It’s understandable that a decrease in your Pinterest monthly viewers number has you concerned. After all, we all want our content to be seen!
However, before we dig into the “Why?” it’s important to realize what “viewers” really means and how much impact (or not) it is having on your business.
What Is Pinterest “Monthly Viewers”?
“Viewers” indicates how many people may have seen your own content that you save to Pinterest, as well as your own content that others have saved to Pinterest. It also includes views of content you have saved from other people’s sites AND views on any Pins you may have promoted.
That said, it’s not the best metric to go by if you’re looking to measure your success on Pinterest, as it’s not a great indication of the engagement on your Pins or on the true impact that your Pinterest marketing has on your bottom line. For a more meaningful number, look at the traffic Pinterest is sending to your site. For that, just go to this link in your Pinterest analytics (that’s analytics > website > click on “clicks”).
Why Does my Pinterest Reach Go Up and Down?
You may notice your viewers and/or traffic fluctuate and that’s perfectly normal. Most businesses have some seasonality. You can compare year-over-year analytics to see if that might be the case for you.
Another thing to consider is that people using Pinterest have a lot of seasonality to their habits! For instance, many people notice a big drop around holiday time and then an upswing the first of the year. You’ll also likely see a slowdown in Pinterest usage when the weather starts to warm up in whatever area your followers live. People are out DOING all those things they were Pinning all winter.
Reasons Your Pinterest Reach Went Down
It’s not usually possible to say for sure, but here are some possibilities:
- You Pinned someone else’s Pin which took off for season or other reasons (Pinterest shared it in an email, etc.) and that flurry of activity has died down.
- Maybe you wrote about someone’s product or service and they promoted it for a while with ads and have since stopped.
- You’re not adding your own new content to Pinterest weekly.
What Can I Do to Increase Pinterest Viewers?
- Keep an eye on your Pin Inspector in Tailwind. See which Pins are working for you – and which aren’t. Don’t bother deleting Pins that didn’t get engagement – Pinterest looks for fairly quick engagement, so if it didn’t happen, deleting it won’t fix that and you may miss out on traffic when that Pin picks up later. Just continue improving over time, making more Pins that engage, learning from your Pins (and others’ Pins!) that do well. A great place to find those high-performing Pins is in Pinterest analytics (Analytics > Profile). Learn more about how analytics can help you up your Pinterest game here.
- If you’re using Tailwind SmartLoop to reshare your best content, make sure to keep an eye on your Loop analytics. If you see that a particular Pin isn’t getting engagement, you may want to remove it from the Loop and replace it with another image for that content. Try changing up the description keywords and hashtags, too.
- Stay active on Pinterest. Pin daily, even if you don’t have enough content of your own to Pin something new every day. Use Tailwind Communities to find great content to share. Keep your queue full – and remember that SmartLoop is a great tool for making sure you NEVER have an empty queue!
- Create new content. Pinterest loves new content. They love creators who add their new content. Try to create a new page, post, or item listing at least weekly.
Is Tailwind Causing my Drop in Viewers? Should I be Pinning Manually?
Tailwind is an official Pinterest partner and we work closely with them to ensure that our products, features, and recommendations will keep your account growing in a healthy way for the long term.
Some people claim that Pinning manually grew their viewers and that may be so, but it likely has more to do with the way they choose Pins and craft careful descriptions when they Pin manually – all things you can also do when using Tailwind!
We asked Pinterest’s Head of Product Marketing if it was important to Pin manually some or all of the time and her answer was an unqualified, “NO.” You can see the short clip here.
In Conclusion: Why Did My Pinterest Monthly Viewers Decrease?
While no one likes to see their numbers decrease, there are lots of reasons why this one might. Seasonality, Pinner habits, waning popularity of a Pin of someone else’s content… It may not be anything you’ve done wrong! But, there are things you can do to increase views and (more importantly) Pinterest traffic, including:
- Watch your Pinterest referral traffic for a more meaningful indication of success.
- Learn from high-performing Pins and make more Pins like that!
- Stay active on Pinterest by using Tailwind, SmartLoop and Tailwind Communities.
- Create content on a regular basis, weekly if possible.
That’s it! Have you seen ups and downs in your Pinterest reach? Will you try any of these methods to get back on an upswing? Let us know in the comments!
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