Whether you are using Pinterest to market your blog or for your company, I’m certain that at one point on your Pinterest journey you’ve asked yourself: how often should I pin in a day and how many times can I repin my content?

This post will share Pinterest’s best practices for 2021 and answer the previous questions.

Pinterest’s best practices are continuously developing. In 2019 repining the same pin numerous times to the same board was the most normal thing to do, but with the algorithm update that happened in 2020, all of that changed.

How Often Should You Repin Your Own Content

How do you continue to use Pinterest to market your business or blog in 2021? Keep these 5 things in mind.

With the changes to the algorithm, how can you continue to use Pinterest as a marketing tool for your blog or business?

You can do so by remembering these 5 things when you pin your content.

1 – Pinterest Favors Fresh Pins

Since 2020 Pinterest started to favor “fresh pins” over old pins. This means that even though you still might get a lot of traffic from pins you first pinned in 2017, now it is time to change them up.

With this new algorithm, these pins will become less visible.

So what does Pinterest consider a fresh pin? Per Pinterest’s definition, a fresh pin is an image that was never before pinned on Pinterest.

Fresh pins do not automatically mean new content as they can link to old content, new content, or even a variation of a new or old pin.

But what exactly does this definition mean?

Well, we might consider ourselves lucky because, with the algorithm, even minor adjustments to an image can make Pinterest regard it as a completely fresh pin.

Other simple and easy things that could also make an image count as new are background image, text color, font, transparency overlay, or zooming in (or out) on the photo.

The following images display multiple alterations of a pin to create a plethora of fresh images. Even though these images are derived from the original, Pinterest considers them to be “fresh” because they are not the same.

This means that you can repin the same blog post as long as you frequently create new pin images. Do not forget that Pinterest can see the images you pin – including the stock images.

This is why I will never advocate for the usage of free stock images in your pins.

So many people can use the same free stock image and that one image can be on thousands of images that are floating on Pinterest.

This can hurt the visibility of your pin.

One way to make sure to always have fresh images is to upgrade to Canva Pro – which comes with images that free users are not privy to.

An even better option is to utilize a service like Deposit Photos for stock photos.

Most bloggers do not like to purchase images, so you won’t easily find these images on Pinterest thus they will forever be fresh for your pins.

2 – Pins Must Be Relevant To Your Content

This is a no-brainer, in cases where your pin titles need to match your blog posts. However, when it comes to the images you use for your pin, it might get a little confusing.

Let’s say for example you wrote a blog post on the best vacuums for pet hair removal on your furniture.

It is only logical that you’ll use a nice picture to draw in pet owners, so you probably will find an image of a dog playing with a toy a great idea.

Unfortunately, this can cause a problem, because from your pin Pinterest will think that your content is about dog toys, not vacuums.

And when it checks the content that the pin links to, it finds no mention of dog toys. This will confuse Pinterest and that is bad for your pin’s reach.

It is important that both the image you use and the words on your pin must match the destination URL.

Whether that URL is attached to a landing page, website, product sales page, or blog post, doesn’t matter, as long as the content it is linked to match the pin.

3 – Repin Duplicate Images Sparingly

You might think to yourself, how often can I repin my own content? Back in the day, it was normal to repin old pins to all of your group boards and boards you find important.

Unfortunately you can no longer do this.

No longer can you ‘set and forget’ a pin. According to Pinterest’s new guidelines, owners can repin a duplicate pin to only 10 relevant boards.

What constitutes as a duplicate pin for Pinterest? A pin with the same image and exact same link!

This doesn’t mean that you can no longer repin your old content, however, you can no longer repin your best pin to the same boards after every 30 days.

Now, you have to create new pins.

This doesn’t mean that you should delete your old pins, because old pins can still bring in a lot of traffic and even go viral.

The important factor here is that you let the pin gain visibility organically. No more can you repin the same pin after 30 days to give it visibility.

