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Why Did My Pinterest Monthly Viewers Decrease?

It’s understandable that a decrease in your Pinterest monthly viewers number has you concerned. After all, we all want our content to be seen!

However, before we dig into the “Why?” it’s important to realize what “viewers” really means and how much impact (or not) it is having on your business.

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What Is Pinterest “Monthly Viewers”?

“Viewers” indicates how many people may have seen your own content that you save to Pinterest, as well as your own content that others have saved to Pinterest. It also includes views of content you have saved from other people’s sites AND views on any Pins you may have promoted.

Screenshot showing Tailwind monthly viewers on Pinterest

That said, it’s not the best metric to go by if you’re looking to measure your success on Pinterest, as it’s not a great indication of the engagement on your Pins or on the true impact that your Pinterest marketing has on your bottom line.  For a more meaningful number, look at the traffic Pinterest is sending to your site. For that, just go to this link in your Pinterest analytics (that’s analytics > website > click on “clicks”).

Why Does my Pinterest Reach Go Up and Down?

You may notice your viewers and/or traffic fluctuate and that’s perfectly normal. Most businesses have some seasonality. You can compare year-over-year analytics to see if that might be the case for you.

Another thing to consider is that people using Pinterest have a lot of seasonality to their habits! For instance, many people notice a big drop around holiday time and then an upswing the first of the year. You’ll also likely see a slowdown in Pinterest usage when the weather starts to warm up in whatever area your followers live. People are out DOING all those things they were Pinning all winter.

Reasons Your Pinterest Reach Went Down

It’s not usually possible to say for sure, but here are some possibilities:

  • You Pinned someone else’s Pin which took off for season or other reasons (Pinterest shared it in an email, etc.) and that flurry of activity has died down.
  • Maybe you wrote about someone’s product or service and they promoted it for a while with ads and have since stopped.
  • You’re not adding your own new content to Pinterest weekly.

What Can I Do to Increase Pinterest Viewers?

  1. Keep an eye on your Pin Inspector in Tailwind. See which Pins are working for you – and which aren’t. Don’t bother deleting Pins that didn’t get engagement – Pinterest looks for fairly quick engagement, so if it didn’t happen, deleting it won’t fix that and you may miss out on traffic when that Pin picks up later. Just continue improving over time, making more Pins that engage, learning from your Pins (and others’ Pins!) that do well. A great place to find those high-performing Pins is in Pinterest analytics (Analytics > Profile). Learn more about how analytics can help you up your Pinterest game here.
  2. If you’re using Tailwind SmartLoop to reshare your best content, make sure to keep an eye on your Loop analytics. If you see that a particular Pin isn’t getting engagement, you may want to remove it from the Loop and replace it with another image for that content. Try changing up the description keywords and hashtags, too.
  3. Stay active on Pinterest. Pin daily, even if you don’t have enough content of your own to Pin something new every day. Use Tailwind Communities to find great content to share. Keep your queue full – and remember that SmartLoop is a great tool for making sure you NEVER have an empty queue!
  4. Create new content. Pinterest loves new content. They love creators who add their new content. Try to create a new page, post, or item listing at least weekly.

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Is Tailwind Causing my Drop in Viewers? Should I be Pinning Manually?

Tailwind is an official Pinterest partner and we work closely with them to ensure that our products, features, and recommendations will keep your account growing in a healthy way for the long term.

Some people claim that Pinning manually grew their viewers and that may be so, but it likely has more to do with the way they choose Pins and craft careful descriptions when they Pin manually – all things you can also do when using Tailwind!

We asked Pinterest’s Head of Product Marketing if it was important to Pin manually some or all of the time and her answer was an unqualified, “NO.” You can see the short clip here.

In Conclusion: Why Did My Pinterest Monthly Viewers Decrease?

