Do you want to increase the reach of your account and get followers on Pinterest? Don’t you want to get more Pinterest followers to market your content or products?
I mean who doesn’t?
But before that let’s see why we should even be choosing Pinterest to grow our blog traffic and business.
Why Pinterest?
Pinterest is a popular visual search engine. It has about 459 million monthly active users with 98 million of those from the United States.
Not only this but Pinterest users have a high tendency to make a purchase. This is why almost all online businesses especially those targeting female audiences are using Pinterest to market their products.
Read more about Pinterest Marketing here.10 Steps of Pinterest Marketing Strategy Revealed
Another reason to use Pinterest for building your brand awareness or gaining traffic is because the shelf life of a Pinterest pin is years and it continues to generate traffic even for many years. While the shelf life of a post on other social media platforms is merely a few hours to days.
These are the most important two reasons for you to create an SEO-optimized Pinterest business account so that you can reach your target audiences.
Now, let’s come back to the main topic of this post which is how to get followers on Pinterest.
How to Get Followers on Pinterest? Best 14 Strategies:
Here we will find out what important strategies you should use to get followers on Pinterest.
Optimize Pinterest Profile
First and the foremost step for getting more Pinterest followers is to create a business account.
You can convert your previous account into a business account just with a single step. If you don’t want to do that you can create a brand-new Pinterest business account. I also suggest you create a new Pinterest business account and claim your website or Shopify store on Pinterest.
Just creating a business account is not enough. You need to optimize it.
A Pinterest account can be optimized by adding relevant keywords in the Pinterest username and bio.
If you want to read about Pinterest SEO in detail, click here.
Make Pinterest Boards
After creating a Pinterest business account and optimizing it, the next step is to create boards.
Pinterest boards are like folders. They help to keep your pins organized.
While creating Pinterest boards you should use relevant keywords in the board names and board descriptions.
Use of keywords in Pinterest boards should be in a natural way. Avoid mere stuffing of keywords. This can get you flagged.
If you want to learn how to properly write Pinterest board descriptions, read here.
Scroll Stopping Pins
To get followers on Pinterest the next step is to create visually appealing and high-quality Pinterest pin images.
Pinterest favors vertical pin images with a 2:3 aspect ratio. The recommended dimensions are 1000 x 1500 pixels.
However, you can also create vertical pins with 600 x 900 pixels or 1200 x 1800 pixels.
A scroll-stopping pin should be vertical, with an aesthetic background image and compelling text overlay.
Adding your website name to the pins is also very important in creating brand awareness.
Learn here how to create eye-catching Pinterest pins.
If you find creating new pins that are aesthetically pleasing difficult, you can check some premade Pinterest pin templates in my Pinterest shop that are easily customizable in Canva.
You can download your free Pinterest pin templates here.
Pin Consistently
Pinterest is a visual search engine, and it loves to provide fresh and relevant content to its users. So, in order to provide value to your audience you should be creating new pins and be consistent with your pinning strategy.
But this doesn’t mean that you need to stay on Pinterest all day long every day and keep pinning new pins.
You can either add pins manually or with a pin scheduler.
Pin schedulers are of two types. One is Pinterest’s own inbuilt pin scheduler. The other type of Pinterest pin scheduler is third-party software like Tailwind.
Now Canva also allows you to directly schedule pins from their platform.
There are a few other soft wares as well that do the job well, but Tailwind is the only trusted third-party Pinterest partner.
As already mentioned, Pinterest loves new content, so while posting pins on Pinterest, make sure they are new. Changing a background image with a few changes in text overlay can result in a new pin.
Creating new pins and consistent pinning will help Pinterest show your content to a wider audience and will help you get followers on Pinterest.
Utilize Pinterest Trends
Pinterest Trends is a very useful tool to get followers on Pinterest. It helps you to see what trends are most likely to be popular in which particular time on Pinterest. You can utilize them and create content related to these trends.
