We’ve had some great listener questions about Pinterest this year! Let’s wrap up the last few questions about pinning before we head into 2026.

Episode Highlights:

• What Should I Do With Zero-View Pins?
• Should I Connect Instagram to Pinterest?
• Where Should I Start with Traffic for Free?
• Will Google AI Impact Pinterest?

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We've had some great listener questions about Pinterest this year. Let's wrap up the last few questions about pinning before we head into 2026.

Welcome back to the podcast. Before we dive into this episode, I just want to let you know that the December episodes are not going to have a video version. I choose to practice what I preach and sometimes we just can't be everywhere all the time. And for me, in December, editing the video podcast was something that I just didn't need to have on my plate. And so I do apologize if you like to pop over to YouTube and watch those, but we are going to continue to have the audio podcast all month long.

Now, if you've been listening for a while, you know that I like to have kind of an overarching theme for each month. In fact, we just finished No Pressure November. Now, when I'm looking for inspiration for these monthly themes, I often go to my list of listener questions that I keep in Airtable because sometimes a listener question can inspire an entire month of content. Other times, I'll just sneak an answer into the middle of an episode. But when I was looking at my list of questions this month, I discovered that we still have quite a few that I haven't been able to address yet. So in true holiday spirit, we're going to "wrap up" listener questions all month long, starting with Pinterest.

We have four awesome questions related to pinning that I want to cover today. So let's dive right in.

Our first question is, "What do do with pins that have stayed at zero views? It seems that a lot of my pins aren't getting viewed and I don't feel like making the effort for nothing. I'm not sure if I should just delete them."

This really is a great question and I can tell that this listener likely understands that the Pinterest algorithm relies heavily on user engagement in order to learn more about a pin. If the pin gets zero impressions, it's essentially dead in the water. Or is it? We actually never know what the future holds for a pin.

When we create a quality pin with a keyword rich description and save it to an optimized board, there's still enough data attached to that pin for the algorithm to have a basic understanding of what it's about. So it's possible that Pinterest might still grab that pin from the archives and start circulating it again. I've seen it happen before. So a general rule of thumb is to never delete an old pin if it still points to something relevant in your business.

But I want to focus on the middle part of this listener's question for just a second. She is noticing a lot of her pins getting zero impressions, and she doesn't want to do all of that work for nothing. And so we've talked about what to do with pins with zero views, essentially leave them alone. But now let's focus on what to do about pins with zero views. So when you're scrolling through your stats and you notice a lot of pins with straight zeros, you should start to look for patterns.

First, do those pins use similar photography or pin designs? The algorithm does take note of pins that reuse the same photos over and over, so try cropping your photos differently and shake up your designs a bit, because if there is a particular template that consistently gets zero impressions or clicks, it might be time to ditch that particular template.

The next pattern to look for is whether those zero-view pins have been saved to the same board or boards. The strength of your board is actually a really important part of your pin circulation. It's possible that you have a board that's getting stale, so it might be time to start a fresh optimized board for your new pins moving forward. You don't necessarily need to do anything with the old board. Just start a new one and see what happens.

And third, do you see any patterns in your keyword choices? Do you keep targeting similar keywords, hoping that this will be the one that gets impressions? Sometimes you need to just completely scrap the keywords that you're trying to target and look for something with less competition.

And finally, do you see any patterns in the timing of your pins? We know that the teacher space is very seasonal on Pinterest. It's possible that you're scheduling seasonal content a bit too far in advance. So if you go and look at the single pin analytics for one of your seasonal pieces of content, you'll see that it looks like a switch has been flipped when the algorithm starts and stops pushing that particular holiday in the feed. It will go from having a ton of impressions to basically zero overnight. And so if you pin your seasonal content before that switch has been flipped, you might end up looking at a lot of zeros in your stats.

The other important part of timing your Pinterest content is to avoid being spammy in the frequency of your pinning. Remember that the algorithm is battling AI slop and spammers right now. You don't want to inadvertently get caught up in a spam filter, which often looks like your content is not getting pushed out at all. You'll see a lot of zeros. If you feel like this might've happened to you, it could be worth an email to Pinterest support to see what they have to say.

Let's move on to our next question. This one actually came from the same listener, which is an important thing to remember because it will come into play in just a moment.

This question says, "I was given the option with Pinterest to attach my Instagram so that all my posts go straight to pins. And now I feel like that's a bad idea as some of my Instagram posts and reels don't make sense on Pinterest. Should I unattach it?"

So the short answer is yes, you should unattach it.

I do think it makes sense for someone to directly post their Instagram feed to Pinterest when they are solely working in video content. They make most of their income through social media helps them cast a wider net for their audience.

