Swimming Laps
I recently started swimming laps in the morning.
My usual weekly exercise program includes walking my dog for several miles. But with this miserable summer heat we’ve been dealing with in Florida, it’s hard for my dog Winston to be outside for long periods of time. I worry that the hot pavement will hurt his paws and I’m afraid he’ll get heat stroke.
Since I still needed to get some exercise, I replaced our weekly walks with laps in my community pool.
I go early enough in the morning before anyone in the neighborhood packs up their pool noodles and decides to spend the day at the pool. It’s usually just me and the birds. Occasionally, one of the neighbor’s cats will slip into the opening in the fence and hangs out on the pool deck to stare at me for a bit.
I did a little research and found that if you swim 33 laps in a standard pool it would equal a mile. One lap is counted as swimming to the deep end AND back.
I admit, it’s been quite some time since I’ve gone swimming for other than just fun in the pool. Actually I know how many years its been because I remembered that I took swimming for a PE credit in college. { with a kid in middle school and coming up to a zero birthday, I’ll let you do the math! }
I knew that there was no way that I was going to be able to just jump in the pool and swim a full mile on my first day. I had to come up with a way to ease into this new exercise program.
I had to use the slow and steady approach to get to a mile.
My first day I swam 15 laps up and back. My next swim, I added 5 more laps and then 5 more and continued to add 5 more laps until I hit 33 laps.
I was beyond thrilled the day I swam my first mile.
Slow and steady wins the race
You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you a story about me swimming a mile when this post is about Pinterest.
I’m bringing this up because I get asked all the time how I grew my Pinterest account to over 12,000 followers. They’re convinced it’s this one big secret tip that everyone knows about but them. OR that I’m spending a bunch of money on Pinterest schedulers.
Honestly, it’s neither one of these things.
It’s that I learned that there’s no quick fix to growing my Pinterest presence. It’s a slow and steady process.
There is no ecourse you can take and you’ll get thousands of followers in a week. It took me several months before I even started to figure out what to pin and where to pin it.
Just like my swimming program, I created a slow and steady process by adding in 5 more laps to my Pinterest process by discovering a new step to do my pinning strategy faster.
That’s the first part to learning about this Big Secret to how you’ll grow your Pinterest presence, get more repins and connect with more clients. Accept that when you dig in and do the work, Pinterest will start to work for you and your business.
I’m NOT the Queen of Pinterest
Sometimes when I’m introduced to people who are looking for help with Pinterest, they say, “You need to meet Penney, she’s the Queen of Pinterest.”
I will always appreciate an introduction to help someone understand how to use Pinterest but I’m not a big fan of being called a Queen – or Diva or Ninja or Guru for that matter.
I like to refer to myself as the Neo of Pinterest. And I mean Neo as in the character from The Matrix movies.
If you’re not familiar with this movie series, here’s the short version of what happens:
Neo is offered a choice to remain in his everyday life and forget about the Matrix or to learn what the Matrix really is. Through a slow and steady process, Neo discovers how the Matrix works and stands up to the machine bad guys.
He no longer sees the fantasy world as the Matrix has programmed for everyone to believe in. He sees the code, he sees what’s really going on and the movie ends as he plans to oppose the machines of the Matrix by freeing as many human minds as possible.
Not only do I totally LOVE the whole Matrix Trilogy { and can watch them over and over and never get tired of the movies! }, I get how Neo goes through this whole process to understand how the Matrix works.
I feel like Neo when I log into Pinterest.
I can stare at the home feed and I see the code. While other people see the pretty images of things they want to repin, I see the green dots and circles.
I see the pins that have engaging images that tell a story. I see the pin descriptions that get more repins and clicks. I see why your home feed looks like it does with Related Pins, Promoted Pins and the content that Pinterest shares with you.
I see how Pinterest works. I watch my feed and I can see how the pieces come together and how each pin fits into the next.
And like Neo, I developed a slow and steady process to help you grow your Pinterest presence — freeing as many human minds as possible 🙂
The Pinterest Process
Alright already … what’s the BIG Secret to growing your Pinterest presence?
I know that you’ve wondered to yourself that there has to be some steps to do this pinning stuff. There’s gotta be a system to get your content into Pinterest’s feed so more people can find your pins.
There has to be a process to get more people to find your pins, click on them and go to your website.
I’m here to tell you that yes … there really is a Pinterest Process and here’s how this works:
1.Understand how Pinterest’s Smart Feed works:
What is Pinterest’s Smart Feed? Basically Pinterest assigns a score or a ranking to each pin that gets uploaded to the social site.
The Smart Feed ranking is based on these three factors:
- The quality of your pin’s image
- The quality of the source or website link that’s connected to the pin
- Interests you’re following
Then Pinterest uses the pin’s rankings combines it with your interests { the type of content you pin } and pops them into your home feed. The order of when the pins are uploaded to the site no longer makes a difference in what you see when you log on for your next pinning session.
Pinterest now shows you the images that rank highest in their Smart Feed three-factor criteria. And then they drop in a feature called Related Pins based on your interests and what content they believe you want to see in your home feed.
And this is what we see when click on that red Pinterest app when start scrolling through the pins in our home feed.
2. How to pin with Smart Feed:
The next part of the Big Secret is that when you’re pinning to your other boards or Group boards, pin directly from the original pin.
As you’re sharing your pins to other boards, make sure that the pin you’re repinning is the one with the HIGHEST repin numbers. The higher the number, the better the chance that this pin will get pulled into the Pinterest ranking program.
As the pin gets added into Pinterest’s rotation for Pinners interested in your content, your pin has a greater chance to appear in Pinner’s home feeds, even if they’re not already following you.
And when your pins show up in more Pinners’ feeds, this process grows your followers, increases your repins and ultimately, brings more traffic to your site from Pinterest.
3. Review what’s working:
You’ve created some great content, you’re starting to see an increase in your followers and your traffic … but how can you really know where these increases are coming from?
How can you figure out what parts of your Pinterest strategy are working and what needs tweaking?
The best place to look to find this information is to click into your Pinterest Analytics.
To find your analytics, you must have a business account. If you haven’t converted your personal account to a business one, go to the Pinterest Help section and look for the information to convert your account to a business account. It’s super easy and you won’t lost any of your pins or boards when you convert your account.
For those of you who already have a business account, just go to your profile page, click on the gear icon and go to the Analytics links in the drop down list of options.
There’s a ton of crunchy Pinterest goodness in there to see what’s working with your Pinterest marketing plan, which boards are the best place to pin your content and which pins were getting clicks back to your website.
Need some help with your Pinterest Process?
If you need some help with your Pinterest Process, I’ve pulled together a 25-page Pinterest Process Workbook to give you simple easy to follow action steps to give you clarity with your Pinterest strategy.
What you’ll learn:
- Understand how Pinterest decides which pins show up in the feed
- How to get more people to repin your blog posts, products and services
- Step-by-step process to create a personalized Pinterest strategy
- Monitor what’s working and what needs tweaking
You’ll also get a tracking guide that you can customize to monitor your Pinterest marketing plans so you can see which boards you should be pinning to and where to focus your time on Pinterest. Plus, you’ll get printable tracking worksheets to use every month to track your progress … all of this cool stuff for just $7 bucks!
Click here to get your instant download of The Pinterest Process Workbook.
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