Are Pinterest Idea Pins Worth Spending Time On? I’m About to Find Out

I am an avid user of Pinterest, I have over 14 million views a month and 43,000 followers (although those numbers don’t mean as much on Pinterest as they do on social media).

However, I have to admit, I have been a late starter when it comes to Idea Pins.

I use the Tailwind Scheduler app to upload between 20 and 25 Pins to my Pinterest account every day and this has been instrumental when it comes to growing my Pinterest account, the views and the clicks through to my blog.

Around 90% of my blog traffic comes from Pinterest.

So far, I have only managed to create one Idea Pin. I couldn’t see why Pinterest wanted me to start uploading videos and quick snapshots of many different images.

Like Instagram, I see Pinterest primarily as an image-sharing and inspiration app and I didn’t want to start making short-form videos for yet another content-hungry platform.

My one Idea Pin sitting all on its own

In the last year or so, the growth of my Pinterest account has slowed and the engagement and click-throughs to my blog post have plateaued. I am becoming increasingly despairing at Instagram, so I wanted to find a way to get more traffic to my blog, which will increase my ad revenue.

My Pinterest statistics have been on a sharp decline recently

I would eventually like to rely on my website(s) only and no longer post ads on Instagram.

Why? I’ll be honest with you, I started to fall out of love with Instagram around 2 years ago but it had me by the balls. I was (and still am) making a decent wage from it with brand deals and collaborations.

But Instagram has completely lost its way. I believe it has stifled a lot of creativity and we have all become copycats, chasing those golden viral reels with trending audio and formats. I could chat all day about my views on Instagram but they are for another post…

I’ve decided I need to reinvest a lot of my time back on Pinterest so I started to look into Idea Pins.

My Pinterest performance is going the wrong way. I have taken my foot off the Pinterest gas pedal over recent months.

This is what I found –

• You can include up to 20 images and videos on an Idea Pin, great if you want to share a whole room renovation or DIY in one
• Idea Pins used to be Story Pins and work like any other Story element on social media. They can have high engagement and Pinterest is keen to push them out to users more.
• Idea Pins take the story element but don’t disappear after 24 hours. As with all Pins on Pinterest, they are evergreen.
• You can’t put a link on Idea Pins, so why would we use them to increase traffic to our blogs? A few reasons really — Idea Pins are prominent in a Pinterest feed and will appear at the top of the home page and on the Today page. Pinterest prompts people to follow the Idea Pin creator at the end so this is a great way to increase your followers. The more followers on Pinterest, the more eyes on your Pins.
• You can download the Idea Pin once created. Although this will carry the Pinterest watermark, it is a great place to create more content to spread throughout your social media channels
• Pinterest has said they’ve seen more engagement on Idea Pins. Up to 9 x the number of comments are left on Idea Pins which can have a positive effect on your Pinterest account overall. However, I’m yet to be convinced that I want to invest time in likes and comments on Pinterest. To me, it is a search engine for inspiration, not social media. We’ve already got plenty of those platforms!

Over the next few weeks, I am going to concentrate on creating Idea Pins for Pinterest and see how much effect that has on my engagement. I’m not sure if it is worth spending too much time on creating this kind of content when it seems to only benefit Pinterest with no link back to your content.

I’ll let you know how I get on!