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I signed up for Pinterest on October 23. On January 9, I reached 500 Pinterest followers, which you can read more about here. I wondered how long it would take me to reach my first 1000 Pinterest followers, and it turns out I met that goal on January 25, just 16 days later, for a total of 94 days to 1000 Pinterest followers.
In my post about my first 500 Pinterest followers I detailed my journey from knowing nothing about Pinterest to gaining 5oo followers. You can also read more about why I signed up for Pinterest in that post:
Now how did I get my second 500 Pinterest followers in just 16 days later? I have a very strong engineering background, so due to my inherent nerdiness I started keeping track of what I did on Pinterest in even more detail once I reached 500 followers (be sure to read that timeline here! It is full of great information and my beginning strategy knowing nothing about Pinterest).
Recap of My First 500 Pinterest Followers
I went into great detail in my post on my first 500 Pinterest followers, but here is a brief summary of the major things I did:
October 23 – Signed up for Pinterest.
October 24 – Signed up for Tailwind Free Trial (100 Pins). Started filling up publisher queue with default slots.
November 11 – First website hit from Pinterest.
November 20 – Signed up for Tailwind Plus Account for One Year (Yay unlimited pinning!).
November 21 – Started pinning 10 pins a day via Tailwind.
December 17 – From this day forward, I saw traffic from Pinterest every day on my website.
January 1 – Increased to 15 pins a day via Tailwind.
January 9 – Reached 500 Pinterest followers.
There you have my basic strategy, and again, I knew nothing about Pinterest going in, so there was a huge learning curve. Everything I learned up until that point is detailed in my post about my first 500 Pinterest followers.
My Next 500 Pinterest Followers
As you can see, it took me 74 days to reach 500 Pinterest followers and 16 days later I reached 1000 Pinterest followers. As you can see, the increase in followers has been exponential! I gained 500 Pinterest followers in just 16 days and my mind is blown.
In addition to an increase in followers, I have noticed an increase in traffic from Pinterest on this site, as well as more repins, clicks, and impressions on the pins I publish.
My First 1000 Pinterest Followers
I am going to start with what I changed on January 1 when I talk about how I got my first 1000 Pinterest followers, since that was the point where I made some big changes in strategy. Here is my timeline from January 1 to January 25:
January 1 – Increased Tailwind scheduled pins from 10 to 15 per day.
January 2 – Joined 2 more group boards
January 5 – Joined 2 more group boards
January 6 – Started using intervals in Tailwind so I did not have 10 of the same pin posting in a row to all the different boards I was posting to
January 10 – Joined 2 more group boards
January 11 – Until now, I had one big board list in Tailwind (You can learn how to make a board list here. It makes it super easy to post to a bunch of group boards at one time). I kept the big board list and started making sub groups in case I did not want to pin to all the boards at one time, based on topic, for example General Group Boards, SEO Group Boards, etc.
January 12 – Created my first “long pins” to see what would happen.
January 13 – Pinned more “long pins”, both manually and scheduled.
January 14 – Joined 1 group board.
January 16 – Looked at the group boards with the most impressions, repins, and clicks in the last 3o days. I was surprised to see that most of the most engaging content was on my OWN boards, and just a few of the 20+ group boards I was posting to. I left what was in my Tailwind queue alone for the most part, but started putting more thought into where I was pinning instead of just pinning to every board all the time.
January 16 – I also started researching how Pinterest actually works, and had a lot of trouble finding good content. Luckily I stumbled upon How Pinterest Algorithm Works on SelfHostedLife.com. Faizan Ali does an excellent job of making really technical material easy to understand on his blog and more importantly taught me something very important: the Pinterest Engineering team has a great blog full of details about how Pinterest works.
January 17 – Started pinning a few things during the day manually for fun. I try to do it around the same time every day, but it does not always work that way.
January 19 – Created new boards for myself, in line with topics I was writing about.
January 23 – Started creating board covers for my boards. Doing a few a day until all boards have a custom cover.
January 24 – Joined 1 group board.
January 25 – Reached 1000 Pinterest followers
Throughout this time, I was continually creating new pins and keeping my Tailwind queue full.
As you can tell, January was a busy month for me in Pinterest land. I spent significant time working on Pinterest many nights that month, and it clearly paid off.
