Now that Pinterest has a Smart Feed, does it really matter how many Pinterest followers you have?
When I first started my Pinterest business account for my blog, I did everything other bloggers’ said would guarantee Pinterest followers and success. I optimized my profile, wrote intentional pin descriptions, and my profile looked really good. I was constantly checking my profile, expecting to see my follower count go up, but it just wasn’t.
It took me two months to get 100 Pinterest followers! I was confused and discouraged.
Then when I asked other bloggers for input, some of them told me, “It doesn’t matter how many Pinterest followers you have because of the Smart Feed.”
In this post, I’m going to talk about the Pinterest Smart Feed and ask the question, do Pinterest followers matter?
Pinterest Smart Feed and Getting Pinterest Followers
It didn’t used to be as difficult as it is now to get Pinterest followers. In the past, people’s Pinterest home feeds were only made up of the pins the people they were following had pinned. Pinterest was continually suggesting new people for Pinterest users to follow. Overall, there was just a much bigger emphasis on following people and following boards.
Now, however, Pinterest has done away with that system. Instead of seeing the pins of the people you follow on your feed, Pinterest has developed a “Smart Feed.” The Pinterest Smart Feed shows you pins that Pinterest thinks you’ll like, regardless of who pinned them. You’re no longer only seeing the pins of the people you follow.
Pinterest also stopped suggesting people to follow nearly as much. Instead, Pinterest recommends following topics.
All of these changes have added up, and now it’s become really challenging to get Pinterest followers naturally, especially for new bloggers.
So, does having Pinterest followers really matter?
Because of the emphasis Pinterest is putting on the Smart Feed, you might hear other bloggers say your follower count doesn’t matter anymore. I’m here to tell you, that’s simply not true. Having Pinterest followers matters, just maybe not quite as much as it used to.
Usually when people say follower count doesn’t matter, they mean that now that Pinterest is doing the Smart Feed, you don’t need followers for people to see your content. That is true! Hypothetically, Pinterest could pull your pins and show them to anyone. I have seen pins go viral (get thousands of repins) that were pinned by someone with like five followers! It does happen.
BUT that’s not the whole story.
Here are three reasons why Pinterest followers are still important:
1. Having Pinterest followers establishes your legitimacy and credibility.
Imagine this. You like a pin and think, “I wonder whose pin this is.” So you go to their profile, and see they’re a blogger. Are you more likely to follow them if they have 5 followers, or if they have 5,000? Even if you’d follow them with 5, most people would be more likely to follow if they see that they have 5,000. Having a lot of followers makes you look legit, and shows you’ve been around for a while.
2. Having Pinterest followers makes it easier to get on group boards.
I began applying to group boards before I even had 200 Pinterest followers. I probably heard back from one in like every 50 people I reached out to. No exaggeration. Now that I have almost 1,500 followers (which isn’t even that many), I’m hearing back from about one in every five. Since group boards are the #1 way to increase traffic to your blog from Pinterest, this is a big deal!
3. The more Pinterest followers you have, the more people see your pins.
I do still believe that having lots of followers improves your reach, even with the Smart Feed. I can’t show you any concrete data to prove this, but in general, my pins have gotten more attention as my follower count has increased.
So since having followers is important, how do I get more followers on Pinterest?
Glad you asked! I tried every strategy out there that other bloggers said would gain me Pinterest followers, and almost none of them worked.
After a lot of trial and error, I have found three highly effective ways to get more followers on Pinterest, which I have shared in my post, How to Get Followers on Pinterest. You won’t find these tips anywhere else, promise!
I’m currently averaging 200 new followers a week, and we’ve gained over 1,000 followers in just the last four months since launching our site. Go check out those tips!