While no one likes to see their numbers decrease, there are lots of reasons why this one might. Seasonality, Pinner habits, waning popularity of a Pin of someone else’s content… It may not be anything you’ve done wrong! But, there are things you can do to increase views and (more importantly) Pinterest traffic, including:

  • Watch your Pinterest referral traffic for a more meaningful indication of success.
  • Learn from high-performing Pins and make more Pins like that!
  • Stay active on Pinterest by using Tailwind,  SmartLoop and Tailwind Communities.
  • Create content on a regular basis, weekly if possible.

That’s it! Have you seen ups and downs in your Pinterest reach? Will you try any of these methods to get back on an upswing? Let us know in the comments!

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14 Comments

  1. Avatar
    Suzette

    Actually I have noticed as my monthly viewers increase so do my shares. As my shares increase so do my clicks.

    • Alisa Meredith
      Alisa MeredithModerator

      Good! You must be getting your content in front of just the right people. Thanks for stopping by.

  2. Avatar
    Kennedy

    I really wouldn’t use a Facebook live event from mid-2018 to support any argument for anything especially considering that everything she said in that video is a joke. In that video, she talks about pinning your best pins at a certain time of the day – that lasted what? 2 months before we were told it was no longer a “thing”. She also talks about how long pins are being deprioritized in the feeds which another Pinterest team who did a Facebook live event shortly after said that wasn’t even remotely true. Still seeing long pins in my feed 8 months later ..so? So many things in that video are wrong or outdated.

    I don’t think using Tailwind decreases my reach. I have no problem at ALL using tailwind. But I do think using a very outdated video with SO much incorrect information as support for your argument makes Tailwind look as bad as the Pinterest conspiracy theorists who think every single little correlation is causation.

    • Alisa Meredith
      Alisa MeredithModerator

      Just like every other platform, things on Pinterest do change, but the fundamentals remain the same, and it is always nice to get information right from the source. We made sure to note in the blog post and on YouTube where the “first 5” was deprecated.

      As for long Pins, the official recommendation is 2:3 still (as it always has been), but it’s always worth testing different ratios for your own content. There is a lot of very useful information in that video that still stands and we hope to do a follow up very soon.

  3. Avatar

    Hi Alisa, I was facing the same issue with my Pinterest account, after reading your article I got a clear idea why viewers decrease. I will be implementing your suggestion, Thanks for sharing such a wonderful piece of article.

    • Alisa Meredith
      Alisa MeredithModerator

      I’m so glad it was useful to you, Garrate!

  4. Avatar

    The analytics on Pinterest are a waste of time. When I compare it to what traffic actually came from Pinterest (in GA) it never even comes close to matching. None of it matches–page views, most popular content, etc.

    • Alisa Meredith
      Alisa MeredithModerator

      It’s definitely a good idea to look at both and figure out what is more meaningful to you. Thanks for stopping by, Lisa!

  5. Avatar

    I have a question about SmartLoop!! My “marketing” loop is getting really big (like it is going to take 5 years to cycle through all the content big)… so I know I have to break it up. How do you recommend doing that? Should I put the “popular” ones in a new loop? Do the oldest ones I added in a new loop so they get a chance to be seen? What is best?!?!…:) THANKS!!

    • Alisa Meredith
      Alisa MeredithModerator

      What about adding more timeslots to your Loop? Would that do it?

  6. […] Why Did My Pinterest Monthly Viewers Decrease? If you’re a Pinterest user, you may have noticed that your monthly viewer numbers can ebb and flow like the tides. But just like page views mean very little if you’re not getting conversions, your monthly Pinterest viewers mean very little in comparison to the traffic that your site is getting. In this article, Tailwind shares several tips you can use to not only increase your Pinterest monthly viewers, but your engagement as well! […]

  7. Avatar

    Thanks to tailwindapp, I am getting more than 50% traffic on my blog from Pinterest.

    • Alisa Meredith
      Alisa MeredithModerator

      That’s great to hear! It certainly does help with consistency! Thanks for stopping by.


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