What to Pin in October

How far in advance should I Pin my fall content to Pinterest?

In the springtime we Repin easter eggs, in the summertime we Repin swimsuits, and in the fall we Repin everything orange-colored and pumpkin-flavored. You’d think it would be pretty simple to answer the question of when to publish your seasonal Pins to Pinterest, unfortunately it can be a lot harder than you’d initially think.

Pinterest isn’t a real-time Platform like other social networks. If your content doesn’t become popular on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter within 24 hours, it likely never will, but on Pinterest, the first 24 hours after publishing a Pin are more-or-less meaningless. It usually takes a Pin weeks, or even months, to build up the momentum needed to perform well.

So should you be Pinning your blog post about Thanksgiving decorations in October? Should you Pin Christmas sweaters in the Fall? Many Pinterest experts advise you to do just that, and in general we agree. It’s helpful to give your content time to mature on Pinterest, to get Repinned to many related boards and to appear in Pinterest search.

But can we be more specific and answer exactly what type of content someone should Pin in October? We think we can. We hope to do that with this post by showing you the Pins that Tailwind members published at this time last year that went on to receive a ton of Repins.

Can we answer exactly what type of content someone should Pin to #Pinterest in October? Yes.

Learning from last October’s most popular Pins

We analyzed all of the Pins from Tailwind members from October of last year (2015) and Pinned the ones that received the most Repins to 11 new boards that we created – one board for each of the 11 Pinterest categories Tailwind members publish to most often. We Pinned to these boards in the chronological order that the Pins were published. So Pins at the bottom of the board are from earlier in the month and Pins at the top are from later in the month.

We’ll be repeating this formula with a new blog post at the beginning of every month for the next year, so that you’ll be kept in the know about what you should be Pinning in any given month, all year long.

Remember that the Pins we are presenting here were popular at this time last year. That doesn’t mean you should go and blindly recreate or Repin them. Some of these Pins reference trends that have already passed. Instead we recommend that you try to look beyond the exact content of any given Pin and ask what lessons can be learned from that type of Pin published at that time, why was it so popular back then, and what can I do to repeat that success today?

To help with the job of decoding the lessons from last year’s most popular Pins each blog post will be accompanied by a video, originally recorded on Facebook Live, with live questions from Tailwind members, where we’ll attempt to pick out the trends we see in any given month.

The Video

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What to Pin in October

Big Takeaways:

Pin seasonal content weeks or even months ahead. Most of the successful seasonal Pins that we see are Pinned at least two weeks before the holiday or event they reference. This is because Pinterest users plan (and so Pin) their meals and decorations in advance, and because it takes time for a Pin to gain traction on Pinterest.
But it’s never too late. We saw one example of a Halloween Pin that was successful despite being Pinned on Halloween day!
Some categories are much more seasonal than others. These are the 11 categories we covered in order of how seasonal their most successful content was in October (from most to least): Holidays and Events, Food and Drink, DIY and Crafts, Kids and Parenting, Women’s Fashion, Education, Wedding, Home Decor, Travel, Hair and Beauty, Health and Fitness
But even the least affected categories contained some seasonal content. If you can work seasonality into your category then go for it. As in this autumn defuser from the health and fitness category.
Seasonal color palettes seem to be somewhat correlated with virality, especially in the Food and Drink, Wedding and Home Decor and the Women’s Fashion categories. So you should probably use a Fall-appropriate color palette for Pins you create in the run up to Fall, if you Pin in these categories.
As well as seasonal trends we also observed popular trends (like Paw Patrol, Harry Potter, Yoga and the Paleo Diet). You’d do well to be aware of these and create content that references them as appropriate (for instance a Paw Patrol birthday party).
Yes, it’s not rocket science – pumpkin is a popular ingredient in the Food and Drink category in October, but we did notice that creative treatments of holiday stables seemed to outperform the more traditional approaches.
Evergreen content can become popular anytime, so you can keep Pinning that year round! Every category had examples of evergreen content that became popular, even on Halloween itself!