Why Size Doesn’t Matter on Pinterest
In the wedding industry, marketing is never a one-and-done situation. It is a cycle that starts fresh every year. We are constantly working to get new leads, attract new clients, and fill our calendars and weekend of with new weddings and events. When the wedding season ends, we start the process all over again with the start of the next engagement season. Whether your a wedding planner, designer, photographer, florist, DJ or any other wedding service provider in between, this can feel overwhelming and exhausting.
But, the good news is marketing a wedding business doesn’t have to be hard. The even better news is that as wedding pros, we have lots of ways to promote our business and today, I’m sharing a little known secret to getting more inquiries from engaged couples planning a wedding, and more engagement from one of the best and most powerful sources for leads in the wedding industry, Pinterest.
The TLDR here is that when wedding pros focus on quality over quantiy they are much more effecitve in turning Pinterest into a lead generating machine. Yes, that’s right: the size of your Pinterest account doesn’t matter. What matters is how good your content is.
Unlike other industries, we do not get a lot of repeat customers. An engaged couple hires us once for their wedding, and then they move on with their lives happily ever after. Unless you are in the vow renewal business, we are always chasing new business. Lead generation never stops for wedding businesses. Ever.
Photo credit: Willett Photography
That is why wedding businesses from videographers to officiants to venues to stationery designers and more have to be everywhere engaged couples are. We need to show up in networking groups, best-of wedding vendor lists, wedding vendor directories, wedding and event industry associations, social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, search engines like Google, and more. Every day it can feel like there’s a new group or a new place to be and to market our business.
Pinterest is one of those important places where engaged couples hang out. It is a platform where engaged couples find ideas, gather inspiration, do research, and plan their weddings. And that means it is a place where wedding professionals can (and should!) show up and get in front of the couples who are actively planning and looking to hire vendors for make their dream wedding a reality.
But when it comes to building a Pinterest presence, there is a big myth out there that needs to be busted wide open.
Does Size matter?
There is a widespread belief in the wedding industry that the size of your Pinterest account matters. Many wedding pros think that unless they have a huge following, hundreds of boards, and thousands of pins, Pinterest will not work for them. This belief leads businesses to waste time chasing account growth tactics instead of focusing on strategies that actually move the needle. Or worse, it causes them to not even try for fear that they missed out or that real success on Pinterest will never happen for them because they started too late.
The truth is that size does not matter on Pinterest.
It does not matter how many followers your business has on Pinterest. When users open the Pinterest app, they are not shown pins from the people they follow. They are shown pins based on what they have searched for in the past and what Pinterest thinks might help them right now. Followers are almost irrelevant on Pinterest compared to how important good search-optimized content is.
It also does not matter how many pins you have. (Pins refer to the photos, videos, graphics or content that users post on Pinterest that serve as the main vehicle to share ideas, inspiration and advice on the platform.) You could have a hundred thousand pins on your account, but if none of them are optimized for search or aligned with what your ideal client is actually looking for, it is not helping your business. On the flip side, you could have just 10 pins that are truly optimized with the right keywords, helpful ideas, and valuable content, and those 10 pins could outperform a giant account with thousands of bad pins.
It does not matter how often you pin either. Some wedding pros think they need to pin hundreds of times a day to keep their account active. Not true. In fact, pinning too much, especially at one time, can hurt your business. Pinterest might flag your account as spam if you flood it with content beyond their recommended guidelines. Consistency matters more than quantity. A small number of high-quality pins posted steadily over time will always beat a flood of random pins. Always, every single time.
It also does not matter how many boards you have. (Boards are Pinterest’s main source of organization. All pins must be put on one board to help with categorization.) Having lots of boards can help you if they are created strategically, but having a ton of random boards without a purpose will not help your account grow. Pinterest is looking for relevance and organization. They want to see that your boards are organized around clear, searchable topics, not just that you have a ton of boards.
How We Got Here
It is not your fault if you assumed Pinterest works like social media. Most of us in the wedding industry were trained by social media first.
On social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, size matters a lot. How many followers you have directly impacts how many people see your posts. If your post does not get good engagement or appeal to a large number of people right away, the algorithm stops showing it. Big accounts have a natural advantage because they already have a built-in audience.
So it makes sense that people come to Pinterest expecting it to work the same way. But it does not.
Pinterest is not social media. It is a search engine.
When a pinner comes to Pinterest, they are not browsing their feed based on the accounts they follow. They are typing into the search bar real questions like “best outdoor wedding venues in Virginia,” or “fall wedding bouquet ideas in Ohio”, or “what to include in a wedding welcome bag for a beach wedding.” (These questions that engaged couples type into the search bar are often refered to as keyword phrases.)