Now, I want to elaborate on the key things I learned in January as I reached 1000 Pinterest followers.
Tailwind Remains a Key Part of My Pinterest Strategy
Tailwind is still a huge part of my Pinterest strategy. There’s no way I could accomplish pinning what I do without it, considering I work full time. I can take a few minutes here and there at night to load up my queue, and I am good to go.
I have found myself using Tailwind to just post a bunch of places at once in real time. Once I “schedule” the pins I want to publish, I simply head on over to my list of scheduled pins, scroll down to the pins I added and click the Pin Now button:
Then, my pin is posted right then instead of schedule now for later. Does this count as “Manual Pinning?” I have no idea, but it makes my life much easier when I am pinning outside of my pins that have been pre-scheduled in my Tailwind queue. Are these results typical for each and every Tailwind user? Of course not, but I would not be where I am right now if not for Tailwind.
Assessing Your Boards is Important
It is important to look at how all of your boards are doing, especially your group boards. If you are pinning to a group board that is not very active, or you are not seeing activity from that board, it may not be worth your time. It does not say anything about you or your pins, it just means that board may not be followed by your target audience.
You can do this a couple of ways. First, if you use Tailwind, there are Board Insights which tell you the general activity of the boards you are working with. Board insights is located under Insights in the left navigation pane:
In addition to Tailwind, I like to use plain old Pinterest Analytics and Notifications.
I get Notifications from Pinterest when my pins are saved, and the notifications tell you where your pin was saved from. I have noticed my pins seem to be saved from the same boards over and over, which tells me those Pinterest followers like my content.
Remember: There is a two day lag in Pinterest Analytics, so you are not seeing the most up to date information which is important to remember. Pinterest Analytics shows you important information like your best performing boards and pins in the last 30 days. Since you have a 30 day view, it is important to check these statistics regularly to see how they are changing over time.
Earlier in January I fundamentally changed my pinning strategy from “let’s see what sticks” to “more targeted”. So far I have been seeing good results, and I will keep an eye on this strategy to see how my Pinterest growth continues.
Long Pins are Fun to Play With
According to Pic Monkey, long pins are 600 x 1560 pixels. I saw the most immediate uptake in impressions on long pins when I started to use them. I saw traffic coming from my website from them before I even saw what they were doing in Pinterest Analytics.
Do I post solely long pins? Of course not. Every now and then I create one and post it and see what happens. I encourage you to give it a try and see what luck you have, and keep track of your results.
I Still Cannot Predict How Pins Will Do
I still cannot predict how pins will do. Some pins I think are horrible do well, when others I spent a long time working on and I think are great do not do well at all. I need to spend more time analyzing this to see how things go. I got a notification from Pinterest while writing this post that people are noticing my pin, which I personally thought was terrible.
If I thought it was terrible, why did I post it then? I am not a graphic designer by nature, or especially artistically minded, so while I did not like the pin, I felt others might, and I was right.
I still think Breaking The One Percent’s The Perfect Pin Course was essential to my Pinterest success since I had to learn how to make decent looking pins. My first few before the course were not nice looking at all.
Looking Towards the Future
In my last post on my first 500 followers, I said I wanted to pay attention to two things:
- How long it would take to get 1000 Pinterest followers
- More analysis on my website traffic
I accomplished the first by keeping detailed data on my Pinterest strategy. I need to keep collecting this data, and figure out the best way to record, maintain it, and use it.
I have not done any analysis on my website traffic because well, that sounds boring compared to Pinterest! I have done this type of activity for other sites many times, so I know it is just a matter of sitting down and make the time to do this task. It is an important task, so I should not neglect it!
One thing I really started paying attention to in the last month or so is the powerful Pinterest Analytics, which are completely free if you have a Pinterest Business Account. Be sure to check out this complete guide, and you will be a Pinterest Analytics pro in no time at all!
Reflections on My First 1000 Pinterest Followers
I am sort of surprised, but I really enjoy trying to figure out Pinterest. I did not know what I was getting into at first, but learning this platform is defiantly worth my (very limited!) time. I am looking forward to continuing trying to figure out what works best, and share all the knowledge I gain on this blog!
What is your favorite tip for Pinterest beginners? Be sure to let us know in the comments, or on Twitter.