As part of my continuous education (a more formal way of saying I am naturally curious), I spend time not just on reading and doing online courses relative to my line of work, but I also read job posts even if I am not looking for projects.
Curiously, I wanted to be abreast of what’s in the mind of clients now who are looking for freelancers to do their social media marketing efforts, specifically on Pinterest.
Pinterest Follow - Is It Still Relevant?
One thing that always catches my eye is that clients wanted to be assured that they will be able to gain followers from their Pinterest account.
While I believe that the number of your “followers” are provided by Pinterest for a reason, I agree with the idea that it does not matter much on your potential reach to your audience.
And let me reiterate, we are only referring to Pinterest - and not other social media platforms.
First thing, most Pinterest users search pins NOT based on the people or brands that they already follow. Rather, they focus, save and click pins that matters most on their intent at the moment they do the search on Pinterest.
For instance, if I am already a follower of a brand, say like “Amazon”… and now I am looking for a unique gift idea for my friends, I would not automatically go to Amazon’s Pinterest account to look for products. Rather I would go to the search bar and type in the keywords that I think makes sense to my current need.
Now, this does not mean that you will not bother to grow your followers. Like what I mentioned earlier, “followers’ are there for a reason.
For one, Pinterest gives your follower a notification whenever you have a new pin. The notification will look like this:
Also, I believe that somehow Pinterest will favor your pins and your account if they perceive that your Pinterest account matters to their users.
Followers count may seem to be merely just a vanity metric but know that these vanity metrics can give you some information (though not exact) how your contents create an impact to the reader/viewer to gain the trust to follow you.
In the long run, the number of followers count may also give you that edge of having the impression that you are a top contributor on your niche.
Nonetheless, the value of making your pins SEO-ready and be searchable totally outweighs the followers count.
That is why I encourage you to focus and spend time on creating great contents and pinnable pins, make your pins searchable instead of spending time doing the follow-unfollow method that tends to be really annoying for whatever social media platform that you use.
Nonetheless, since the number of followers matters to some of us, here are some ways to passively grow your followers count:
Tell people to follow you via blog posts or newsletters
If you are using other social media platforms say like on Facebook, tell them to follow you too on Pinterest
Use pop-out apps like MiloTree
Do you still see Number of Followers as a Vanity Metric or you see it as a good indicator if your content resonates with your audience? Share your thoughts by commenting below.
