pinterest mistakes to avoid

10 Pinterest Mistakes That You Need To Avoid

July 12, 2014 by Marc Guberti 6 Comments

Pinterest is the fastest growing website on the web, and there are over 70 million users on the social network. As Pinterest continues to grow, it becomes more important to avoid making mistakes on Pinterest. Sure, no one is perfect, but there are common mistakes people are making on Pinterest that you need to avoid. These are the 10 Pinterest mistakes that you need to avoid.

Pinning on one board. The difference between Pinterest and other social networks is that Pinterest allows you to categories your content and organize that content on various boards. If you pin on one board, you are losing out on what makes Pinterest unique.
Only pinning about your business. There are a plethora of topics that you can pin about. Do not limit yourself to your business. Pin about some arts and crafts, food, clothing, shoes, or anything you want to pin about.
Not commenting on other pins. Only 1% of the average pinner’s time is actually spent commenting on other people’s pins. That means even if a pin goes viral, few people will comment on that pin. If you are one of the first people to comment on those pins, you will get extra spotlight, and possibly, more followers.
Not repinning or liking other people’s pins. When you like and repin other people’s pins, those people will be grateful that you helped to spread their content. Some of these people will decide to follow you and engage with your pins in return. Since you have the power to repin other people’s pins onto your boards, you can also create more boards and have all of your repinned pins from a certain category go on that board.
Not interacting with the followers you have. Comments are rare, but when they come, you need to interact with those followers. Leaving a comment below someone else’s comment will encourage a conversation to develop. The longer the conversation goes, the more likely that person is to visit your blog, subscribe to your blog, and eventually buy one of your products.
Not following your followers on their other social networks. There are many Pinterest users who also display their Twitter and Facebook accounts in their bio (in the form of tiny icons). Clicking on those icons will allow you to get to those social networks where you can follow your Pinterest followers on their other social networks. If people are following you on Pinterest, and you follow those people on their other social networks, those people will be more than likely to follow you back.
Not pinning videos. Videos are a great way to increase engagement, but few people pin videos on Pinterest. People can watch videos without leaving Pinterest, so if you have a board with all of your videos on it, your followers can watch all of those videos without leaving Pinterest. When all of the videos are done, you get extra views, and your followers may decide to take a look at your other boards.
Not having group boards. If you decide to take the week off from Pinterest, your boards will be left inactive, and engagement will slowly go away. However, if you have group boards, you can rely on individuals to update your group boards. As your group board gets more contributors, it may eventually be able to get updated once every hour without you logging in.
Worrying about how many times you pin. People do not mind that you pin too many times as long as what you pin is valuable. If you read 7 books written by the same author in two weeks, and you were given an 8th book by the same author to read again in two days, chances are you would read that book. You like the author enough since the books provide value and decide to read the 8th book.
Getting trapped on Pinterest. Pinterest is a great tool to get more traffic and exposure because it is a very addictive social network. Although Pinterest is an addictive social network, there are other things that you need to do as well. You need to grow your presence on your other social networks and focus on the methods you use to bring in your income. Don’t let 10 minutes on Pinterest turn into a few hours.

There are many mistakes that can be made on Pinterest, but these are the 10 biggest ones. By avoiding these mistakes, you will have a better experience on Pinterest and be able to optimize it effectively.

What are your thoughts on these Pinterest mistakes? Do you have any additional tips? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

5 Pinterest Mistakes To Avoid (Part 2)

December 27, 2013 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

A while ago, I wrote a blog post about 5 Pinterest Mistakes To Avoid. After learning more about Pinterest and using it more often, I decided to come up with a second part for this post. Pinterest is a powerful social network, but it is important to avoid these mistakes:

Not following others. I made the mistake of not following others back when I wrote Part 1. I decided to follow people on Pinterest in an attempt to get more followers. Before I followed people on Pinterest, I was gaining around 5-10 followers every day. Now that I am following back on Pinterest, I am gaining over 100 followers every day. More people know about following others on Twitter, but I encourage you to also follow people on Pinterest.
Not commenting on other pins. By commenting on other people’s pins, more people will be able to see your account, and you may have a conversation with the pinner. Only 1% of an average pinner’s time is spent commenting on other people’s pins. By commenting on other people’s pins, your comment will appear on the top. If you are the only person who left a comment on a pin that went viral, a lot of people are going to see your Pinterest account.
Not utilizing Pinterest’s search feature. When I follow people, I make sure to follow people who would be interested in what I have to say. I use Pinterest’s search engine to find popular boards about social media. I follow that board and a lot of that board’s followers. Then, I get more followers, and all of those new followers are also interested in what I pin about.
Not making money on Pinterest with advertised pins. I am not a big fan of advertising on a blog, but Pinterest is different. You can create a board with all of the advertisements. You will be able to receive a commission for each of those ads. You can make money with advertised pins on Pinterest by using Pinbooster or by allowing advertisers to contact you on your blog.
Not pinning infographics. It is possible to be successful on Pinterest without infographics, but they are very helpful. Mix some infographics with the other things that you pin.

