Wondering how to grow your Pinterest following without having to mastermind a viral Pinterest article?
With limited time available in the day, and so many social profiles to grow, you need the fastest and most proven methods. Like…right….now.
I’ve used the two methods outlined in this guide to grow my Pinterest board for Home Grounds to over 900 followers in less than a month – on less than 1 hour per week!
Method 1: Follow/Unfollow
This method involves following pinners or boards related to the content you will be sharing on your Pinterest account.
You will continue to follow the people who follow you back, and unfollow the ones who don’t.
Two ways to find people to follow:
1. Follow Industry Pinners
- Search for a keyword in your industry or niche. You’ll then see a list of pins, pinners, and boards related to that keyword.
- Then, choose whether you want to see pinners or boards.
- Once Pinterest shows you the list, follow people/boards related to your content.
- Follow 100-300 people per day, then wait a few days. Check to see the accounts that followed you back. Continue following them, and unfollow the ones that don’t.
Just make sure you only follow people with similar interests. Following just anyone is going to get you a very untargeted random group of followers (if they even follow you back) who will likely be unengaged.
2. Follow Competitor’s Followers
This method works well because the people you want to follow you are probably already following one of your competitors.
- Find your competitor’s on Pinterest (only follow the followers of accounts with at least a few hundred followers).
- Navigate to their followers page.
- Follow 100-300 of their followers.
Keep in mind you can only follow 100-300 followers per day, so if you’re using both methods try to split it up evenly.
These steps should only take you about 10 minutes per day once you get used to it.
Method 2: Create Pinboards Based on Low Competition Keywords
Next you’ll want to use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tactics to get your boards noticed by more people.
To find low competition keywords:
- Search for keywords related to your niche or industry. Long-tail keywords (meaning a string of words rather than a single word) often work best for this. For example, one of my boards is called, “Cool Places to Drink Coffee” and it’s gotten almost 800 followers itself.
- To tell which are low competition, look for search results that aren’t dominated by huge accounts. For example, if you search “Camping Coffee”, some of the highest ranking accounts have less than 100 followers.
- When searching for a long-tail keyword with low competition, try to include a single keyword within it that has high competition. That way, as your account grows, you can eventually rank for the higher competition, single keyword.
Let’s say you want to rank for the high competition keyword “Coffee Brewing”. You could try to rank for the slightly lower competition keyword “Coffee Brewing Methods” instead.
Coffee Brewing
Coffee Brewing Methods
Notice how the first image is in both keyword search results. They started out ranking for “Coffee Brewing Methods” and took over “Coffee Brewing” as they became more popular.
Once you’ve found some good keywords to rank for, the next step is to put that keyword in every section of the pin. It should be in the:
- Pin Title
- Pin Description
- Pin Image Alt Text/File Name
Of course, don’t spam – try to work it in there naturally.
Using these methods, you should see results of around 100 new followers per week.
Keep in mind, however, you should have several pin boards in place already for people to look at when you follow them. I recommend at least 5 boards with 15-20 pins each to start.
Also, you should keep up pinning new content every day. For Home Grounds to see these results, I was pinning 3-5 pins per board per day.
Finally, if you’re interested in tracking your results, sign up for Pinterest Analytics. It’s great info to see which pins are performing so you can make more similar pins.
I hope you’ve found this guide helpful. If you did, please share it with others who want to grow their Pinterest following.
