Hi guys! This week I finally decided to add a new Sewing themed board to my Pinterest page. Why on earth did it take me so long? Well, I already had boards for Crafting, Quilting and DIY Fashion so I wasn't sure if I should add another one. But some sewing things don't fit directly into those boards and sewing is my #1 jam so I decided to give it a go. I'm planning to pin links to tutorials, sewing tips, patterns and projects. I've been working on populating it a bit and I hope that it will be a useful resource for me and for you.
Shown above, clockwise from top left: DIY Bag // DIY Halter Bikini // Reversible Box Tote // DIY Hashtag Pillow
While we're talking about Pinterest, I want to share some of my experience with the platform over the last year. If you've been following me for a while, you'll know that I'm very fond of Pinterest. I even wrote a couple of posts (here and here) with tips on how to use Pinterest and gain followers. I started using Pinterest while it was still in beta and fell in love with the ability to create virtual moodboards. I've been saving pages from magazines for years and going digital makes it so much easier. (But I'm sure you guys already know all that.) Anyway, about a year ago I hit the major milestone of 20,000 followers. !!! At that time I was gaining almost 100 followers a day. It was pretty insane. Then it kind of plateaued. Today I have about 27,900 followers and gain maybe 10 new followers a day. I don't believe that my behaviors changed and I believe the change in growth has something to do with the algorithms on Pinterest.
When my growth was at its peak, I did a little testing to try to discover why. I logged out of the platform and cleared browser history (to try to create some anonymity) and did keyword searches for pinboards on Pinterest. Some of my boards were very easy to find, appearing in the top 10 listed. After my growth rate slowed, I did the same search and my boards did not show up. (By the way, it's really hard to get pinterest to allow you on the site without logging in. And even harder now than it used to be.) This week I did the same search and found that a few of my boards do show up at the top of the board searches which is great. I believe the key is that my boards are named very simply, for example “crafting” or “quilting”. After the name match, the number of followers seems to be key in having your board show high up in the search. Pinterest is an evolving platform and they are constantly trying new things. Just last month they did another update to search features.
Some of that change is for the better and some of it, well I hope they’re working out the kinks. I don’t begrudge the drop off in follower growth at all (really!). I think I was really lucky to have that happen. I was also an early adopter, pretty strategic and very active which I’m sure also helped a lot. Today I mostly use Pinterest to pin things but rarely visit it to find inspiration. Due to promoted and suggested pins, my feed is cluttered with things that I’m not interested in. I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about this and I know there are some work arounds but it’s so much work that I don’t want to bother. Hopefully they will work out those issues so that Pinterest can be that source of inspiration it used to be. In the meantime, I’m going to continue pinning and curating images. If you haven’t already, please join me over on Pinterest and have a look around at my boards. I have a lot of DIY, plus graphic design, fashion and food. Happy pinning!