Those are the 5 mistakes to avoid on Pinterest. You can take a look at Part 1 here.

5 Pinterest Mistakes To Avoid

December 17, 2013 by Marc Guberti 8 Comments

Pinterest is a social network on the rise. Pinterest beats Facebook in numerous statistics. The impact Pinterest can have on a business is unquestionable. However, when it comes to the newbie using Pinterest, there are a lot of things that can appear confusing. Some people who have been on Pinterest for a long time also make these mistakes. Here are the 5 mistakes that I have seen people make again and again:

Only creating boards and pinning about the business. People don’t just want to see pictures of your products and workplace. They want more. If you have more boards with different categories, you will be able to satisfy the needs of a more diverse group of people. The baseball lovers and social media experts can both be happy with your boards if you have some boards about baseball and other boards about social media.
Not pinning pictures of your products or your business. Like all social networks, Pinterest is a place to promote your business. People worry about making the first mistake so much that they don’t create any boards for their business or products. You should have at least 5 boards for your business and have at least 10 boards out of the business. The more diverse your boards are, the better. If you get a big following on Pinterest, your business needs to benefit from that following.
Pinning only once a week. On Pinterest and every other social network, consistency is key. The only way to get noticed by people who aren’t following you and to be remembered by the people who are following you is by pinning. I recommend pinning at least 10 times a day. When you get used to that rate, bring it up to 20 pins every day. It’s better to pin 10 times every day than to send out 50 pins on one day of the week and then not sending out any pins for the other 6 days.
Creating too many boards too quickly. When you create another board, that board needs to get updated. If you create too many boards, updating all of them is going to be a challenge. I make sure I get one of my boards up to at least 100 pins before I create another board. Then, I add at least 10 pins to the new board. This ensures that the new board has some pins on it, and when someone looks at your board with 100 pins, they will have a lot of pins to look at.
Not following others on Pinterest. When you first create your account on Pinterest, people have no idea who you are. Your account is just another one of the millions of accounts on Pinterest. In order to get noticed, you need to follow other people. As some of those people follow you back, you will begin to get noticed on Pinterest. By following others, you will go from an unknown user to one of those power users with a lot of influence. Here are 11 additional ways to grow your following on Pinterest.

Pinterest is a social network that you should not overlook. It is a game changer that has the potential to transform your business. By subscribing to my blog, you will get free access to the How To Master Pinterest Video Tutorial. In addition, you can take a look at these 100 Pinterest tips.

5 Pinterest Mistakes To Avoid

September 14, 2013 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

There are millions of users on Pinterest, but since Pinterest is the newest social network of them all, it is easy to make mistakes. Pinterest is different from other social networks based on the way Pinterest was designed to work. Here are 5 Pinterest mistakes that you need to avoid:

Don’t be afraid of sending out a lot of pins in one blast. If you can send out 50 pins in 20 minutes and then send 10 more for the rest of the day, that’s okay. On Twitter and other social networks, posting 50 times in 20 minutes and then only posting 10 more times throughout the day would annoy followers. It doesn’t annoy Pinterest followers as much. In addition, the more pins you have, the more likely you are to get thousands of followers. Almost every user with over a million followers also has over a thousand pins. Some of them are approaching 100,000 pins.
Don’t pin exclusively about your business. It’s okay to pin about different things as well. I don’t only pin posts from my blog, but instead, I pin about baseball, 3D printing, Legos, and a lot of other things as well.
A big mistake is to make your blog unpinnable. If you are using Pinterest, you have to start adding pictures to your blogs and a Pin It button. My traffic has gone up by 200% just by adding pictures to my blog and a Pin It button. Pinterest has taken the web by storm, and if you want your blog posts to be shared more, make sure people can easily share them on Pinterest.
Make sure you like a lot of pins. The people who have liked thousands of pins also have millions of followers. Liking a lot of pins will help you towards getting more followers.
If you pin a lot in one blast, people make the mistake of pinning from the same board the entire time. If you have a board about tips for your niche, and you send out 50 pins about tips for that niche, chances are some of those tips are going to be repeats. If one of your followers doesn’t like that niche, they may unfollow that particular board. Make sure you send out 5 pins from one board, 5 pins from another board, and so on until you reach your desired number of pins.

For more tips on Pinterest, you can subscribe to this blog to get free access to the Mastering Pinterest Video Tutorial.