This will help you increase the reach of your pins, getting more views and followers on Pinterest.
Keyword Optimization
In order to get followers on Pinterest, proper keyword optimization is very important.
Keywords should be used effectively while optimizing your Pinterest profile, boards, and pins.
There are many ways to find relevant Pinterest keywords. Some of them are free and some are paid.
You can learn here how to find relevant Pinterest keywords the easiest way.
Once you have found relevant keywords according to your niche, you should use them in the following places.
- Pinterest user name and bio
- Board name and description
- Pin text overlay, pin title, and description
The use of relevant Pinterest keywords in these locations will help you increase your reach and get followers on Pinterest.
Follow Other Relevant Accounts
Another good way to get followers on Pinterest is to follow other accounts that are relevant to your niche.
Following other accounts will help you get noticed and it will give Pinterest a signal that your profile is active.
By following I don’t mean to follow hundreds of accounts in a day. Follow only a few relevant accounts a day.
The following relevant accounts will show their content in your home feed, where it will be easy for you to save their content to your boards when required. This will also help you to get an idea of what type of content big accounts in your niche are posting.
Another strategy that works to get more followers on Pinterest is to go to established accounts in your niche with a big following and follow their followers.
I will recommend only following a few such accounts, just to get some initial followers. Users who are following other accounts in your niche will also be interested in your content and will interact with it.
Once you are able to get some initial traction by following others, your useful content and consistent pinning strategy will help you attract more users to your profile. Many of them will consider following you.
Don’t Follow and Unfollow
When you are following other relevant accounts in your niche, do that only if you are genuinely interested in their content. Follow for follow or following to just unfollow later will not help you anyway.
In fact, this malpractice can get you noticed by Pinterest and your account can get blocked.
Interact with Your Audiences
Interacting with your audience is very important in order to increase activity on your profile.
A few ways of interacting with your audience are:
- Ask them a question in your video pin or a pin description
- Reply to their comments
- If similar accounts save your pin, repin that pin to another relevant board on your profile.
Pro tip: When a relevant account saves your pin, you also save their pin to your relevant board as a good gesture. This will make them notice your profile and they may visit it as well. And chances are that they might save some more useful pins from your profile.
Thus, your content will get more reach and followers in return.
Interact with Other’s Content on Similar Niche
When you start following other relevant and established accounts in your niche their pins will be shown in your Pinterest home feed.
If you want to get noticed and get followers on Pinterest you should interact with their content.
You can interact with their pins in the following ways:
- Saving
- Liking
- Commenting
This will increase activity on your profile and in return, Pinterest will push your profile and pins in front of more and more audiences.
Pinterest Follow Button on the Website
Another important way to get followers on Pinterest is to add a Pinterest follow button on your blog or website.
You can do this by using many free or paid social sharing plugins on your website. This will help your blog or website visitors to follow you on Pinterest and other social media platforms that you mention.
Promote Your Pinterest Account on Other Social Media Platforms
If you have accounts on other social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or any other with some followers, you can ask them to follow your Pinterest profile.
You can also ask them to share it with their friends who also might be interested in your content.
These two practices on other social media platforms can help you get followers on Pinterest profile.
Another way is to let your audience on other social media platforms know that you just created a video or standard pin on Pinterest, and they might go and have a look as it may be useful for them.
Send Invites via News Letters:
I can bet that you must have heard that an email list is like a gold mine and no doubt it really is. It helps you build connections and trust. You can slowly nurture your email list and drive traffic to your website or get sales.
If you have an email list, no matter how small, you can build a connection with them by sending them newsletters.
You can repurpose your blog content for an email or tell them about something exciting about your niche and at the end you can also ask them to follow you on Pinterest.
Analyze Your Analytics
When you are applying all the above-mentioned strategies, it’s important to analyze and repeat what is working and improve what’s not working.
Pinterest analytics are very important in providing account insights. They should be studied and understood carefully.
