Why I Stopped Focusing on Pinterest For Blog Traffic

As someone who has always sung the praises of Pinterest for blog traffic, it’s pretty wild to me that I’ve only been on my Pinterest account a handful of times in the last month, and I don’t think I’ve been on Tailwind at all.

While I still completely believe that Pinterest is one of the easiest ways to get traffic to your blog, lately, I started to feel disenchanted with chasing pageviews.

Again, this goes against a lot of the ideas I’ve talked about in my articles about building a no-niche blog and blogging consistently.

If you haven’t read those articles, basically, I’ve always been very pro creating a lot of content.

I understand that the more content I create, the better chance I have of people finding me on Pinterest, and thus, finding my blog.

And yet, even though I know that, and even though I’m currently writing new posts EVERY SINGLE DAY, I’m not creating Pinterest shareable images for any of these posts.

Again, this goes against pretty much everything that I’ve done as a blogger in the past two years.

Even just 2 months ago, if you would have told me I wouldn’t be making Pinterest graphics, and I wouldn’t be filling my Tailwind queue, I would have told you that you were crazy.

So, why have I stopped focusing on my Pinterest strategy for blog traffic? Let me elaborate:

1) I missed the connection

When it comes to my blogging journey, I’ve gone through phases where I wanted to be super social (i.e. constantly on Instagram, super active in FB groups, and consistently commenting on other people’s work), but I’ve also had times where I wanted to put the blinders on and just create (I even stopped using Instagram entirely for over a year because of that!).

Recently, I’ve definitely found that I more so fall into that second category, and I’ve been stuck in this category for the past six months.

But, not too surprisingly, it’s been in this last month where the idea of posting another article and not knowing how anyone felt about it, made me feel so resentful of blogging.

As a full-time freelance writer, I have enough work where I hand it over to someone else and never get any feedback.

The fact that it felt like I was basically doing this with my own blog, which was supposed to be a creative escape from freelancing, was just a bit too much to handle.

I’ve realized that I need an equal balance of both.

I need to have high pageviews to make me feel like my blog is reaching people, which I get through Pinterest, but I also need to have a handful of readers who I actually connect with beyond them just reading one blog post and then never coming back to my blog ever again.

And so, that’s exactly what I’m doing.

After I’m done my Daily Blogging Challenge, I’ll continue to write these more essay style blog posts, communicating ideas and thoughts, but also write those more Pinterest-worthy articles so I can continue to grow my blog.

Also, if you’ve never read this article about why you only need 1000 true fans to grow your business, I highly recommend it. It really changed a lot about how I think of my blog as a platform.

2) I didn’t sign up to be an influencer

As much as I’ve convinced myself that, at times, I wanted to do the whole influencer thing, I know that’s not true.

Or, at least I know it’s not true in the sense that I don’t want to feel pressured to post pictures of myself on a daily basis (not that there’s anything wrong with that; I just spend 90% of my time in leggings with no makeup on, which isn’t very interesting…).

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, I identify more with being a writer than I do with being a blogger.

While blogging has always been a big part of my life, I consider the majority of my blogging business to be about writing.

What does this have to do with Pinterest, though?

Well, I talked about this when I shared why I started this daily blogging challenge, but my writing didn’t feel very creative when I was forcing myself to write blog posts that I thought would perform well on Pinterest.

It started to feel like just another writing job, and I didn’t want that.

I wanted writing that felt creative and more connective for readers who were actually interested in what I had to say.

I don’t think I’ve reached this point yet, but I definitely have aspirations of finding readers who relate to my writing, and I think executing on this goal requires me to be less concerned with writing articles that are simply for Pinterest, and more concerned with writing articles that people can relate to.

I want my blog to be a platform for my writing. I don’t want my blog to be the business, ya know! I hope that makes sense.

3) I needed a change (don’t be scared of this!)

And lastly, I stopped using Pinterest so consistently (for now), because I just needed a change.

I understand that when you’re blogging to make money, you have to think of your blog like a business, and you need to be strategic about the content you put out.

Like I said, I get it, BUT the issue that I think this creates is that everyone takes their blogs so damn seriously.

It almost feels like sometimes, as bloggers, we think that all eyes are on us, and if we make one wrong move, our blogs will implode.

But really, this couldn’t be further from the case.

Unless you have a really large, engaged audience, there’s a good chance that nobody is watching you that closely.

You can put out an article that feels a little different than what you normally do, and the world won’t stop spinning (promise).

And really, even if someone does notice that your content feels a little “off brand”, that person always has the ability to not read the article if it’s not interesting to them.

So, to make a long story not so short, even though I know this 30 day challenge isn’t probably benefitting me much in terms of pageviews from Pinterest, I do know it’s keeping me consistent and disciplined with a writing practice.

Blogging everyday is not something I plan on continuing forever, but for 30 days, it’s an amazing challenge that I highly recommend to anyone who wants to switch up their blogging routine.

Not to mention, beyond just the challenge of it, embarking on this daily journey sparked an idea in me that I’m really excited to hopefully implement in the new year (more on this soon). If I would have continued to stick with the articles that do well on Pinterest, I probably would have never come up with this idea.

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Let me end by saying that, by no means, do I think Pinterest is bad.  I would never advise that anyone stop using it if they’re trying to grow their blog. Like I said, I still think Pinterest is one of the best ways to get blog traffic.

Having said that, I also think that when you’re blogging just for pageveiws, things can start to get stale.

For me, in 2020, I’m going to be more focused on getting a mixture of pageviews from Pinterest, but also from cultivating a relationship with people on my newsletter, along with forming connections on Instagram (and beyond!).

If you’re a blogger, I would love to hear your perspective on this.

How do you balance forming connections with people, but also keeping your pageviews and motivation to blog high?

For me, it’s a tricky balance, but I would love to explore the idea together! Let me know in the comments below 🙂