55 Pinterest Mistakes That Will Seriously Hurt Your Traffic

Huge Pinterest Mistakes You Could Be Making

Many bloggers and entrepreneurs are doing all sorts of Pinterest mistakes. I’ll admit – I did some of them too. Some were terrible, and some were more innocent, but they still didn’t help me grow my business.

If you have been putting in the work for months now, but you’re still not getting the results you want and deserve, then you could be making these mistakes too. But don’t worry, after you read my blog post, you will take action, change your Pinterest Marketing Strategy and you’ll start seeing results.

Before we jump on to Pinterest mistakes, I would like to invite you to our FREE Coaching Group that is for all entrepreneurs and bloggers who want to learn how to do Social Media Marketing, Blogging and Email Marketing to build a really successful online business and the life of their dreams. JOIN US BY CLICKING HERE 🙂 I’m excited to connect with you.

This post includes affiliate links to products I really love and recommend, which means I may receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you. I will use the earnings to feed my little dog Ciara  🙂

Are you ready to level up with your Pinterest Marketing? Let’s go…

1.) Using a Logo instead of your own profile photo:

People want to do business with people, not their logos. If you’re using your logo (or any other photo that is not of you) – it seems like you are hiding something.

Your audience will trust you more if you use a photo of yourself. Don’t forget to smile because you will look more inviting.

2.) Another one of the big Pinterest Mistakes is if you’re not using keywords in your business name:

Many entrepreneurs and bloggers are not using keywords in their business names. Don’t be one of them! When you use keywords, that means your targeted audience will be able to find you faster.

3.) Not having a Pinterest Business Profile:

If you don’t have a business account, you don’t have all the features like Pinterest analytics. Plus you don’t look professional to your audience.

You are running a business, so treat it as a business!

4.) Not using Keywords in Profile description:

As you can see, KEYWORDS are essential on Pinterest. Without them, you won’t reach a lot of people which means your traffic will be low. But you know that traffic is an important key to your success.

Do your research and include long-tail keywords that you want to be found for. And always remember this:

NO TRAFFIC = NO BUSINESS

5.) Another one of the huge Pinterest Mistakes – Not using Keywords in board title & description:

Again with keywords 😉 Yes, because they are super important to get your boards ranked up higher on Pinterest. So when people are searching for specific boards, they will see yours and follow it.

Without the proper keywords, you won’t get many eyeballs on your Pinterest boards. That is not good when you’re growing your business.

6.) Not using Keywords in pin title & description:

Here we go again 🙂 I hope you see how important keywords are if you’re doing Pinterest Marketing. No, I’m not kidding – they really are important. With them, you can rank your pin on top and get in front of your targeted audience.

You can learn the steps that you have to take to skyrocket your traffic, leads, and sales with Pinterest marketing. If you’re ready to take your business to the next level, then get my FREE PINTEREST COURSE RIGHT HERE.

7.) Not having your website/blog URL verified & Rich Pins enabled:

This is another one of those BIG, HUGE Pinterest mistakes. You need to verify your blog URL so that people can click on it. It’s another way you will get traffic to your blog. Also, don’t forget to enable rich pins. Your pins will look a bit different with more information about them.

CLICK HERE to learn how to enable rich pins.
CLICK HERE and learn how to claim your website.

8.) Not having a good Pinterest Strategy is one of the BIGGEST Pinterest mistakes:

Without a good Pinterest strategy, you won’t get far. It’s really important to learn how to use Pinterest to drive massive amounts of traffic to your blog.

When I started with Pinterest I only knew the basics. But that wasn’t enough. I got 500+ monthly readers and that was it. Then I invested in an amazing course and my traffic tripled the next month! And each month I’m getting more.

Learn everything from A-Z from PinFunnels. CLICK HERE and check it out – it’s literally teaching you how to get Pinterest on “steroids” 🙂

9.) One of the HUGE Pinterest mistakes is pinning too much:

If you are guilty of this, STOP right away. You shouldn’t go over 50 pins per day (yours and other people’s pins together). It’s best if you stick to 30.

If you’re a beginner in Pinterest marketing, then I suggest you share 20 other people’s pins and only 10 of your pins. After a month or two, start pinning 15/15.

10.) Not pinning enough or at all is one of the huge Pinterest mistakes:

You need to be consistent – that means pinning every single day! There is no “OH but it’s weekend… I will take a break.” 😉 You have to pin daily.

But as a boss babe, you are probably really busy. So there is a great solution for you. It’s called Tailwind. It’s a scheduler tool that will work 24/7 even when you sleep or have fun with your family.

I do recommend you get it HERE (you get $15 account credit – which means 1 month FREE! So get it here).

11.) Pinning only your pins:

Pinterest is not made for you to share only your pins. You should always share other people’s pins besides your own. This way you help your audience to learn more about the niche you are in.

12.) Pinning only other people’s pins:

Yes, this is one of those BIG Pinterest mistakes. It won’t help you grow your business because you are promoting other people’s stuff. So it doesn’t make any sense to only share pins from others. You are running a business, so take it seriously and have a healthy balance between other people’s pins and yours.

13.) Treating Pinterest as a Social Media platform:

Pinterest is NOT a Social Media platform. It is more like Google – a search engine. Also, it’s a VISUAL search engine, so you need to make sure your pin images look professional and attractive.

14.) Another one of big Pinterest mistakes is – not creating any pin images for blog posts:

That’s a huge mistake because you are getting the audience from Pinterest. And guess where they will share your content to check it out later or help their audience – YUP you guessed it – on PINTEREST 🙂

If you don’t have any pin images in your blog posts, then you are missing out on more traffic.

15.) Creating only one pin image per blog post is another one of the big Pinterest mistakes:

I see a lot of bloggers that create one pin image per blog post. And that’s not good because some of your readers don’t like that image and that’s why they won’t share it.

Create at least 3 images and hide them in the blog post. This way your readers will have more choices and they will share pin images that they love most.

16.) Having unrelated boards on Pinterest:

I heard that was a good strategy in the past, but not anymore. If you are in the make money online niche, then you shouldn’t have a board for weight loss. It just doesn’t make any sense, do you agree? 🙂

Your audience is there to learn about a specific niche, not all of the niches that exist on this planet 🙂

After you read this blog post, go to your Pinterest account and delete (or hide) all the unrelated boards.

17.) Sharing pins to unrelated boards:

This is another one of those big Pinterest mistakes. Have you ever seen a pin about Email Marketing and growing your email list on a board called Social Media.

Pinterest will see you are not doing a good job with marketing and that’s why your pins and boards won’t reach more people. Bye-bye traffic. So if you don’t want that, start pinning to the right boards.

18.) Joining Pinterest group boards that have a bad score:

It’s true that you don’t know which group board is doing great and which will do more harm than good to your account. You need to first join the group board and then you can see results in Tailwind (under Board insights).

I know it’s hard to leave a group board but if it’s hurting your Pinterest account – then you need to do what you need to do. RUNAWAY 🙂

If you want to learn more about this topic – here is an amazing blog post about Pinterest Group Boards (from Louise Myers). CLICK HERE and read it – you won’t regret it.

19.) Not analyzing your Pinterest results:

Another one of those BIG Pinterest mistakes: Not checking out your analytics. If you’re scared of Pinterest analytics – don’t be. Learn slowly, step by step and each day check the analytics so that you get used to it.

Also, you should use Tailwind and your blog analytics. It’s going to hurt your business more if you don’t take this step seriously. And I bet you don’t want to waste years on Pinterest marketing without any good results.

20.) Not having your best performing boards at the top:

These boards have the best-performing pins in it. So you want your new followers to see them. These pins will get even more re-pins and that means more traffic for you.

21.) Not following & engaging with others in your niche:

This can help you a lot! Start following your competitors and get inspired. You will get many new blog post ideas. Also, leave comments and respond to comments. This builds a better relationship.

22.) Another one of the big Pinterest mistakes is not using Tailwind:

I already mentioned Tailwind in this blog post, but I have to mention it again. It is really important to get it because it will help you save time and you will also get a great analytics tool.

Besides that, you can join Tailwind tribes where other people will share your pins but you have to share theirs too. It’s a WIN-WIN situation. This way you will get even more traffic and you will grow your business faster.

23.) Not learning about Pinterest Marketing is one of the BIGGEST Pinterest mistakes:

If you’re not learning about it, you are wasting your time. You need to invest in courses to learn the best strategies that work. It can take you many years if you will try to figure it out yourself.

But in business we want fast results, right? So the fastest way to success is investing in yourself. I already recommended PinFunnels and I’ll do it again because this course changed my life & business.

Get PinFunnels here and start taking action right away. You will be amazed at what Pinterest can do for you and your business.

24.) Not creating professional and attractive pins:

Pinterest is a visual search engine. If you are not using tall (vertical) pins, you won’t get many clicks. Besides that, if you’re not using beautiful professional photos and your pins look like you didn’t put much thought into them – people will just ignore them.

Here is what you should include in a pin:

• Beautiful, professional photos (Ivory Mix has 550+ beautiful & FREE photos – CLICK HERE to check it out)
• Eye-catching headline
• CTA (call to action)
• Your logo or URL
• Or you can create an infographic

25.) Creating wrong size pin images is another one of the big Pinterest mistakes:

You have to create tall vertical pins. These kinds of pins stand out, others get lost in the crowd. Pinterest says that the optimal size is 600 x 900 pixels (or 2:3 aspect ratio)

26.) One of big Pinterest mistakes is – sharing pins with no text (just the picture):

You probably saw some of the pins that are actually just an image. There is no text on it. Now be honest – did you click on it? Probably not, right? 🙂

If you won’t put interesting text on your pin (eye-catching title), then you won’t see great results. Not a lot of people will click and that means less traffic to your blog or website.

27.) Creating dark-colored pins:

Dark, boring pins don’t stand out. And if they don’t, you know what that means. People won’t click on it. You have to create beautiful and colored pins.

That’s why it’s important that your branded colors are brighter. You can test a couple of colors out (the ones that go together) – experiment with them and see which ones work best.

It’s true that you should start branding yourself with specific colors but in the beginning, it’s ok to test multiple colors out. When you find the best combination, then stick with it.

28.) Re-pinning the same pin to all your boards is another one of those BIG Pinterest mistakes:

That is not good at all because your Pinterest account will look like spam. You should always mix it up. Your account should look interesting meaning you should offer your audience different topics (as long you stay on niche topics).

29.) Not updating older pins that aren’t performing the best:

This is why you need to check your analytics. You will see what works and what doesn’t. That way you can update older pins (maybe re-write the description or create a new pin for the same blog post). You should always test, tweak and update your pins.

30.) Sharing pins that don’t lead to where they should:

This is a huge Pinterest mistake. Your audience can actually report you and you can lose your account. If the title on the pin says Complete Blogging Guide, then you can’t put a link to a meatball recipe.

Always make sure you are sending people to the right place. This goes for other people’s pins too. When you are re-pinning from others, check where they are sending people. You don’t want to get in trouble, right? 🙂

31.) Using many different fonts on pins:

Fonts, colors, and your logo are a part of your brand. It’s ok to test different fonts at the beginning to see which perform better. But if you will keep changing your fonts, it will look weird and unprofessional.

If you don’t have your personal branding strategy yet, don’t worry. Grab my Freebie that will help you create a strong strategy that will attract the right audience to you and you will be able to build your business faster. CLICK HERE and get Personal Branding Strategy 100% FREE!

32.) Not using your branded colors on pins:

This is the same as fonts. You have to brand yourself with the same colors. People will notice you faster and when they will see similar colors, they will think of you.

33.) Not using your logo on your pins:

Having a logo is necessary! Without it, you can’t brand yourself as a professional in your field. And guess who people follow first – professionals! You can create your own logo or pay someone to do it for you. Then make sure you include it in every pin!

34.) Not using your blog URL on your pins:

Sometimes you just can’t squeeze your logo on a pin or it just doesn’t look that good. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t brand yourself. Put your blog URL (in text form) on your pin.

35.) Not using Tailwind Tribes:

Tailwind Tribes are awesome because you can join them faster than Pinterest Group Boards. And all the people in tribes are there to help each other.

Before you submit your pin, you should share at least one (or more) of other people’s pins. Everyone has to share pins so this will help you reach a new audience. This is why having Tailwind is important, so CLICK HERE and get it now.

36.) Not having attractive board cover graphics:

It looks way better if you use attractive board cover graphics. Your account will look more professional and put together. You will definitely brand yourself the right way.

37.) Sharing spammy content:

If you are always selling something and not offering any value, then this won’t look good. Just think about the last desperate salesperson you talked to. If they were trying to hardcore sell you something, you probably wanted to run away.

38.) Pinning boring or not helpful content:

No one is going to follow you if they won’t get much value from your blog posts. Before you will start earning money, you will have to help solve some of your audience’s problems.

39.) Not having Pinterest follow button on your blog:

If you want to grow your following on Pinterest, then you have to get a button on your blog. Or you could use a call to action at the end of each blog post.

Example of a CTA (call to action): Hey, if we are not connected on Pinterest yet, I would appreciate it if you would Follow Me – just CLICK HERE 🙂 Thanks!

40.) Not sharing your Pinterest account with your email list:

Every blogger should have an email list so I’m guessing you have it 🙂 So why don’t you send your subscribers an email letting them know you have a Pinterest account and you would love to be connected with them there.

41.) Not including a pin on the landing pages of your courses or products:

If one of your customers is really happy with what they bought, they could actually share it. That’s why it’s really important to connect with your audience and make them happy. They will return the favor for sure.

42.) Not including a pin on the landing pages of your freebies:

I’ll be completely honest with you – I’m totally guilty of this 🙂 I didn’t include any pins on my lading pages. But I will because you never know who will share it. You could get in front of a new audience and get them to subscribe to your email list.

43.) Not getting Pinterest traffic on your email list:

If you are a blogger, but you’re not growing your email list – I have some really BAD news for you. Most of your audience will come to your blog once and never again.

So if you want to connect with them, then you need an email marketing strategy. Grow your list fast, build a great relationship and you will be able to sell more of your products.

I have 3 great FREEBIES for you that will help you grow your email list really fast:

• Get These *FREE* 35 Freebie Ideas To Rapidly Grow Your Email List
• Email Marketing Goals – Cheat Sheet
• FREE 100 Email Marketing Subject Lines

44.) Not sharing your Pinterest account on other Social Media platforms:

Yes, that is one of the Pinterest mistakes that many bloggers and entrepreneurs make. You never know which of your Facebook friends has a Pinterest account too.

Maybe you’re thinking that it’s enough if people follow you on only one platform. But that’s not true. If they follow you on multiple platforms, they are more likely to see your content on at least one.

45.) Not using Tailwind SmartLoop can be one of those Pinterest mistakes too:

This is yet another great tool from Tailwind. Set up your best-performing pins in the SmartLoop and Tailwind will post them for you automatically. And because Tailwind works closely with Pinterest, they know how many times you can loop the same pin in a specific time.

You don’t want to spam your Pinterest, so check out Tailwind SmartLoop settings and you will be safe.

46.) Not sending your pin links to your email subscribers:

Yes, you can actually invite your email subscribers to check out your pin and share it with their account. If you’re not doing this, you are definitely missing out.

47.) Not using Facebook Groups (threads) to get your pins shared:

This is one of the HUGE Pinterest mistakes some entrepreneurs and bloggers do. Threads in some of the Facebook groups helped me the most and they are still helping me.

You can actually get a ton of traffic because people are sharing your pins. Of course, you have to share theirs too. But that’s the point of these threads. We help each other.

48.) Not treating Pinterest as a visual place is another one of HUGE Pinterest Mistakes:

If you’re using Pinterest, you know it is a visual place. That means you have to create really beautiful and attractive pins that will get clicked on. You have to stand out of the crowd and it’s not enough to just include a great headline.

Photos, colors, fonts, and even your logo are really important. So make sure you test some designs out, and see which works best.

49.) Not using Pinterest ads:

Pinterest ads are great because there is not a lot of competition. Most big companies use Facebook & Instagram ads. That means Pinterest ads are way cheaper.

50.) Giving up on your Pinterest marketing too fast is one of those BIG Pinterest mistakes too:

Any strategy takes time and only those who never quite, see results. And remember this – every time you quit, you start from scratch. You don’t want to keep repeating this mistake and not see any results.

This is what I did in the past (2 years ago). I started with Pinterest and I quit because I didn’t know what I was doing. Instead of learning and implementing the strategies, I simply quit.

Now I took it seriously, invested in PinFunnels, learned, took action (still taking action) and after 3 months and a half, I started earning money from my blog. So stick with Pinterest, learn about it, and keep going. You won’t regret it.

Here are my results after 10 months of doing the Pinterest marketing strategy that I learned from PinFunnels:

51.) Focusing too much on growing your followers:

I’m not going to say that followers are not important because they are. But don’t focus only on the followers. When you do your Pinterest strategy right, your pins will get in front of a lot of people – even those who are not your followers.

So instead of focusing just on growing your following, focus on creating great pins with long-tail keywords in the description. This is going to help you rank your pin on top.

52.) This is another one of the big Pinterest mistakes – Creating boring pin titles:

No one loves boring stuff, so make sure your titles are amazing. They have to capture people’s attention. Like we said before – Pinterest is a visual search engine. People won’t click on your pins if the titles are boring.

53.) Using photos that are not related to your topic or niche:

I think we are all guilty of this, but we should be careful. If you’re talking about making money online, then you can’t include a photo of food. It just wouldn’t make any sense to your audience.

54.) Focusing on the quantity, not the quality of the pins:

This is another one of the Pinterest mistakes you should avoid. It’s better to pin 5 great quality pins that are going to bring your traffic to your blog, than to pin 15 poor quality pins that won’t do anything.

You are doing Pinterest marketing to get results, so focus on the money-making activities. You know that Pinterest is a visual search engine, so create QUALITY pins.

55.) One of the bigger Pinterest mistakes you can do is – not checking Tailwind analytics:

In my opinion, Tailwind analytics is better than Pinterest analytics. But don’t get me wrong, you should still check all the analytics (Tailwind, Pinterest, and on your blog).

If you want to learn more about Pinterest Marketing for your business, then check another one of my popular blog posts – How to use Pinterest for Business.

Did you get some value from this blog post on BIG Pinterest Mistakes? I hope you did because every week I put my whole heart into giving you the most amazing tips and strategies that help you succeed in your business. 

If You Love Sharing Valuable Info Then Click Below And Share This On Your Favorite Social Media 🙂 ⬇

Petra Šranc (CEO of Big Income Paradise) is passionate about teaching female entrepreneurs how to do Social Media Marketing to grow their business online. She also focuses on teaching Social Media content tactics to skyrocket traffic, leads, and sales.