‘This course will teach you the miracle pinning technique that will guarantee massive traffic growth on Pinterest. Right now reduced from $499 to only $67.’
You have probably seen this and many similar marketing plots in communities, forums, and online blogs.
Just search for Pinterest marketing and a common thread emerges: if you want to succeed in Pinterest, there is a secret method that only the experts know.
Well, guess what?
It’s all misleading marketing in action.
The success on Pinterest has been well documented and it’s no secret.
How the platform works and what are the best practices are well mapped out in their support pages, Community Guidelines, and Pinterest engineering pages.
In this article, I will break down some myths and confusion about using direct Pinterest upload (manual pinning) vs using scheduling tools like Tailwind.
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Is Manual Pinning Better Than a Scheduling Tool?
Let’s get right to the main questions.
Here is the main idea: if you pin manually, Pinterest will reward you with higher impressions and clicks, and deliver more traffic than publishing through a scheduling tool.
Ok, now let’s look at why this claim cannot be true.
1. No Scientific Case Studies
I’m yet to find a real scientific case study that would demonstrate which one of the pinning method works better.
You can find ‘case studies’ like this one, which shouldn’t be really called a case study as there is nothing scientific or systematic in how they measure the data.
In this example, they share screenshots from different client accounts over a very short period, within a month of changing the pinning strategy.
Unfortunately, that’s not a way you run a marketing test, and certainly not for such a short period of time.
To see notable changes in a Pinterest account, when you test a new strategy, you will have to wait at least three to six months. Not only that, but you should only change one attribute, in this case, the publishing platform, without changing anything else.
That’s pretty much impossible.
Things don’t miraculously happen within four weeks just because you need a screenshot to share in a blog post.
A case study that would prove that manual pinning delivers more impressions and outbound clicks would have to run as a split test, using the same pin images over at least 3 months, so you can run a direct comparison.
You can’t simply run a case study on two different accounts, with different pin images, and in a different niche, and use that as proof something works or doesn’t.
2. Why Penalize Content from an Approved Scheduling Tool?
Tailwind is one of many Pinterest-approved scheduling tools, which means its using their API to schedule content to the platform.
Yes, if you pin through Tailwind, there is a small bit of code that tells Pinterest where the pin came from, but that’s about it.
If Pinterest really wanted to penalize traffic via approved tools, what would the end benefit be for the user?
Make people work twice as hard to get their content published and get eventually fed up with the platform?
Limit the amount of new content that is added to the platform?
Logically, it makes no sense.
Manual pinning through the platform is time-consuming, and people will unlikely be able to do this over a long period.
Pinterest likely knows this as they have plenty of data to back it up, and that’s why there are approved API tools you can use to make this process easier for content creators.
3. But it Worked for My Account!
Great, good for you!
Keep going then!
But before you recommend it to other people (or sell your brand new course), did you take these things into account?
- have you optimized your pins in a different way compared to the previous period?
- have you increased or decreased your pinning frequency?
- have you added any new boards or group boards?
- does your niche experience seasonal spikes?
- have you changed the design of your pins?
- have you been adding only new pins instead of repins?
This is just a small sample of things you should factor in before you attribute your overnight Pinterest success to the miracle called ‘manual pinning’.
Notice that anyone who is peddling the ‘manual pinning’ scheme never mentions any of the above.
4. Catching Spam Filters
Now this is just my speculation, but bear with me!
Pinterest knows spammers are getting increasingly sophisticated, and to achieve results, they need to do things on scale.
And what’s easier to scale?
Manual pinning or using an automated tool?
Of course, adding 100 pins to Tailwind will take you a fraction of the time compared to doing it manually.
I think this is where you need to be a bit more careful when you’re using Tailwind and don’t start posting on a crazy schedule when you have a new account or have rapid increases in activity.
It could be that Pinterest is using the data about the ‘method’ of uploading to run a more sensitive spam filter when you’re uploading from Tailwind.
But that doesn’t mean that manual pinning will get you more traffic, and you can still get caught up in the spam filter.
Manual Pinning vs Tailwind: What’s Actually Important
So here is the back story that nobody talks about.
The main benefit of manual pin upload is that the pin is always considered a FRESH pin.
If there is one thing you need to know about the Pinterest algorithm, it’s the fact that FRESH pins are more important than ever.
Your account is going to suffer if you’ve been repinning content from other people, instead of posting fresh content.
Pinterest wants fresh pins and they made that very clear both in their community guidelines and also on their engineering blog posts.
Fresh pin = new image + new title + new description
So where does manual pinning come in?
As I mentioned earlier, if you pin directly through the platform, the pin is always a fresh pin as you’re creating something brand new with each upload.
Pinterest will flag this up as a fresh pin in the source code.
Now, if you’re using Tailwind and don’t save your drafts saved and edited correctly before pushing them to the platform, you might end up scheduling them as repins.
I know it sounds weird, but those new images you added might end up being flagged up in the code as repins.
To ensure you always have a fresh pin when using Tailwind, if you’re not changing the image, make sure each one has a unique title and description.
To make the process faster and create better SEO optimized titles and descriptions, I created a free AI tool which will do this for you in seconds.
You can get access to it for free, if you take my free Pinterest mini course below.
Conclusion
So what should you do?
If you’re pinning manually and it works for you, great. Keep at it.
If you’re using Tailwind, you’re fine too as long as you make sure to check your pins are marked as fresh in the Pinterest page code.
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