Pinterest shows them pins based on how well the pins (or content Pinterest) matches their search, not how big the account is that originally posted the content.
What Actually Matters
If size does not matter for wedding businesses to be successful on Pinterest, what does?
It is all about the quality of your content.
Pinterest cares about one thing: whether your content, or your pins, is helpful or inspirational to the user. That is it.
You can have the biggest account on Pinterest, but if your pins are low quality, off-topic, misleading, or worse viewed as click bait, Pinterest will not prioritize them and users won’t click on it. Meaning, Pinterest won’t show your pins or your content in the search results of your potential customers if it thinks that your content is not good. Further, pinners won’t click on your pins to view or see more if they think your pin won’t answer their question or help them.
Poor content is a double whammy. Pinterest doesn’t like it and users don’t like it either.
On the other hand, you can have a very small account and still show up in search results every day if your content is good, expert or viewed as helpful, unique or otherwise inspirational. Quite the opposite of poor content, Pinterest rewards high quality content by showing it in search results, and pinners do too with their clicks and views.
Helpful and inspirational means delivering exactly what the pinner expects to find when they click your pin. If you create a pin that says “10 Dreamy Places to Get Married in Washington DC,” and someone clicks on it, you better deliver a list of 10 dreamy wedding venues in Washington, DC. If your pin promises epic mountain wedding inspiration in Colorado, the link should take them to exactly that, not a homepage, a sales pitch, or worse, a beach birthday party in Florida.
Social vs. Search
Pinners are not coming to Pinterest for entertainment. That is what Instagram, TikTok and other social media platforms are for. They are coming to Pinterest to solve problems, get answers, be inspired, find ideas, and research their options. They are planning their weddings, which is overwhelming and stressful, and they are looking for real help and unique inspiration they can’t find anywhere else - plus the wedding vendors to help make it happen for them!
Another important thing to know is that 97 percent of searches on Pinterest are unbranded. Pinners are not searching for your business name or anyone else's. They are searching for solutions. They do not care if the pin or the inspiration comes from a small business, a big corporation, a solo florist, a multi-op DJ company, a national wedding dress brand or a local bridal boutique around the corner from where they’re getting married. They just want the answer to their question.
This is why size does not matter.
They do not care how many followers you have. They do not care how many boards you have. They do not care how often you pin.
They only care that when they click on your pin, they get what they were looking for. They care that your pin and it’s content is inspiration, creative and ultimately answers their original search request.
How to Attract Leads
If you want to get leads from Pinterest, stop focusing on vanity metrics like followers and pin counts, and start focusing on value.
Your job is to create content that helps engaged couples plan their weddings. Think about the questions your ideal client is typing into the search bar. Think about what would make their lives easier. Think about what would inspire them to reach out and learn more about your services.
Create blog posts, galleries, resource lists, and helpful guides that answer real wedding planning questions for real couples in the real world in your area, niche or geographical location. Design pins that clearly communicate what the user will find when they click from your pin over to your website to see more. Make sure your pin’s link leads directly to what was promised, without bait and switch tactics.
When you consistently show up with valuable, keyword-optimized content that matches what couples are searching for, Pinterest will start to trust you. It will show your pins to more people. And those people will start seeing you as an expert who understands exactly what they need.
Quality pins and the content connected to those pins are a win- win on Pinterest. They build up know, like and trust with Pinterest and your ideal clients.
That is how you turn Pinterest into a lead machine for your wedding or event business.
Focus on Quality, Not Quantity
Pinterest is not about being the biggest. It is about being the most helpful, the most inspiring, and/or the more creative, which thankfully the wedding industry has in spades.
If you want to grow your wedding business and get more inquires using Pinterest, focus on the quality of your content, not the size of your account. Forget follower counts, pinning quotas, or building huge numbers of boards. Focus instead on becoming the best possible answer to the questions engaged couples are asking.
That is how you use Pinterest the smart way. That is how you stay ahead without spinning your wheels waisting time. And that is how you build a marketing system that brings you leads while you sleep, or in the case of wedding pro’s during your busy season.
If you want even more real-talk marketing advice for wedding pros, come hang out with me and get lots more wedding marketing advice and tips for using Pinterest as a wedding pro. Around here, I keep it practical, doable, and maybe even a little fun.
Want to Dive Deeper?
If you are serious about using Pinterest to grow your wedding and event business, not just post pretty pictures and hope for the best, check out The Pin Pipeline. This is the only on-demand online course for wedding and event pros to learn how to use Pinterest for their business.
The Pin Pipeline is my step-by-step program designed specifically for wedding professionals who want a steady stream of leads from Pinterest without spending hours glued to their phones or chasing trends.
Learn more about it here: The Pin Pipeline.