I have been working hard to get my Pinterst account in order so it works better for me and the people I am trying to reach. I have run into a few things that are not true or have changed recently. So I thought I would collect 6 Myths I have learned in the last month after reading many blogs.

1. You don’t need a lot of followers to get good flow to your blog. I have known this one of a long time, you only need one great pin to get great views on your blog. I have 1 (yes, 1) that gives me 90% of my views and it’s not that great of a post but it is useful. That is what is more important than anything, filling a need to get the views. Personally I don’t have a lot of followers (about 1,ooo) but I have been averaging 1,000 views a day on my blog with 300,000 average views on Pinterest. Again that is from that 1 pin on how to make a tutu which is extremely popular for Halloween, so it will probably go down a bit after that. I am hoping it won’t fall to much because 2 of my other pins have been getting a lot of attention too. So again the number of followers you have is not as important as who is pinning your pins. A lots of people will view a pin and open without even following you.

2. You don’t need to pay for a program to get good traffic to your blog. I know these programs that pin and re-pin for you are all the rage but I am a firm believe of doing it your self if you can. I know this will only be possible if you have the time to do it, like me. I am on Pinterest all the time already, so it’s easy for me to pin up 50 pins a day. As a DIY crafter, Pinterest is a great resource for me, my guess is it was created for people like me. So I am pinning all day as it is, I have been working hard to make my pins count too. Think about take a few minutes a few days a day and pin 5 to 10 pins, it will add up.

3. Just because you have a Business account doesn’t mean you can’t pin for your self. If you (like me) don’t want to have a different account for your business and personal, you don’t need to. I really hate having to switch accounts back and fourth, so for the most part my accounts are mixed. Something I just started using is the secret board for stuff that is more for me than my followers like minecraft and lots of recipes. I am a DIY, crafter, sewer, and blogger so minecraft and recipes are not really on brand but I still want to remember them. I have noticed a big difference in only having related pin on my profile, it looks a lot cleaner too, even with public 65+ boards.

4. Women are not the only ones using Pinterest anymore, men are searching too. Yes I have noticed in my analysis that men are pinning my pins too. It may not be a lot of men but I am not trying to get their attention either. So if you think Pinterest can’t work for men that is not true, search something that men would be interested in you will be surprised. If your niche is in a male dominated area think about sharing your content on Pinterest sooner than later. An important side note about Pinterst is that your pins are around for ever and the more repins they get the higher the ranking it will have and the more repins it will get (its a cycle). So the sooner you pin your content the more luck it will have to get up in rankings, being in the top 10 is great. Yes that 1 pin is #1 for it’s search and I pinned it before I was even trying to blog (3 years ago) for a living.

5. Pinterest is a social media platform, it is a search engine. This is something that I was not really aware of but makes total sense. From a business point of view looking at Pinterest as a search engine will help you get better traffic. You need to make sure you pins are keyword rich, yes I had to edit almost all my old pins to do this. The best way to find the right keywords is to, search for your topic and look at all the suggestion boxes under the search bar. These suggestions are the most common keyword searches related to your topic. Pinterest only let’s a few word in the description before it …… them, so most of your keywords should be in the front. Side note do not use Hashtags, Pinterest will block anything after the # sign. Back to keywords, please don’t just list them either in the description box, you description should be a sentence with said keywords.

6. Deleting pins are BAD, as far as I can tell it is not True!! Deleting pins that have no repins can only help you by changing your stats on Pinterest. I know this is a big debate and many say don’t but I have read some pros that say it’s okay. With that said I have deleting pins, that either had no repins or were deleted blog posts and I am still here. So the idea is that those low pins make you look bad to Pinterest therefore you ranking falls. When you have a lot of pins with good repinning Pinterest will think you have great content and will rank you higher. It works I have been watching my ranking climb in a couple keyword searches such as Rag Dolls Profiles (I am first now). Something I have no idea about was repinning your own pins counts, so pinning one pin is as many boards as possible is great. I learned this from Melyssa Griffin, after taking a free class.

I hope all these Myth busters helped you and your blog. If you have any myths to share comment them below so I can read them.