4. Engagement Over Impressions

My fourth success tip for Pinterest is to focus on ENGAGEMENT rather than obsessing over impressions.

It’s super easy to get caught up in tracking how many times your pins are seen. And obviously, you want them to get good reach and good visibility because if they don’t, then no one’s going to click and no one’s going to buy your products. 

But there is way too much emphasis on tracking your pins’ impressions – it’s a statistic that everyone obsesses over a little – but in reality, Pinterest is a slow burn; it is a snowball-effect type of platform. 

Your impressions will naturally increase (and increase and increase) as long as your engagement is high for that pin. Impressions will of course be low to start, and then they’re going to snowball into higher numbers — that’s the power of Pinterest. That’s why some of those pins are going to bring you visits to your store for months and years to come. 

This is why you need to focus on engagement first. Engagement is what will drive your growth, so if at first you don’t see super-high impressions it’s totally ok, what you want is for your engagement to climb nicely in the background – so saves, clicks, etc.

Once you are getting engagement, it will have a trickle-down effect and you will start to see your impressions increase. 

So making pins that people engage with – that they want to click on and save and go visit your shop from – that’s what you really need and is the metric that you want to be focusing on.

5. Idea Pins

UPDATE [2024] Pinterest has streamlined their content creation process and we no longer have Idea Pins (on some accounts they may still be available but this functionality is being phased out). 

Next let’s talk about idea pins. 

Idea pins are great, but here’s the thing: they can’t be clicked (yet!). 

And if they can’t be clicked, guess what? They can’t generate direct traffic to your store — not good! So they should not be the main focus of your Pinterest strategy.

You can’t take impressions to the bank and I see a lot of makers getting stuck there, pushing idea pins like crazy and not getting results.

Now, a word of caution here: at the time I’m writing this article (as I just explained) you can’t add links to idea pins. But I wouldn’t be surprised if soon this changes and we see Pinterest create the ability to add a URL. If Pinterest wants to push idea pins as an ad format on Pinterest they will need to add this feature, so I think it will happen at some point. 

But until then, please don’t put all your eggs into the idea pins basket — even though they get a lot of impressions, get a lot of engagement, and the algorithm seems to be favoring them, it doesn’t mean that it’s a good Pinterest strategy. 

So use them — but don’t abuse them!

One other word of advice for those of you who make idea pins:

A mistake I see a lot of makers make with idea pins on Pinterest is sharing so much of the behind the scene and the process of how to make their product that the pin ends up being shared more on Pinterest by people who are trying to learn the craft that you are skilled at, rather than those actually buying the product. 

Remember, the point of your idea pins is to sell the product – you don’t want to give away how you make it. And on Pinterest, it’s very important to incorporate this distinction into your pins because there are a lot of crafters on the platform as well, and you do not want them to see your pins – you want shoppers to see your pins! 

So it’s very important to remember that what you share in your idea pins needs to be carefully planned.

6. The Buyer’s Journey On Pinterest

Next up is tip #6, “the buyer’s journey on Pinterest,” and what I mean by this is that you have to be knowledgeable about the stages a buyer goes through and how to appeal to each one with your pins.

It’s important to remember that some people are just starting their buyer’s journey; they will be looking for ideas and inspiration but are nowhere near ready to purchase anything. 

Other people may be getting a bit more serious about their planned purchase and looking for different product options, and of course some may be at the final stage where they’re actually making their buying decision.

What’s important to remember here is that you have to create different pins with different formats and different design goals – each different pin will appeal to a certain set of people in a specific stage of their buyer’s journey and meet them where they are.

Here’s an example of how images change during the buyer’s journey. You can see that the images that appeal to someone at the beginning of the buyer’s journey are meant to inspire them, and as you move along the journey the images become more focused on a specific product and how you would display or use that product.

For example in the first couple of stages, we have lifestyle images and pins with text that offer ideas and inspiration like “ideas for styling indoor plants” or “how to hang plants from the ceiling” – but as your potential buyer starts getting clearer on what they want to purchase (in this case, we are selling macrame plant hangers), the images and designs start to focus more on the product itself.