0

Why My First Pin Behaved That Way — And How Pinterest Really Works

This is a newsletter I sent to my subscribers last week. I publish the newsletters on my website; however, I edit out some information from the public versions.

If you’d like to receive these updates in your Inbox in unedited form, sign up for my newsletter:

In my previous newsletter, I continued talking about my 🐮 Website Pivot Project and explained why I’m limiting myself to 15 Pinterest pins a day.
I also shared initial results since I posted my first pin and how Pinterest treated it.

Today, let’s dive into why that first pin behaved the way it did — and how Pinterest promotes and distributes pins behind the scenes.

📊 What Happened with My First Pin?

The very first pin really took off in terms of views: so far, it has had ***edited out*** impressions and ***edited out*** pin clicks, but… 0 saves and most importantly, 0 outbound clicks.

☝☝☝ I left out some details from my original newsletter. If you’d like to receive these updates in your Inbox in unedited form, sign up:

Why?

Because Pinterest has been showing it mostly to my existing audience, who have almost zero interest in my new niche since it is totally different from what they used to see.

They clicked the pin, got puzzled by the new content, and abandoned it without further engaging.

Pinterest’s algorithm initially tests new pins on your current followers and audience to gauge engagement.

When the new content does not resonate, engagement drops, and Pinterest stops showing it to your regular pinners. Hence, a drop in the views 🙎‍♀️

Pinterest is realizing something’s changed, and it starts reassessing the new pins by analyzing the pin images and text and annotating with its categories.
It is trying to understand what the pins are about and what new audience might be interested in this content.

It likely still tests each pin on my old audience, but since they don’t engage, Pinterest has to find a new relevant audience.
Once Pinterest sorts this out, the views may start growing again… It’s already happening for one of my new niche pins 😉:
 

☝☝☝ I left out some details from my original newsletter. If you’d like to receive these updates in your Inbox in unedited form, sign up:

⚠️ Does This Hurt My Account?

Yes, probably — since my new pins aren’t interesting to my current audience, engagement drops.

When it happens, Pinterest takes note, and it may change its opinion about the quality of the account.

But this account is strong, and my bet is it will survive the pivot.

The account did dip a bit, but that could also be due to the recent Pinterest algorithm reshuffle that the forums are buzzing about or the natural aging of previously viral pins.

So far, the account does not look to be penalized for my experiment.

🕰️ What Should I Do Next?

So, what’s the next step?

Honestly—nothing drastic!

I’m just going to keep pinning new content.

This pivot started less than a month ago, and it’s way too early to judge the results. With Pinterest, patience is key.

I’ll give it at least 3 months before deciding if the strategy is working or if I need to make any changes.

📉 Why Native Pinterest Analytics Isn’t Enough

So far, I have shown you screenshots from the native Pinterest Analytics.

Pinterest Analytics is good for tracking very recent activity, like immediate impressions and clicks, on the most popular pins.

However, it falls short when it comes to uncovering long-term trends, spotting new opportunities, or analyzing the behavior of all your pins over time, or even in the shorter period, since it only shows the 50 most popular pins 😬

To get a full picture and make data-driven decisions, I use other tools, which brings us to the topic of the next newsletter!

🔮 What’s Next?

It will soon be a month since I started this pivot project, so it’s time to start looking at what is working.

In the previous email, my Tool of the Week was PinnerAnalytics, a powerful tool for digging more deeply into your Pinterest data.

In the next newsletter, I’ll dive deep into how this tool works and share my findings on how my new pins are performing after a month of pinning.

I’ll analyze the results with you as live as the newsletter and video formats allow!

🤔 Now, a question to you…

Have you ever pivoted your content on Pinterest? How did your audience react? Hit reply and share your experience!

Meanwhile, have a nice weekend ❤️

Nadya

P.S. Pivoting on Pinterest takes time and data. Using the right tools to track your progress is key—I’ll show you how in the next update!

This is a newsletter I sent to my subscribers last week. I publish the newsletters on my website; however, I edit out some information from the public versions.

If you’d like to receive these updates in your Inbox in unedited form, sign up for my newsletter: