A question I’ve asked myself on and off since I started blogging has been, “Should you delete Pins on Pinterest?” I’ve gone back and forth until recently.
I’ve taken plenty of courses, paid and free on how to increase my traffic with Pinterest. And I take something from every one of them. But sometimes when you look back later, you realize there might be a better way, if you tweak a few things.
One of the first courses I took really did help my blog move forward but involved a whole lot of pinning. Manual and scheduled pins. I watched my traffic go up, but it peaked, and I also watched my number of pins go crazy!
I’m curious by nature and I’m always observing other bloggers profiles and strategies. Especially the patterns of top bloggers in my niche!
Before I took said course, I had been deleting unsuccessful pins and noticed in my Tailwind stats that my engagement rate was going up. But, the course had said to leave them because pins could go viral down the road, so I stopped.
Big mistake.
I took a look at her profile, which had a following of 40,000+ followers (much more than I had). But then I took a look at another top blogger in my niche and she had 200,000+ followers!
So, I started dissecting their profiles.
Share the love! Pin me for others!
The first blogger had 60,000 pins and growing and an astronomical amount of group boards. The second blogger was staying steady at around 20,000 pins total and close to 30 boards total.
How was the second blogger so successful with so few pins and boards?? She was doing what I had been doing before the course. Deleting pins!
Pinterest only allows us to have a total of 200,000 pins before we either need to start deleting or start a whole new profile! So, when you reach that 200,000 you’ve got a dilemma. Either a whole lot of work sorting through what to keep and what to ditch. Or throwing all of that previous work to the wind and starting a new profile.
Should you delete pins then? Change is hard, but I decided to give it another shot and start deleting my unsuccessful pins. Yes those pins could be successful some day, but I’d rather increase my chances now than wait for the “some day.”
How do I know what pins to delete? My favorite Pinterest tool, Tailwind has made that easy for me! In that stats they offer, you can use the Pin Inspector!
The Pin Inspector shows you how many times, if any, your pin has been repinned.
What did I see when I started deleting pins? My engagement rate was going up daily! And when your engagement rate goes up your pins are being pinned more by others! That means more traffic and less work for you!
How did I know my Engagement Rate was going up? Tailwind has even more great stats that show you that!
When looking at that stats for your Profile Performance you can see your Virility Score, Engagement Score, and Engagement Rate.
How Should You Delete Pins?
Should you delete pins the next day? From a week ago?
The strategy that has worked best for me is to give the pins one month to try for traction. My goal is to give them less time and to go from deleting pins with zero repins to 1-2 repins.
But for now it’s One month and zero pins.
Go to your Pin inspector and change the filter date to one month from today.
All of your pins from that day will show up. They will tell you what board it was pinned to and how many times it was repinned.
Find a pin with Zero repins and click on the image of that pin. It will open a new tab on your browser taking you to that specific pin.
At the top of the pin image click on the edit button. In the editing screen click to delete the pin. I know it can be hard but just give it a try! 😉
The next day, stop over and take a look at your Profile Performance and see if you’ve had any change!
After you’ve been deleting pins for a few weeks, you’ll notice another pattern. I mentioned above that the more popular blogger also had less boards.
You’ll notice while deleting pins, what boards are working for you and which ones aren’t.
If you are constantly deleting pins from a specific board, what is the point? One, you’re creating more work for yourself, both pinning and deleting. And two, that unpopular board is actually making you unpopular!
What I’ve learned about social platforms is that if you’re popular, you keep getting MORE popular! That goes for your pins and profile!
If a board is not working for you leave it! It was hard for me to do to start with. A lot of the boards were from people that I have worked with from the start of my blogging career.
But once I did it I also watched my followers go from 40-80 new followers a week, to 75-130+ new followers a week.
Without Tailwind I was blind to these stats and guessing. While Pinterest Analytics are helpful, they definitely don’t let you in on the finer details of your pinning strategies.
So, should you delete pins? If you’re ready, Grab Tailwind now and start watching your Pinterest game go crazy!
Thanks for sharing! I’m on tailwind already and I’ll give this a shot.
I’m with you on deleting pins. For the past few months if I have some free time I look at my Tailwind stats and delete pins that have 0 repins. Whenever I do that I tend to start seeing a spike in my engagement like you mentioned.
I’ve also started monitoring the group boards I’m a part of more than I had before. I’ve even left a few boards that were hurting my engagement stats.
very interesting article. will have try
THis was a very interesting analysis! I’ve always seen mixed reviews about deleting underperforming pins. I always thought why keep something around that just isn’t doing the job? Better to get rid of dead weight than just like more on top of it.
Tailwind has awesome features and analytics. It’s definitely a good investment.
Thank you so much! That’s exactly it! It’s kind of like a toxic relationship lol you keep it around because you want it to get better but it drags you down!
Tailwind has so many more benefits that just a scheduler!
Thank you for writing this. It was extremely helpful. I have Tailwind and I’ve been trying to figure out how to use some of the tools and this taught me how to use Pin Inspector.
Heyy,
That’s an interesting read!
I’ve been deleting a lot of pins lately to increase profile score and engagement. I was actually worried. Thanks for clarifying and sharing the insights this really helped me. I haven’t tried it via Tailwind app. I was doing it manually, all this while. Loved the tip ?
So helpful! I’m not on TW yet,but looks a must. Thanks!
I guess it doesn’t matter if the pin (the unsuccessful one with zero engagement) is mine or someone else’s?
New to the blogging world, but I’m glad I found this post! I also love how helpful this blog is too.
Hey,
This was extremely helpful, thanks! I’ll definitely give it a try and take some time to go through my TW. I had no idea about deleting pins, but I’ll get to it now.
Thanks for this great info. It will be hard but I’m going to give it a try!
This post is so timely. I actually started deleting pins and boards today before coming across this post. I can’t wait to check the difference it’s made tomorrow. This post has definitely given me the confidence I needed regarding the actions I took. Thank you
Okay I don’t blog and I’m curious as to why people blog. Is there a financial benefit, just giving advice or what. I’m not being snarky, but trying to get an understanding of its use
Thanks in advance
Danni Armstrong
Hi Danni! I love that you threw in there “I’m not being snarky” I say that all the time lol!
Blogging started out as a hobby for me, but yes we do make money blogging! I actually was able to leave my full time job and Blogging is now my full time career!
Hi. I just came across your blogs and am interested in blogging. I’ve actually interested a long while but now am starting to delve more deeply. I wonder, what is it about deleting pins that creates more traffic? Thanks so much for your time. 🙂
Hi Irene! Thanks for asking! Unsuccessful pins will bring down you popularity in Pinterest’s eyes. So by removing them they are more likely to make your new pins more visible to your followers. As you build a more successful profile your repin rate will increase!
Hiya! Thank for the great post – I’m with you on deleting pins and have been cleaning up my boards a LOT over the past few week.s My question is this: as Tailwind only allows you to see pins from the past 3 months, what do you do with all the other pins that had zero repins from before that? I’m finding it really hard to get any information on repins through my own Pinterest account, so I’d appreciate your input! x
Pinterest has been making so many changes to how we view our individual pins and it is so frustrating! You can either leave the old ones be, or occasionally I’ll go back and delete pins that have less than 100 total repin count. Usually they end up not having any repins. Also do not do this to your “Best of” board. Hope this was helpful!
Thanks for the post. It’s giving me the confidence to start deleting my under performing pins. It’s hard because I want to believe they may get better, but also really refreshing to get rid of the junk.