Yup! I will tell you right off the bat that I don’t use third-party apps to automate my pinning. Even those that said to be approved third-party apps.
You are probably wondering now how to pin on Pinterest without using apps. So, yes! I do manual pinning.
Sound tedious? It is as compared to using apps like Tailwind. But as the saying goes, “Do what is right not what is easy.”
But How Did I Have The Idea That Manual Pinning Is The Right Thing To Do?
First, when I was new to Pinterest, I came across a course called Pinteresting Strategies. In this course, the blogger mentioned how she grew her traffic from Pinterest by manual pinning.
Later on, I read this blog post from Alex Tooby, an Instagram Expert where she talked about how you can be shadowbanned on Instagram if you use apps that automate your posting. Basically, shadowban means not one of your post is visible in the hashtags that you’ve used. Thus, limiting your capability to reach your potential audience.
It was not obvious to me at first but the idea came like an epiphany. Not using third-party apps indeed makes a lot of sense. Think about it… no website would want that you visit their site/platform today and totally forget about it for a month or so.
Here are just some of the people who do manual pinning:
Of course, there are people who also favor automated pinning. They stood on the side that automation on pinning does not affect their web traffic from Pinterest.
Well, it may be because of several factors:
They run ads on Pinterest
They have a seasoned account
Nonetheless, I still believe that you will reach greater potential if you remain to be human on social media platforms.
Admittedly, without this thorough studies made by some of these bloggers on their own sites and Pinterest account, it is hard to make a replicate of the study that they did.
Fortunately, I was able to do this on Instagram.
Here’s what I did:
I created an IG account.
I used a third party app to automate my posting (this app actually claims to be an approved third-party app of both Instagram and Pinterest).
Created a simple caption plus hashtags.
The results: No follow and not even a single “like” on my post. Which is very unlikely since 99% of the time, just a few seconds of posting content, you will instantly see the engagement in the post.
Curiously, I tried to find my post using the hashtags that I used and tada! My post is invisible.
In my mind I said, “So this is what shadowban is about!”
But I didn’t stop there. Right there and then, I created a second IG account.
I used the same image, same caption, and same hashtags. I still used a third party app. It’s also an approved third-party app by Instagram. But the difference is that this app just notifies me that I need to manually publish a content (it does not automate the posting of my content).
Just a few seconds after I publish my post, I received my needed likes and I even gained some followers.
This is the app permission where I was shadowbanned:
This is the app permission where I received the expected engagement:
How Can You Be Efficient On Manual Pinning?
The only way is to organize stuff through a Google Spreadsheet. This document should contain:
Title and Link to the content
Link to Pin Graphics
Keywords to use
Post Description
Hashtags
Boards where the pin will fall
Link to the pin (of course!)
What If You Will Be On Vacation?
I mentioned in my blog post how important it is to consistently do the pinning on Pinterest. But what if you decide to take a vacation where the internet may not be stable or simply you wanted to free yourself from pinning during a certain period.
The key is by using Pinterest’s own scheduling tool.
To Conclude
Third party apps allow us to save time and effort (no question to that!) but I firmly believe that manual pinning and “authentic” way of using Pinterest is the best way to manifest the ROI that you are looking for.
All you need to do is have a system in place where you can somehow replicate how to automate it in a way that Pinterest will love.
