Have you heard the phrase ” The First Five”? If you are not a pinner, blogger, or Pinterest manager, then you may not have. No, it’s not a reference to the US Olympic Gymnast Team, it is part of Pinterest Best Practices that were released recently.

You can read about those HERE.

The First Five

Basically, Pinterest says the first five pins of the day are prioritized to the new follower feed. So if you are pinning 20 pins per day,  your followers will see your first five pins in the follower feed. It does not mean they will ONLY see those 5 pins, your others will show up once they have gone through the feed.

Pinterest starts the day at UTC time if you don’t know what that is google it. I wouldn’t stress too much about what time that is because analytics and Tailwind’s smart scheduler will let you know the times that your pins are the most engaged. If you use Tailwind to schedule I suggest you put your first five pins of the day as fresh content, with keywording and good images, and pin those to relevant boards.

If you have a pin about Making Slime, then pin it to your Slime board, etc. Pinterest likes fresh content and that content will be seen in all the feeds, the following feed, the Smart Feed, and in the hashtag feed. You want to use good descriptions with 1 to 2 keyword rich sentences and 2 to 4 hashtags, branded hashtags are great!!

When is the Best Time to Pin

Consistency in pinning is what you want for your Pinterest account. You want to pin the same amount of pins daily, not just 50 one day and then nothing for the next 5 days. Be consistent!!

Spread out those times too, use the Smart Schedule in Tailwind, it gives suggestions as to when the best times are, ideally people are on Pinterest in the evenings during the week and on weekends in the U.S.

How do I know my Pins will be seen

They will all be seen, eventually. Pinterest is a slow as you go platform and a Pin may not take off for months. You really want to focus on the 3 important things in the algorithm, Keywords, Eye-Catching Images, and Descriptions. If these 3 things are at the optimum level then they will be distributed.

A few other things to note, make sure your pins have a link to more info about the content stated in the description. Pinners will click on a pin to read more about it. So, that blog post about a brownie recipe should have a link to the recipe on your site.

If someone is on your site and reading your blog you want them to be able to Pin your content. Make sure you have a Pinnable image, hidden or in the post. and a good pin description attached. You can read how to do that on this blog post about Optimizing Images.  You also need to have the Save button on your website so they can pin directly. Check out how to do that HERE.

Wrapping Up

I encourage you not to stress about the “First Five” just pin your best content, to the most relevant board first, then keep pinning. If you want to try to schedule at the UTC time and test things out, go ahead and see if you can tell a difference. In a few months, we will see how this all pans out. Follow the best practices Pinterest has put in place and you will see growth. Get those clicks and saves, share your content with your readers and gain new followers.

I will see you on Pinterest, HAPPY PINNING!!

UPDATE: Basically Pinterest has removed the First Five from their best practices. There has been a lot of confused pinners in regards to it. So, with that being said, remember to pin optimized images with keywords, conversational pin descriptions(about 2 sentences), and use hashtags. Images with Text overlay are ideal and keep them to a 2:3 ratio, 600x900px, or 735x1102px. Anything over 1260px long will be cut off and may not be shown in the feed. Thanks again for following. Get Your Pin ON!!

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