You post the thing you’re proud of. The carousel you spent an hour on, the clip pulled from your best episode. A handful of likes, maybe a comment, and by Wednesday it’s buried under everyone else’s Tuesday.
That’s not a you problem. It’s a platform problem. Most of what you post to Instagram or TikTok is built to disappear.
Pinterest works differently, and if you want to know how to use Pinterest to grow your business without adding another daily posting habit to your plate, this is where to start.
Why Should You Use Pinterest for Your Business?
Pinterest is a visual search platform with over 400 million monthly users who show up looking to plan, learn, or solve something, not to scroll past you.
That’s the whole difference. Instagram and TikTok were built for talking to friends, and they’re only now bolting search onto that. Pinterest has been matching people with solutions since day one. Someone typing “how to grow your community” into Pinterest isn’t killing time. They’re actively looking for you.
Pinterest marketing expert Meagan Williamson, founder of Pin Potential and a decade-plus into doing this for other businesses, puts it simply: solve what they search. You’re already the expert in your niche. The work isn’t creating new authority, it’s making it findable.
How Do You Get Started With Pinterest Marketing?
Start with a business account, a claimed website, and your ten best-performing pieces of content. Nothing here requires making anything new.
Set up your account and claim your website
A business account gives you access to analytics. Claiming your website (embedding a short code if you have your own domain) lets Pinterest actually attribute traffic, email subscribers, and sales back to what you post, instead of leaving you guessing.
Find your top ten pieces of content
Look at your best-performing podcast episodes, videos, or lead magnets from the last year, on any platform. Pinterest is where you repurpose with purpose. You’re not creating, you’re redistributing what already worked.
Do quick keyword research
Search Pinterest the way your audience would: “community building,” “how to grow your online audience,” “how to sell digital products.” Pull the phrases people are actually typing and use them, naturally, in what you share. It doesn’t have to be polished. Taking imperfect action beats waiting for a perfect funnel.
What Should You Actually Measure on Pinterest?
The metric that matters isn’t likes or comments, it’s saves, because a save means someone plans to come back to what you made.
That’s a mindset shift for anyone used to Instagram’s numbers. A save is your next email subscriber or your next customer, bookmarking your content the way they’d bookmark a recipe they intend to cook later. Content built to get comments doesn’t automatically get saved. Content built to genuinely help someone does.
Set your expectations honestly: it takes three to six months of consistent, low-effort investment before you see real return. Not money spent, time spent. Meagan compares it to a garden. She’s in Toronto, and by her own account, nothing gets planted until May or June, and the garden doesn’t peak until August or September. Pinterest works the same way. What you post today pays off in six to twelve months, which is exactly why it’s the marketing that keeps working while you’re not actively working it.
Why Do Pinterest Pins Fail to Convert?
Pins that get clicks but don’t convert usually send traffic to a landing page built for people who already know you, not for someone who’s never heard of you before.
This is the mistake even experienced business owners make. A sales coach with strong messaging and real testimonials shared that same content to Pinterest and it fell flat, because someone discovering her for the first time had no idea who was being quoted or why it mattered. A testimonial that says “Rachel really supported me” means nothing to a stranger. It needs context: who you are, what you do, and why this person should trust the page they just landed on.
The fix is giving first-time visitors what an Instagram follower already has: a sense of who you are before you ask for their email. Add a short bio and photo to the landing pages your Pinterest traffic hits. It’s a five-minute edit that changes whether a stranger decides you’re worth trusting with their inbox.
How Do You Scale Pinterest Once It’s Working?
Once Pinterest is sending real traffic, scale by doubling down on what’s already resonating, posting consistently, and using Pinterest’s own trend data.
Start with a content audit. Look at what’s already performing and ask whether there’s more to say on that same topic, from another angle or in another format. Pinterest also wants regular new content: their own best practices call for posting at least once a week, a detail buried deep enough in their documentation that most people never find it. Their free Trends tool shows you what’s picking up in your niche or industry before it peaks, so you can ride a seasonal spike instead of guessing at one.
Once traffic is consistent, look at your funnel. The short opt-in that converts your warm Instagram audience won’t convert a stranger from Pinterest. Give them more: who you are, what to expect, and how often you show up, so the ask to hand over their email feels earned instead of sudden.
Try This Prompt
Once you’ve picked your top ten pieces of content, this sorts them into something you can actually post.
“I run a [type of community or business] for [who it serves]. Here are my ten best-performing pieces of content from the last year: [list them]. Based on the approach in this post, suggest a specific search keyword phrase for each one, then draft a Pinterest pin title and a two-sentence pin description built around that keyword. Give me the output as a table with columns for content title, keyword, pin title, and pin description.”
It sorts and drafts the starting point. You still decide what’s worth posting.
The Marketing That Works While You’re Not Working
Pinterest isn’t instant. If you need to see results this week, this isn’t your platform, and that’s fine. But if you’re tired of spending an hour on a post that thirty people see once, it’s worth the trade.
The businesses using it well aren’t the ones online every hour of the day. They’re the ones who did the work once, months ago, and are still getting found for it today. You don’t have to choose between showing up everywhere and showing up nowhere. You can stop renting your audience on platforms that bury your best work in a day, and start building an email list from traffic that keeps arriving long after you hit publish.
Plant it in May. Let it bloom in September. That’s the whole strategy.
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More Like This
Listen: Stop Renting Your Audience. Why platforms you don’t own are a bad long-term bet, and how a search platform like Pinterest changes that math.
Listen: 10 Reasons Why Building an Email List Is Crucial for Community Building. What to actually do with the traffic once Pinterest starts sending it your way.
Watch: Emails That Sell (Without Feeling Sleazy). The nurture sequence a cold Pinterest visitor needs once they’ve handed over their email.
Keep Going
coCreator Society is where community builders and membership founders work through this together, with the templates, the walkthroughs, and people who are one step ahead of you. Join coCreator Society
If you would rather not do this part alone, Rachel and the team build, migrate, and run communities for founders who need it done properly the first time. Talk to the team
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