I would recommend giving at least 3 months to any strategy that you are applying to produce results. If you notice that even after 3 months it’s not working you should try to make changes or try something else.
How do I Grow From 0 Followers on Pinterest?
If you have just created a new Pinterest account and it has no followers then the best thing you can do to get followers on Pinterest is to:
- Optimize your Pinterest account and boards
- Follow popular accounts in your niche.
- Follow some of their followers
- Start Creating Pins
Although all the previously mentioned strategies are important in order to grow your account and get followers on Pinterest. But as someone who is just starting out on Pinterest and wants to grow their followers from 0, these tips are the best to begin with.
Is it Hard to Get Followers on Pinterest?
Yes, it is a bit hard as compared to other social media platforms to get followers on Pinterest.
It is because, on Pinterest, the intent of users is to get inspiration or to plan. They use this platform to find and consume the content that they are searching for. They don’t use this platform to build personal connections or to see what their favorite influencer or blogger is doing today.
Pinterest users mostly only follow an account when they feel inspired by its content or they think it will be helpful for them in the future.
How do You Get 1000 Followers on Pinterest?
When you have properly optimized your Pinterest profile and boards and created pins you will start attracting followers.
Once you have gained a few followers then in order to get 1000 or more followers on Pinterest, the important things you need to do are:
- Pin consistently
- Analyze the results of your strategies and what types of pins are performing well
- Create 1 to 2 new boards every month or after two months
How Long Does It Take to Get 1K Followers on Pinterest?
Pinterest is a long-term game. It takes time to show some traction.
The time required to get the first 1000 followers depends on some variable factors like:
Your niche. Women-focused niches like fashion, makeup, and home decor tend to do better on Pinterest.
Different Pin Formats. Creating different pin formats is very essential. Sometime back Pinterest was immensely promoting idea pins. Due to this, idea pins were getting a lot of traction and views, and also resulting in more followers. But now idea pins are no more a thing on Pinterest. Instead, you can create other pin formats that include static and video pins. Also, try to create different designs for your pins and see what works well. You can also try to create and post infographics, they tend to get more saves. This will signal Pinterest to promote your pins and as a result, you can start getting followers quickly.
Your pinning strategy. If you are consistently pinning a single pin a day it will get you better results rather than pinning five pins a day and then not pinning for two weeks. So be consistent with your pinning strategy.
These three main strategies will help you to get your first 1k followers relatively quickly.
How Often Should I Post on Pinterest to Gain Followers?
Although there is no set number of pins to be posted in a day mentioned by Pinterest that can get you followers fast. But I can share some tips from my personal experience.
I have noticed that pinning consistently, even a single pin a day shows consistent activity on your account and will start getting you followers in some time.
You may also be interested in reading: How many pins to pin a day?
On the other hand, inconsistent pinning is not helpful at all. It will halt the growth of your account.
So, in order to get followers on Pinterest figure out a pinning strategy that is easy for you to follow for a long period of time.
I have been pinning one pin a day for 5 months, and I have noticed growth in my account. Although it was very gradual and not a rapid upward growth. But as long as the account is growing and I am getting outbound clicks and followers it is fine.
Now as I have more content to share, I have changed my pinning strategy. I am trying to pin 3 pins a day. In about 3 months’ time, I will see how fruitful this has been.
Any change in Pinterest strategy takes time to show visible results. So before negating it at least give it 3 to 4 months, and then analyze whether it was helpful for your business or not. And then according to your assessment, you can make necessary changes.
How do Pinterest Followers Work?
Honestly, the number of followers on Pinterest doesn’t make a big difference.
This is because Pinterest is a search engine. When Pinterest users come to this platform and search for something, the Pinterest algorithm shows them the most relevant pins. It does not matter at all how many followers you have. If you have a pin relevant to the search query Pinterest algorithm will show it to the user.
One thing that you need to keep in mind is that when you post an SEO-optimized pin on Pinterest. It takes some time to rank for the keywords, irrelevant to how many followers you have. So, if you are not seeing the required results even after proper SEO optimization and consistent pinning, hang in there, your pins will start ranking for the relevant keywords in some time.
How Many Followers do You Need on Pinterest to Make Money?
This is a very common question that bloggers, affiliate marketers, and business owners have. But the answer to this is that to make money on Pinterest you do not need a large number of followers. You can make money on Pinterest even with no followers.
If you have followers that will be a plus point because when followers interact with your pins, the Pinterest algorithm gets a signal that it is a helpful pin and distributes it to a wider audience.
But if your profile and content are SEO-optimized, you can make money on Pinterest even with no followers.
To learn how to make money on Pinterest without a blog, read here.
How do I Get Noticed on Pinterest?
If you want your account to get noticed and your pins to get viral, you need to stick to the basics of Pinterest marketing.
- Create a business account
- Pinterest Keyword Research
- Optimize your Pinterest profile and boards.
- Create scroll-stopping pins with SEO-optimized pin titles and descriptions.
- Consistent pinning.
These five basic steps of Pinterest marketing will help your account get noticed and grow many folds.
Who has the Most followers on Pinterest?
According to the Guinness World Records Joy Cho from the US, who is a founder of Oh Joy has the most Pinterest followers as of April 2021. She had 14,866,198 followers as of 22 April 2021 and now she has 15.1 million followers as of Nov 2023
Why did My Pinterest Followers Fall?
If you are gaining Pinterest followers organically there are very less chances that they will fall in such a number that you should feel worried.
But if you get involved in the malpractice of follow for follow then there is much more possibility that your follower count starts to fall.
So, as previously mentioned my advice to you is not to get involved in ‘follow for follow’ in order to grow your account. The followers that you will gain this way will not stick for long and even if they don’t unfollow, they will not interact with your content. This will again harm the reach of your account.
Conclusion – How to Get Followers on Pinterest
If you use Pinterest to grow your brand awareness or to get traffic to your blog or website, you may want to get more and more followers as you want them on your other social media platforms.
But let me tell you two important things.
- Follower count on Pinterest is not a very important metric for the growth of your account.
- Pinterest is not just a social media platform, it’s a visual search engine.
Having said that still, every Pinterest user wants to get more followers. And they are not to be blamed. It feels good to have a large number of Pinterest followers.
The benefit of having followers is when they interact with your content. This helps the Pinterest algorithm to detect that your content is useful and it distributes it across a wider audience.
So, in order to get more followers on Pinterest you need to:
- Create a business account.
- Do Pinterest keyword research.
- Optimize your profile.
- Follow other accounts in your niche.
- Create SEO-optimized Pinterest boards.
- Create scroll-stopping pins and post them with well-optimized pin titles and descriptions.
- Pin consistently.
- Analyze and react.
Following these practices will help your account and follower count grow. But keep in mind that it takes time, every good thing does. Doesn’t it?
So, be patient and keep pinning beautiful pins.
Let me know in the comments, how many followers you want to have in one year’s time.
Pin it and share this post with your friends.
FAQs
How to get Pinterest followers for free?
Optimizing your Pinterest profile and sharing helpful content with proper use of keywords will help you get Pinterest followers for free.
Is it hard to go viral on Pinterest?
It’s not hard to go viral on Pinterest. But it definitely requires consistent smart work. You can read in detail here, how to go viral on Pinterest.
How many accounts can you follow on Pinterest?
You can follow a maximum of 50,000 Pinterest accounts. If you’re already following 50,000 accounts, then you can only continue to follow people who are already following you.
How many people can follow you on Pinterest?
There’s no limit to the number of people who can follow you on Pinterest.
I am a passionate blogger who loves sharing insights on blogging tips, Pinterest strategies, and making money online. With a knack for simplifying complex concepts, I help readers grow their online presence and achieve their Pinterest marketing goals. Follow along for practical advice and proven tactics to elevate your blog, Pinterest and online business.