HOW SIMPLE, DAILY ACTION BOOSTED MY PINTEREST VIEWS.
Growing anything is a long game - a new creative skill, a business, a social media account - it takes patience and consistency and a certain amount of stamina when it comes to simply showing up and doing the work, even when it feels like you're not getting anywhere.
It’s so natural to feel frustrated by what feels like an unbearably slow rate of growth, and this frustration is often a major stumbling block for lots of us. It allows doubt to creep in, saps motivation and makes it easier to stop showing up.
I don’t believe in dealing with this frustration with temporary hacks or quick fixes. As well as feeling really icky (and having very unreliable rates of success), the problem with these tricks and shortcuts is that by taking them we cheat ourselves out of experiencing the journey of growing ourselves.
But what can we do to combat this understandable desire for a quick fix?
We can plan some simple, small steps that can be taken most days. By focusing more on only the next day or week at a time, we can put our progress into perspective, and help to stem that feeling of frustration that comes when we’re drawn into thinking months or years into the future.
A couple of months ago I experimented with this approach to start growing my Pinterest account.
In the space of one month I took my Pinterest views from 4k p/month to 17k p/month. And now, two months on, my views are at around 37k p/month. (It's still a little early for me to determine what effect this has had on my blog/website traffic, but I felt even the initial results were worth sharing.)
What exactly did I do?
To start with I spent some time getting my somewhat chaotic Pinterest profile in order. I rewrote my bio, changed my profile picture and checked my linked accounts were all up to date. I also reorganised all of my existing boards. I made sure all of my boards were a really good reflection of my business and the brand I’m trying to work towards and archived or made secret anything that didn’t fit. Within these boards, I took the time to edit their titles and descriptions, really defining what types of images I wanted on there.
After I’d tidied up my account I simply took twenty/thirty minutes a day to save/pin around three new images to each of my boards (remembering to add relevant descriptions and a couple of hashtags to each pin). I also made sure to include some of my own images - pinning the images I make specifically for each blog post, and others that promote things like my free resources or mentoring services.
I missed a few days here or there without beating myself up about it, and I also didn't pin anything on my days off - so on an average week I was only spending thirty minutes on Pinterest, on around three-four days out of seven.
As well as the more measurable effect this has had on my Pinterest views, what I've found really invaluable is the way it's made me reassess my brand and business. In spending more focused time on Pinterest I've been able to touch base with my brand values more regularly, and felt a lot closer to my core purpose in the rest of my work, too.
These little habit-focused steps will always feel more sustainable than quick fixes or big rushes of productivity and it’s clear that they offer a steady and achievable growth. I think it’s something we can expand into other areas of our lives.
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