How to Use Pinterest Video Pins To Quickly Grow Your Account

This post will show you how to use Pinterest video pins to explode your account and grow it fast!

Recently, there’s been a bit of controversy surrounding Pinterest and its creators.

Earlier in February, Pinterest announced they would change the algorithm to prioritise fresh pins.

This meant that to succeed on Pinterest, you need to constantly put out fresh pins rather than ‘repinning’ old ones.

It makes sense because Pinterest has a lot of old, outdated, and recycled content.

This update was way long overdue.

But the issue is the creators/bloggers/brands would have to bear the brunt.

As we settled on creating fresh pins daily, Pinterest struck again.

They claimed they were running an ‘experiment’ and accidentally marked a lot of accounts as spam.

This saw tons of analytics and traffic tanks.

It was really so bad that bloggers had to reach out to them.

But then, their customer service reps responded with various reasons for the dip in traffic.

One such was the use of Tailwind to repin.

It turns out that some bloggers use Tailwind to repin the same pins over and over, which causes Pinterest to flag their accounts as spam.

Everyone is trying to find the best strategies that work for them with or without Tailwind.

As for my accounts, we haven’t been affected yet.

Although, I’m waiting till the end of June to compare analytics and decide the way forward.

Read how I currently use manual pinning vs scheduling to double my traffic.

While all this was happening, the marketer in me was busy finding ways to maximise the platform.

The difference between me and most bloggers is that I have about three years of social media marketing experience working with brands (and seven years of digital marketing experience).

So, I understand how these platforms work to a large extent.

While I love my blogger boos and their strategies, it can sometimes be one-sided.

Enter Pinterest Video Pins

To my knowledge, Pinterest video pins were released in the second half of 2019.

I didn’t notice until early 2020 when I started to take Pinterest marketing seriously.

But then I realised that the only niches taking full advantage of video pins were food and drink. There were tons of food videos on Pinterest.

Followed closely by fitness.

I remember Gymshark posting videos so much that they were able to fast-track their growth.

My experience with Pinterest Video Pins

While everyone struggled with their image pins, creators posting videos were just chilling.

This is also what I think happened to my account as well.

Just before the last Pinterest experiment, I started posting video pins to see how they would affect my stats.

The first video pin took so long to take off that I was discouraged and didn’t post for a few weeks.

But then, I started seeing more video pins in my smart feed, which motivated me to try again.

So, I started posting skincare videos to my best-performing boards, and they blew up.

It was unbelievable.

Before I knew it, my stats were jumping.

While others were struggling with their image posts, I was finding success with my video pins.

My account has hit 1m+ monthly unique viewers from 600k in less than 30 days.

In fact, earlier today, I found out that one of the videos I posted was ranking number one for a keyword.

The Pros and Cons of Pinterest Video Pins

Pros:

• It’s easy to rank for a keyword. You need to understand that social media platforms always prioritise new features. Like IGTV on Instagram, Pinterest prioritises video and story pins. So, tap into it as fast as possible before it becomes saturated. Even if it is one pin a week, start from somewhere. Since video pins are still very underrated, it is easy to rank for keywords. It took me about a month to do so.
• It’s an easy way to explode your stats quickly. I’m growing a new Pinterest account with only image pins, and I can see how slow it can be. According to some Pinterest experts, it can take as long as 3 – 6 months to gain traction with a new account. I’m already thinking of the kind of videos to post to fast-track the growth. Use video pins rather than waiting for your image pins to grow your account. It will blow up all your analytics, from impressions to engagement and followers.

Cons:

• The Click Through Rate (CTR) can be painfully low: Possibly the only con of video pins so far is the CTR. Imagine putting so much effort into creating or curating a video; you only get 20 link clicks. I wish Pinterest would look into it, but for now, understand that video pins are just for impressions and engagement. You would not get as many clicks as your image pins. My best-performing video currently just has 389 clicks with over 500,000 impressions. That’s super low on all levels. This explains why a lot of creators are hesitant to try video pins. But still, you need to give it a shot.

Key Tips for Pinterest Video Pins

• Try curating before creating. Test your hands by curating video pins before making yours. Curate Instagram stories and TikTok videos. They are the perfect size for Pinterest video pins. After curating a few videos, I made a TikTok account to create videos for my blog that I can repurpose for Pinterest.
• Post video pins on popular or trending keywords. I’m very familiar with my analytics, so I know the topics and boards that naturally perform well off the top of my head. It was easy for me to create video pins based on those topics. So go through your analytics, find the best-performing pin, and curate or create a video version. Try as few or as many issues as you wish.
• Don’t neglect your image pins; balance them. At the end of the day, your image pins still have the potential to go viral and get you the most traffic. Personally, I just post one or two videos every couple of days. It doesn’t affect my current pin schedule; it just adds to it.

In conclusion,

Pinterest video pins are absolutely worth exploring.

I’ve found a way to work them into my schedule even though I’m forced to be active on TikTok.

As long as I can repurpose them for Pinterest, it’s worth it.

If you’re unsure how to get DAILY traffic from Pinterest, start with the Pinterest Optimization Worksheet.

When done, use Ell’s Course (affiliate link) to enhance your Pinterest efforts.