There Are Two Sides to the Pin Deletion Debate

Episode #8 of the course How to grow your business with Pinterest by Sydney Wyatt

 

There’s some discourse when it comes to The Grand Pin Deletion Debate.

Here are both sides of the argument:

Those who are for deleting pins: These bloggers and entrepreneurs claim that once they started deleting low-performing pins, Pinterest “rewarded” them by showing their content more often in the Smart Feed. I have not been able to find a case study that backs this theory up with solid stats, but here is a related blog post for further reading.

Those who are against deleting pins: These bloggers maintain deleting pins is a waste of time and that there are more important things you can do to see bigger results. Jess Date visited Pinterest HQ and reports that they said, “Don’t delete pins.” Period.

My (personal) opinion is:

You need to curate quality content. The end.

If you’ve had your account for a significant amount of time and it’s full of low-quality content, you need to do some housecleaning . . .

. . . but you don’t need to waste your time searching out and deleting low-performing pins on the regular. I recommend deleting boards that are old and crusty and no longer align with your niche, and splitting up boards that have grown too large.

 

Making a Board Secret

If you’re a little bit nostalgic about certain pins, Secret Boards are a great way to hold onto your content without having to keep it public.

To make a board secret, click “Edit” at the top of the board page and then scroll down until you see the “Secret” switch. Toggling this switch will turn the secret option on. If you ever want to un-Secret a board, this switch can flip it back to public as well.

 

Splitting a Board into Multiples

There are some MONSTER boards out there. While it is great to curate a big collection, nobody has time to sift through thousands of pins to find what they’re looking for.

This is why I advocate splitting giganto boards up into multiples. For example, if you have a “Christmas” board with 5,000 pins, you could split it up into: Christmas recipes, Christmas decorations, Christmas inspiration, etc.

By splitting one broad topic into a family of related boards, you’re multiplying the number of (high-quality, targeted) keywords you’ve got attracting people from search to your content.

To split one board up into multiples:

1. Create new boards! Using the example above, these boards would be “Christmas recipes,” “Christmas decorations,” etc.

2. Navigate back to the board you want to split up.

3. At the top of the board, click the “Move” symbol. You should now see a little checkmark square in the upper right hand corner of all your pins on that board.

4. Choose the pins you want to move to the new board by selecting them via the checkmark square. You can select up to 50 at a time!

5. Once you’ve got your pins selected, scroll back up to the top of the page and click on the “Move” button. It’s right below the search box.

6. Pinterest will ask you to pick the board you want to move the pins to. Go ahead and find your new board in the dropdown menu, and click “Move.” You’re done!

Now, a word of warning to my looping friends:

If you’re looping entire boards, make sure you do a quick pin audit before you let automation do its thing. Nobody wants to see those old 2013 pin skeletons pop up on a semi-regular basis!

One last thing I will say about the deletion debate is this:

Pour your time and energy into curating high-quality pins, rather than obsessing over past low-performing ones. Pinterest is a funny beast. I’ve had pins sit for months (and even years!), only for them to go viral after popping up in search.

If you’re struggling to find high-quality repins, go to your favorite Pinterest user’s profile, and see who they follow! Usually, it’s a gold mine of beautiful pins just waiting to be queued up.

Only two lessons left! Next time, we’re getting to the big boy: how to make a pin go viral.

See you on the other side!

Sydney

 

Recommended video

Pinterest Magic Day #1: How to Split Up Pinterest Boards by To The Wild Co.

 

Recommended book

Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World by Michael Hyatt

 

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