How I went from 0 to 80k+ views on Pinterest in my first three months

Pinterest has become so well known online that it needs no introduction, yet this social platform is unlike any other! While Google reigns supreme as a search engine by answering user queries, Pinterest is somewhat of the ultimate visual search engine. 

Take anyone you know, and you’ll realize that there’s a very good chance they’ve used Pinterest before. It’s much easier to find inspirational images on Pinterest than on Google, as there are loads of users sharing their interests and visuals. You’re very likely to come across Pins when searching for images on Google on a given subject! I know lots of people who use Pinterest to find outfit ideas, create wedding collages, find recipes, or even use it to find inspiration or references if they’re artists.

As a content creator or someone with a business or a blog, you have to keep in mind that Pinterest can be a real goldmine for capturing the attention of an audience and generating traffic to your site. 

You’ll find tons and tons of tips and guides on how to use Pinterest, but a lot of them are “older”. I actually have successful and established Pinterest accounts that generate traffic to my site and shop, but those were established during the “golden times” of the internet when things seemed to be simpler. 

This has brought me to this year’s challenge. At the end of January, I kind of wanted to try out things as a “beginner” and see if in 2024, I could truly still make use of Pinterest and if I could easily grow on the platform and generate traffic to a brand new site that isn’t ranking at all on Google. 

I also decided to share these growth reports with others so you too can see if Pinterest is still worth it or not in 2024! So I’m not going to share abstract advice or strategies to follow. On the contrary, I’m going to recreate my journey with you each month so that you can see how things look for me on Pinterest as they currently are! Therefore, in this post, we’re going to cover several points: 

• How I set up and optimized my Pinterest Business account and the strategy I followed 
• The type of Pins I’ve created and shared 
• The schedule I followed to post my Pins 
• The results of this first quarter 

Setting up a business account on Pinterest and getting started out on the platform 

I’m going to start off by saying that I’ve been using Pinterest for ages. I had a personal account for years, I already had a business account for another site and I also managed accounts for clients, so yeah, I’m not actually “new” to Pinterest. 

I started Kaleidokika (the site you’re reading this on, hi!) on a whim, as I kind of wanted to see if starting a lifestyle blog would work out in 2024 (since you know, everyone says blogging is dead!). While I do tailor my blog posts to rank on Google, I also wanted to use Pinterest to generate traffic towards the site, and I wanted to see if it was still worth it. So back on January 21st, I went ahead and created a brand new business account on Pinterest. 

It literally took me a couple of minutes to set it up. I added a profile picture and a banner, claimed my website, and added a simple description with “keywords” that would set the “tone” for my profile. Aside from that, I also created some simple boards based on the posts I was planning to share at the time. I remember having 5 to 6 blog posts so I went and optimized the related boards with long tail keywords and other relevant stuff. 

One thing to keep in mind is that I did NOT share a single pin from other users. I know that many advise you at first to follow an 80-20 rule where you share 80% of your content and 20% of other people’s content (sometimes even the reverse!!) but I didn’t go through that and only shared my own pins at first. 

How I started my Pinning strategy and what I was pinning in my first month

I had around 15 blog posts to share on Pinterest during my first few days. So what I did was create 3 pins for each of these posts. I tried to experiment with different designs and layouts so that all my pins wouldn’t look the same. 

I then wrote down different titles and descriptions for each pin and I started to manually schedule them. I tried to “separate” each post URL by 3 days to avoid spamming. I know that for new accounts, it’s better to spread out pinning the same URL, and some even recommend spacing it by a week. But since I did not have enough posts to do that without failing to pin every day, I had to find another solution. Here’s an example of what my daily pinning schedule was like:

Day 1: 

• One pin about Valentine’s Day Nails Inspiration Post 
• One pin about Outfit Ideas for Valentine’s Day 
• One Pin about Valentine’s Day Gift Ideas for Couples

Day 2: 

• One pin about Digital Products to sell on Valentine’s Day
• One pin about Winter Outfit Ideas
• One pin about a Baked Egg Recipe

Day 3: 

• One pin about recreating a look for winter
• One pin about some Amazon Finds
• One pin about Must Have wardrobe items for Spring

And then on Day 4 I could pin again the same URL as Day 1 but with different pins and titles/descriptions or I’d pin about new blog posts I’d publish on the site. I was actually using a schedule/planner that I made to organize the content that I would pin so that I could keep track of what URL I recently pinned. I followed through in this manner through my first month. And one thing that I was adamant about was posting every single day. 

There are 2 mistakes that you ABSOLUTELY have to avoid during your first month on Pinterest (in my humble opinion). Number one is spamming the same URL over and over again. It doesn’t matter if you create 200 different pins that are of high quality. The moment you ONLY share that URL too many times in a short span, you risk getting flagged by the platform. 

The second mistake is NOT being consistent and pinning sporadically. When you start out on Pinterest, you kind of need to “show” the algorithm that your content is unique and useful so that it can push it forward to other people. Pinning different and varied pins daily helps populate your brand new account (remember what I said about not sharing too much of other’s pins? That’s how you can afford to not do it). Consistency is key, especially when your efforts can be rewarded in the long term since Pinterest doesn’t just focus on brand new content and pushes out “old” pins too! 

The results of my first month with a brand-new Pinterest account

I gave some examples of the pins I was posting during my first month, and you can see that I was making use of seasonal trends. I basically targeted some Valentine’s Day keywords and created content based on it. It was in my opinion worth it as I literally reached 1k impressions per day by the 1st of February and I was already getting some outbound clicks towards my site.

