Pinterest Best Practices For 2024

Keeping up with the changes that Social Networks make to their best practices is vital for a successful social media presence. ✨

This is why we’ve been looking at the changes Pinterest has made to its algorithm and the new recommendations they're coming up with for users.

As a highly visual medium, Pinterest is shifting its focus more and more to fresh new content, and we have some tips to help you keep up with the new guidelines!

What Are The Main New Pinterest Best Practices?

1. How many times a day can I post?

Pinterest isn’t enforcing a strict number, but the newest recommendation is to not pin more than 50 times a day. In fact, based on an analysis of their most successful users, the number should be even lower than that, somewhere between 15 and 25 pins each day.

The new numbers have your best interest in mind, as pinning more than this could be interpreted as risky behavior, which could hurt the distribution of your content and affect your engagement.

2. Can I send out duplicate posts?

Pinterest strongly favors fresh pins to duplicate ones and, moving forward, this trend will only get stronger.

The new algorithm will actually ensure that new content will benefit from better exposure, which means that this will be the content that will bring in better engagement.

At this time, duplicate pins are defined as pins with an exact image/URL combination that has already been Pinned to Pinterest before, by you or anyone else, on any board.

While re-pinning is still allowed, as around 80% of Pinterest content is made up of re-pins, this will not be the best way to get good distribution and traffic to your website.

Still, a lot of great relevant content, from talented content creators, is worth sharing when fresh posts are not available.

3. Can I post to multiple boards at once?

Publishing a post to multiple Pinterest boards sounds like a great way to get more engagement for your content.

That being said, there are a couple of changes here that users should keep in mind:

You should try to limit the number of boards to which you’re pinning the same pin. Currently, the maximum number recommended is 10 boards.

Also, Pinterest is trying to discourage repetitive pinning, meaning that accounts could get suspended when pinning to multiple boards at once. The new recommendation is to wait around 2 days between posting the same pin to another board.

4. Can I post multiple new pins every day?

You are encouraged to post multiple new pins daily, as long as you're taking all guidelines into account. That being said, it’s important to consider what makes your pins new – different images or different URLs.

New pins will not be considered spam, but, if they all take you to the exact same page on your website, for the same product or blog post, then it’s better to not send them all out during the same day.

5. How often can I re-pin a pin?

In order to avoid spamming, you should give a minimal 2-day interval before re-pinning the same content. Ideally, the interval should be between 3-7 days as your focus should be on creating fresh pins.

If you really have to re-pin the same content frequently, use the variations feature to create multiple variations of the same pin.

How Can I Create Content For The Best Results?

The main thing to keep in mind is that fresh new content is much more likely to get a higher distribution priority and, as such, deliver better engagement.

Here are some recommendations to make sure you’re getting the results you want.

1. Focus more on your own content and boards.

Pinterest is full of amazing pins coming from multiple sources and it’s hard to not re-pin great content that you want to revisit again and again.

That said if you want to get more engagement for your own content, focus on populating your boards with your own posts as much as possible.

Also, shift your energy from group boards to your own boards. The main purpose of group boards was to help users plan events together and they aren’t as effective as personal boards when it comes to engagement.

2. Create more fresh pins with more new personal content.

Pinterest interprets a pin as “new” if there is a unique image/video used, along with different graphics and text overlays. This means that you should always use material that offers a substantially different perspective or experience.

If you've written an awesome new blog post or want to advertise a great new product and a pin just isn't enough, make sure to vary the look and feel of each subsequent pin in a big way:

For images, make sure to use different photos, either of different things, or at least different angles of the same thing, different backgrounds, crops, or perspectives. Vertical images work best since they're more likely to be seen.
For text overlays, use different colors, fonts, layouts, and graphics - the differences here shouldn’t be minor.
For videos, don't make minor changes to one existing recording, but try to create new ones instead.

And new content doesn’t just mean fresh pins with new pics and text overlays, but new URLs too. Pinterest’s new algorithm will reward content creators that add new blog posts, products, etc. to their new pins.

Newer and more relevant pins will most likely show up in users’ feeds moving forward, while older pins will come up less often and only if they’re specifically relevant to a user’s interests.

3. Focus on creating memorable content

One of the biggest pitfalls of Pinterest is publishing generic images that your audience can find on every other board or profile. Focus on creating unique content that is going to inspire people.

A great way to generate traffic is by sharing infographics. You can pull these from your blogs and share them on Pinterest with catchy descriptions.

4. Use relevant keywords

People often use Pinterest to explore specific topics, so keywords are a great way to ensure your pins are shown to the right audience. By using keywords that are relevant to your business, you also tell Pinterest what kind of content you're sharing, and encourage Pinterest to share your pins more.

Here are the best places to utilize keywords:

Profile "About" section
Boards description
Pins - title and description
Blog post keywords

How To Successfully Use SmarterQueue With Pinterest?

Taking into account new guidelines comes easier with help from SmarterQueue. Here are some recommended features to use and steps you should take in SmarterQueue.

1. Adjust your Posting Plan and Timeslots.

With new recommendations regarding how often you should post to each of your boards, as well as re-queue existing content, it's more important than ever to take a look at your Posting Plan and ensure you've got it set up just right.

Making sure that your content mix is balanced will keep your audience engaged and increase your website traffic, while also meeting Pinterest algorithm expectations.

2. Use Variations in the Post Editor.

With such a high level of importance being given to new pins, Variations will be vital in allowing you to easily advertise great content multiple times, with different images for the same URLs.

Simply create images that provide a different experience for your content, based on detailed recommendations above, and put them to work in the Post Editor via Variations.

This will keep your posting Queue going, as well as offer you the opportunity of checking Bitly stats to see what's performing best.

3. Create new Categories for specific content.

As you try to adjust your posting habits to take into account all the new guidelines, it could be useful to create new Categories, as well as reorganize existing ones.

Having a few Pinterest specific categories to help you maintain a healthy ratio of new personal pins vs. content from other sources in your Posting Plan could be the key to staying on top.

This would also allow you to easily pause specific posting Queues, in order to easily reassess and adjust posting patterns specifically for Pinterest.