In fact, doing that could hurt visibility and can actually stall the traffic that you want.

How often can you repin your own content?

From now on, you can only repin a pin to maximally 10 relevant boards. The keyword here is relevant. These boards can be yours or group boards.

So, if you are part of a catch-all or blog promo group, it wouldn’t be wise to pin there. These boards have no focus and therefore Pinterest finds them confusing.

Pinning in such a board will hurt you more than it will help you.

To increase your chances of success on Pinterest, it is best to find group boards that are relevant to your content.

Only join these boards when you see that they use similar keywords to the ones you use in your titles in their description.

Every time I pin a new pin, I set up a schedule to repin it to 9 of my most relevant boards. This repining happens over 2 to 3 days.

In total, it takes 20 to 30 days to repin the new pin, depending on the space between days I choose.

To Pinterest, the amount of people who choose to repin my pin doesn’t matter. Their only care is how many times I pin it that is why I keep stressing to only pin to relevant boards where engagement happens often.

Your pin design and wording are also crucial as it catches attention and will stand out in the feed.

These pins are the ones you will want to click. These are also the pins that get the most saves and click-throughs. If you have a hard-to-read pin with an unappealing design, users will not click it and simply scroll by.

If you are a little insecure about your pin and think that you might need some help? You can use pin templates for inspiration. I have a monthly subscription at Canva, and they send me nice designs on a monthly basis.

Back in the day, I was using the same template for different pins. But now that Pinterest is prioritizing new images, I often change my templates.

Having only a couple of pin templates a month saves a lot of time.

4 – Never Spam

It happens so often that accounts get closed due to spamming. I’m sure you don’t want to invest so much of your time creating pins and building your Pinterest profile only to find out that Pinterest suspended it for spam.

Often new pinners don’t know that Pinterest prohibits pinning the same URL/image combination to multiple boards, over and over again.

If you are new and did not know that Pinterest does not like it, but have been doing this, it is best to stop TODAY. Pinterest will deem this as spam and will suspend or even close your account.

5 – Create A Strategy For Compliance

With so many things to do on Pinterest each day, how do you keep up and keep track of your pins that you are pinning each day and the boards you are pinning them to?

Here is where the importance of scheduling comes in. Some people have this superhero ability to schedule mentally.

I cannot do that, as I have other pressing matters to attend to. I cannot pin all day long. I need help.

So I use Tailwind to schedule all my pins. Apparently, Pinterest also likes Tailwind because it has approved of Tailwind and directly provides guidance to Tailwind as to what practices are good or bad.

If you’d like to get started with Tailwind they have a FREE 30-day trial. It’s definitely worth it – you can sign up HERE.

A little fun info about Pinterest:

A few months ago, I started using Tailwind as my pin scheduler and since then I saw crazy growth of my account numbers.

I started wondering if manual planning would be a better option. I stopped using Tailwind for a month and tried to schedule manually.

I jotted down the boards I need to pin to and which and when I will pin to these boards. It was very organized, but unfortunately, it didn’t work.

I was disappointed, but started wondering how I could improve my manual pinning. It didn’t take long before I noticed that my Pinterest numbers are dropping.

My click-through, saves and impressions number dropped. When I saw this I immediately returned to Tailwind.

You’ll notice that among Pinterest users and their pinning strategies, the support for Tailwind is literally split into two camps.

One camp hates it the other loves it.

It’s up to decide the side you’ll choose.

I will urge you to try Tailwind for at least a month to schedule your pins. Tailwind even has a smart guide that warns you when you are violating Pinterest best practices with your pinning.

While you’re using Tailwind, keenly monitor your stats for that month. Check if you notice that your click-throughs, saves, and impressions have soared or plummeted.

After that, you can switch back to manual pinning. Manually record the same stats at the end of that month then.

From there you can decide which one is best for you.

So, if you’d like to get started scheduling – head over to Tailwind and get a FREE Trial.