lot of bloggers over the past few years. They are amazing! Group boards allow you to get your content in front of someone else’s audience- and sometimes those audience are much larger than your own.
But lately the effectiveness of pinning to group boards is declining. Some people will tell you that the death of group boards is due to the smart feed and that followers aren’t shown all the pins of the the boards they follow anymore, but the truth is that automation is largely to blame for the decline in the performance of group boards.
Think about it- if you automate EVERYTHING you never go to your group boards. All you do is schedule out your pin and collect the pins of others for your time slots. The performance of the group board will be directly related to the amount of people pinning FROM it.
If you are checking your stats on board performance you might notice that your group boards have low repin rates- and that is because all of us bloggers are automating everything. We pin and leave without taking the time to repin from the board in exchange.
You Are Out of Touch
Finally, when you completely automate Pinterest you can get out of touch with how your pins, profile, and overall strategy are performing. When you set it and forget it you could be missing out on major traffic potential because you aren’t aware of what is going on ON Pinterest.
There is no one size fits all Pinterest strategy. There are guidelines and basic skeletons of strategies but my blog is different from your blog. What goes viral for my niche, might not work for yours. You have get on Pinterest and check out the trending pins for your niche. Check out the biggest bloggers and what they are doing that might be working.
When you are active on Pinterest you can see things that Board Booster or Tailwind can’t tell you with their analytics. These clues will help you tweak your strategy to make it more effective for YOU and YOUR BLOG.
Related Reading: How to Track Pin Performance with Google Analytics
I know that time is limited and that you have so many things competing for your time, but taking the time to get on Pinterest will pay off in the long run. It’s easy to work in a few minutes here and there throughout your day- when the kids are at soccer practice, after they do to bed, first thing in the morning while you drink your coffee…. Pinterest can drive a massive amount of traffic to your blog- so give it the time it deserves!
