I had a zoom with a guy from Pinterest about how to make the most of Pinterest for my art business. Then I had to go to the bathroom.
But first, this is a portrait I did a couple of years ago of a friend’s grandson. Obviously he is not available, but you can always contact me to learn more about commissioning a painting of someone you love. Check out some of my other work here: http://www.kelliesnider.art
In the wake of my Meta expulsion and re-entry (I got kicked out and had to start over) I decided it was a good time to look at other options for putting eyes on my art. Pinterest sounded like a good place to look. Pinterest works like a search engine more than a social media platform, so I decided to launch. I’d had a Pinterest account for years, but I didn’t do anything with it, so I reorganized it and started posting consistently.
Things went great at first. I was looking for a way to grow organically rather than buying ads, and this worked great for a while. Although I had a meager one follower, a friend of mine, I had over 50,000 monthly viewers in my first month.
I was contacted by Pinterest’s sales department about learning how to maximize my account, and since I was in the mode of improving my online presence I decided it couldn’t hurt. I could always decline the offer if I wanted to, right?
We met as planned, and he had some interesting stuff to say about my account. First of all, he said the low followers didn’t really mean much in Pinterest since people don’t tend to follow individuals as much as look for things. So, my 50,000 views was a lot more meaningful than my 1 follower. Cool. And he had some ideas about how to improve my page.
I was all ears, but as we were talking I received a call from nature. I had to go. I really had to go. I asked him if we could take a break. He said he had another client, but we could reschedule. We quickly rescheduled something for 2 days later, and I put it on my calendar. Good. Much better to learn when you don’t have to go potty.
At the agreed upon time, I went to Zoom, logged in, and saw that he had already opened the meeting. But he wasn’t there. I waited. He didn’t come back. After 20 minutes or so, I closed out and called it a day.
Three days later, on a Monday, I checked my Pinterest following. Whoa. It had dropped to 40,000. A couple of days later, it was down to 30k. Today is a week later, and it is down to 16K monthly views. The interesting thing is that these views are measured for the last 30 days, not the last calendar month. So, apparently my viewers were dropping like flies over the past week and it reflected badly on my overall views.
Here’s the thing. I was still posting the same kind of stuff every day. I posted my products, my blog, and art. But in January people wanted to see my stuff. Did they change their minds by February and decide I was not worth their trouble?
That would be a convenient explanation, but I don’t believe it was true. I believe that my inability to meet again with the guy, and more importantly, my failure to spend money on advertising resulted in a change in my rankings. People were not choosing to view my posts less often. They were being offered the opportunity to view my posts less often. People stopped seeing my posts. It stopped being an option for them to view them.
Just like the other social media platforms, Pinterest is in the biz for the money. I get that. But every account should be given the information they need about how to get views up front. Be straight with us. Say, okay, for the first month, you can have 50K views, but after that we’re going to need some cash before you can stay at that level. Failure to do that is dishonest, and honesty is what I find painfully lacking in all of these social media sites.
Instead what they did was let me have a lot of views for a while, stroke my ego, then meet with me to see if they could get my money. Now that I’ve talked to them and didn’t buy advertising (even though it was because I needed a bathroom break and didn’t get to finish the conversation), I shouldn’t be punished. I didn’t really even get a chance to decide if advertising was right for me because I had to go to the bathroom!
So, I’ve done what I should have done long ago, I’ve doled out some cash to have my own website improved by a professional web designer. It still boils down to creating a web presence that isn’t dependent on social media. Yes, I still use social media, but I don’t have any faith in it. I’ll use it to the extent it works for me. I won’t be surprised when it works against me. I hope to learn more about Search Engine Optimization, and will likely hire this designer to keep that stuff up to date. I’ll write more about that later.
It still comes down to one thing. Don’t trust the platforms that want to make money from you. When I was advertising on Facebook and Insta there were times I placed an ad that promised thousands of hits, and I got hardly any. Paying them for ads doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get views or engagement. It just ensures that they will get paid, and that’s what they want. Indeed, that’s why they exist.
Onward and Upward,
Kellie
P.S. Please share this link on your social media spaces!
