Lately, fresh pins have been the talk of the town.
Since the beginning of 2020, Pinterest has been indicating that we should be creating fresh content and ideas.
Oh, scratch that. Pinterest has been indicating this for a long time, but we kinda-sorta ignored the “issue” and hoped it would go away eventually.
It did not, of course.
In fact, creating fresh pins is one of the essential factors of a successful Pinterest strategy in 2021.
WHAT ARE FRESH PINS ON PINTEREST
It does make sense that Pinterest started to prioritize fresh pins to create a better user experience on the platform.
Put yourself in the shoes of a “regular” Pinterest user. They open up Pinterest, browse their feed, and are faced with the same pins repeated over and over; you’d probably agree that you’d leave the platform feeling there’s not much to see on it.
When it became clear that Pinterest is after fresh content and ideas, at first, everybody freaked out, thinking that fresh content meant ONLY new articles or products.
After the initial shock, the new theory emerged, which soon became a common belief โ a fresh pin is an image or video that hasn’t been shared on Pinterest yet.
Butโฆ months passed by, and it was becoming clear that “just changing the color of the title” won’t do the trick.
Which makes total sense. Pinterest suggested fresh ideas, remember?
Is it possible that the truth lies somewhere in-between?
Well, kind of.
I wouldn’t want to complicate things further for you, but the easiest way to explain what fresh pins are is by talking about “different levels of freshness.”
If this makes any sense. #fingerscrossed
Content that we pin can be categorized into four different levels of freshness (mind you, that’s not an official classification, just a way of interpreting fresh pins๐):
SUPER FRESH PINS
When you combine brand new content (new article or product) with a brand new pin design, you’re creating “super” fresh content.
Why super fresh?
This URL hit the platform for the first time EVER and is therefore considered a completely new idea.
Such pins are recognized as “the most” fresh pins on Pinterest and will most likely be shown to more users.
FRESH PINS
Ideally, it would be best for consistent growth if you could produce new content at least once per week.
And while publishing a new article every week might already require a lot of work from your side, it’s almost impossible to create a new product weekly.
But here’s the good news – new pin designs for the existing articles or product pages will still be considered as fresh pins.
“But how?” you might ask. “Just a minute ago, you were saying that changing the colors doesn’t do the trick.
You’re right. But introducing new ideas does.
Create pin designs that will appeal to different audiences and where you’ll change not only the colors but also the image, text, and perhaps the whole concept.
Here’s an example:
NOT SO FRESH PINS, but still kinda-sorta OK
If you’re in a hurry, but still want to create a few new pins designs to fill up your Tailwind schedule, you can use the approach described initially. Instead of changing the whole concept of a pin, change only a few minor things like the image and/or colors.
Pinterest’s algorithms have the capability of image recognition (Anyone else thinks this is super scary but also super cool?!), so they can determine fresh pins by several factors.
While changing just the pin’s image might not always count as fresh content, it is still better than repining the same pin for XYZ times.
OLD PINS
In the past, it was extremely popular to pin the same pin over and over again. And why wouldn’t we do that โ it brought fantastic results with a bit of effort.
Since Pinterest introduced many changes in the algorithm in 2020, repining the same pins (too many times) has lost its effectiveness and can even hurt your account growth.
But does this mean that once we put one pin design into the pinning cycle and pin it to all relevant boards, we should NEVER repin it again?
For the majority of pins, unfortunately, yes.
However (yasss!) – there are few exceptions.
If analytics shows that a particular pin performs well and drives a lot of traffic, go ahead and pin it again after a couple of months. The same goes for popular seasonal content (i.e., a popular pin for a winter wedding can be pinned every year).
HOW TO CREATE “SUPER” FRESH PINS IF YOU’RE NOT PUBLISHING NEW CONTENT REGULARLY?
As I mentioned before, creating at least one new URL per week (or once every other week) would be ideal for giving the algorithm signals that you’re consistently providing valuable content to the pinners.
To introduce as much new content on the platform as possible, it’s best to get a little creative.
Instead of writing new articles or creating new products, you can:
- Create pin designs for pages on the website (such as Homepage, About, Contact, etc.)
- Create pin designs for landing pages with your free resources or paid offers
- (if you’re a photographer) Create “gallery blog posts” where you only upload photos from a photo session (no text, so they are super quick to create) and create pin designs for them
- (if you’re in the e-commerce business) Create pin designs for category pages or gallery posts
- Claim your Instagram or Youtube account and pin from there (or create pin designs for those URLs)
- Claim your Etsy or Shopify store (if you have one) and generate pin designs for those pages too
HOW TO CREATE FRESH PINS QUICKLY?
Creating new pins might take some time โ and since Pinterest now wants a lot of fresh pins, this additionally adds up to your already too-busy schedule.
I would suggest that you optimize your pin design time by batch creating pins (i.e., once every two weeks) and using pin design templates that will allow you to create new pins quickly.
Is designing pins not your area of expertise?
I created 20 editable pin design templates that will help you create unique pins in a matter of minutes!
Just…
โถ๏ธAdd your own photos or stock photos
โถ๏ธChange the template colors with photo colors or branded colors
โถ๏ธChange fonts
โถ๏ธAdd unique Elements
…and voila, you’re good to go!
Yep, they are completely FREE, so just click the button and download them now!
DOES USING FRESH PINS MEAN REPINNING IS COMPLETELY OUT OF THE GAME?
Many of you wonder if repinning your pins is now something that shouldn’t be done at all.
A potential client even said that I should only pin one pin design once and then never again because this is now not a good practice.
I completely understand that things can sometimes be misunderstood or lost in translation in a flood of information.
We should indeed be creating as many fresh pins as possible, and not repin old pins over and over again; however, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t repin your pins at all!
Tailwind ran an experiment for four months on 15000 accounts and almost 200k pins (!) which showed that the first time when a new image (pin) goes out on the platform, it receives 71% of the total clicks.
Yes, it’s a lot. YEP, I know, it’s the majority.
But โ what about the other 29%?
Those clicks come from saved (repinned) pins!
It wouldn’t make sense to ditch repinning your pin to several other relevant boards and group boards and miss out 1/3 of potential clicks to your website, right?
So, repinning your pins is still totally fine; just make sure you’re not pinning all of them at the same time and to too many boards (use Tailwind’s feature for interval scheduling or keep track in the spreadsheet).
If you have any more questions about fresh pins on Pinterest or their repinning, ย DM me, or even better โ add it to the comment section below as I’m sure the answer might help others too! ๐
Happy pinning!