And so that video content that they've published on Instagram can just automatically be placed on Pinterest and it can end up in front of those people who do choose to scroll Pinterest videos like TikTok.

But for those of us who are trying to get people to leave Pinterest and look at our products and posts, it's not as effective to have our Instagram content go straight to Pinterest. because first, the size isn't ideal for Pinterest. With the new display size on Instagram feeds, the aspect ratio is a bit better, but it's still not the ideal pin size and so your Instagram pins likely won't stick out in the Pinterest feed.

Second, you don't have the opportunity to optimize the pin title and description for Pinterest. So both of these factors can significantly impact how users interact with your Instagram content on Pinterest. You will likely have a lot of pins with zero engagement.

And so this goes back to the listener's other Pinterest question, because if you post on Instagram a lot, you could end up with a whole bunch of pins that are getting low engagement. Over time, this could impact how Pinterest views the quality of your account. And ultimately, the pins you create could get pushed out less and less. So long story short, I would suggest turning it off and then watching to see if engagement on your other pins improves.

Okay, now it's time for our third question. A listener asked, "What's one free traffic strategy you'd recommend for someone just starting to scale their clipart business?" Since I put this question in the Pinterest episode, you can probably guess what I'm going to say. But I really did have to think about this question for a while because very few of the most effective traffic strategies are 100% free.

While it is very inexpensive to get started with blogging, it isn't completely free. So if you really are trying to spend $0 on marketing your clipart business right now, Pinterest is likely the best place to start. You can sign up for a business account without having your own website but then you can connect your catalog to Pinterest if you have one that's compatible with that feature. And so, when people are browsing actual products on Pinterest, your clip art could show up as an option.

But then you could also create pins that go directly to your products like on TPT. But just as a little disclaimer, pins that lead to another platform like TPT, they don't tend to do as well as pins that go to a claimed website. And so you don't necessarily want to pour a bunch of time into pin creation.

But if you're trying to get started for free, I would definitely start with Pinterest. Then once you're ready to start your own blog, you already have your account ready. You can claim that domain on Pinterest and start pinning even more. And you'll likely get more traction from those pins that are directed to your website.

Another thing you can do if you're wanting to scale your business is to start building an email list outside of TPT. Kit, what used to be called ConvertKit, has a free newsletter option where you can collect up to 10,000 subscribers at no cost.

You can build as many landing pages and opt-in forms as you need to collect those leads. And those pages will be hosted through kit so you don't actually have to pay for your own domain.

The only catch is that you can only really create one welcome sequence in automation. So you want to be really strategic with how you use that, but you can send unlimited newsletter broadcasts. You can segment and tag your subscribers. And so it really is a great option for building a customer base off TPT that can follow along with you as you continue to scale your business.

And then once you're set up with your free email marketing, you can create pins that direct users to the kit landing pages. Again, they might not get as much traction since they aren't attached to a claimed domain, but it's definitely worth the experiment.

Our fourth and final question is another one that I had to stop and think about for a minute. This listener said, "The Google search experience has become so icky with that AI section at the top. Will people start using Pinterest more to escape from the AI or is AI going to start bugging us over on Pinterest too?"

And this was a great question. I definitely agree with the ickiness of the search experience right now. But at the end of the day, I think that the majority of Google users will continue to use Google.

They will either interact with the AI overviews at the top or they will just scroll past them. Because I think it goes back to user intent. People who are turning to Google for an answer want that quick information. Yes, it slows them down a bit to scroll past AI overviews, but I don't think it's enough to ditch Google completely. I don't think people tend to turn to Pinterest for a quick solution. They usually want to browse ideas.

And even though Pinterest has had some growing pains and forgotten user intent for a season, things have improved. At the end of the day, Pinterest knows that people want to browse and they want the ad revenue that they get from their users browsing.

They don't need AI to summarize search results at the top like Google is doing. I do, however, think that AI has already started bugging us on Pinterest. I think the biggest challenge Pinterest has in regards to AI is the amount of AI-generated images that are currently flooding the platform. They are working hard to get a handle on this so that users will continue to turn to Pinterest for human-to-human inspiration and not the fabrications of robots.

Because, again, going back to user intent, if someone wants to see an AI mock-up of a living room, they can go plug a picture of their own living room into ChatGPT and do it themselves and get a much more relevant image.

And so that was our final question. I hope that this episode has given you some food for thought as you fine tune your Pinterest strategy for the coming year. By the end of this month, our bank of listener questions will be empty. If you have a burning question that you'd like to have answered on the podcast in the new year, you could submit it on my website. Just head over to StephanieRoyerSolutions.com/podcast to fill out the form.