It was kind of “easy” for me to generate some traffic and get some impressions because of a single post, which was the one where I shared 60+ nail design ideas for Valentine’s Day. Impressions aren’t as important as outbound clicks since I wanted to generate traffic to my site after all, but it was still nice to see that some of my pins were getting some views. It was not something crazy, but satisfying nonetheless as I wasn’t spending crazy hours pondering how to market this post! 

As you can see by the screenshot, at the end of my first month on Pinterest, I had 11.1k impressions and 71 clicks, which was considerably better than the 0 organic clicks I got from Google alone at that time.

My second month on Pinterest and how I focused on trends to grow my account further

Once Valentine’s Day was over, I naturally experienced a fall off when it came to performances since my only pin that was somehow getting out there was about nails for that occasion. Still, I kept on sharing posts targeting some trends for the spring. I’d share Spring wardrobe essentials, outfit ideas for Spring, prom dress ideas and other spring finds. Some of these blog posts had more of a “buying” intent as I was trying to put some affiliate links out there. I’d get some views and clicks here and there, but it was kind of “dead” for a moment.

At the same time, I also started pinning images directly from my blog as soon as I posted a new blog post because I was too overwhelmed to sit down, organize my pins, and spread out the URLs. I’m not sure if that “quiet” period was a result of that, but I do admit that I had gotten a bit lazy during that second month, despite trying to pin at least once every day. 

Then at the start of March, I wrote an article sharing Iftar ideas for Ramadan, and sure enough, those pins immediately started getting some traction. By the end of my second month, I did grow my impressions by 34% and I got 98 outbound clicks during that time, but once again, it was all thanks to one blog post instead of multiple posts getting traction as I had hoped.

My third month on Pinterest and when I started to notice some results 

Funnily enough, I did drop the ball during my third month as I wasn’t pinning every day and when I did, I just pinned directly from whatever post I published on my site instead of scheduling the pins and changing up the titles/descriptions, but it was still a crazy month results-wise compared to the first two. 

As I said so before, I knew that by targeting seasonal trends I would inevitably have a limited exposure. Once Ramadan and Eid passed by, the pins that were getting daily impressions wouldn’t be that effective since the time for it would pass and people wouldn’t search for that topic until the year after. Of course, I did have other content that was targeting other keywords on Pinterest, but during the first and second months, I didn’t see any results from that content I made.

Honestly, when you spend time writing blog posts, creating pins, and sharing them, you can’t help but be kind of disappointed when you see a couple of impressions, 0 pin clicks, 0 saves, and 0 outbound clicks. It’s normal to wonder if it’s worth it and if you should even tire yourself like that… And let me tell you, yes it’s worth it! During my third month, I started noticing some pins that I had made before that started to generate some views and clicks. 

Some content I had created at the start of March was only getting views in mid-April. Some pins I shared back in January still have shown 0 results, but that’s okay and perhaps it can change in the future (and if it doesn’t, it’s not the end of the world either). 

By the end of this month, my stats definitely witnessed a LOT of growth compared to the first and second months! I basically tripled my impressions, outbound clicks, and saves during that time. While “limited” content performed really well (the Eid Outfit pins literally blew up quickly despite me sharing them 9 days before the end of Ramadan), I was nonetheless seeing results from evergreen content. And the best of it all? I also got my first affiliate sale on Amazon! 

And on that topic, I also want to point out that you can still use Pinterest trends to create content that stays relevant all year long. For example, two posts that were generating traffic were one about dinner party ideas and another about mob-wife aesthetic outfits. While mob-wife aesthetic is a trend, it won’t be “limited” to a limited period of the year! So really, don’t hesitate to check out trends as it can help you get good ideas for pins. 

What to Conclude from My First Quarter on Pinterest

We’re going to end this first Pinterest Growth Report with a global view of the performances my account managed to achieve and talk about what it entails for my site. My biggest goal with Pinterest is to build my brand and generate traffic towards my blog. From the 21st of January to the 30th of April, I thus managed to achieve these results: 

• 80.13k Impressions 
• 2.82k Engagements
• 463 Outbound clicks 
• 106 Saves 
• 49.76k Total audience 
• 2.05k Engaged audience 
• 1 Affiliate Sale

So what do I get from these results? I can tell that my pins are slowly appearing on other people’s feeds, and they do get some views. The outbound clicks are satisfying as well considering that I have barely any from Google (which is normal for such a newly established site). So really, I did manage to get some visitors on my site after all.

The biggest secret to achieving great results on Pinterest 

Before wrapping up this first report, I would like to share with you guys the ONE thing that really helped me during this first quarter. It’s simply to NOT compare yourself to others. Do not compare your growth and stats with anyone else, because that can lead to your downfall.

During my first month, I was actually really proud of my 10k monthly views. But then I was on Reddit and randomly stumbled upon a person wondering how long it could take them to reach a million views on Pinterest. I read their post and I was flabbergasted to read that they had started their account back in December. They had more than 300k monthly views and more than 1k outbound clicks daily to their site in just a few weeks. When I tell you that felt like A PUNCH in my guts, I’m not kidding. 

They were pretty new to this but were writing up posts that were better than their competitors, and their pins were working well. Despite me being USED to Pinterest, I was still wondering if I really knew what I was doing, if the algorithm changed so much and I didn’t realize it because I was so used to my “old” strategies or something. So many doubts rose to my mind and if I had listened to myself, I would’ve probably given up on this little challenge. Why? Just because someone else had it better. See how dangerous that is?

This is why I wanted to be very clear and straightforward with this growth report. While I hope it can inspire newbies on Pinterest, it’s also a reminder that even though you could follow the most perfectly thought-out strategy, you could still fail or not grow as well as you’d hoped. My advice is to absolutely keep going on and not falter!