Contrary to popular opinion, NOW is the time to start preparing and pushing out your back-to-school Pinterest content! Here are some tips for preparing your organic Pinterest strategy so you are ready to showcase your best products and tips during the back-to-school season.
I’ve been creating lots of “end of the year” Pinterest Pins for my Teacherpreneur, or TpT Seller, Pinterest management clients.
This got my wheels turning, so don’t hate me for saying this. If you’re a teacher, it’s actually NOT too early to be thinking about your back-to-school Pinterest content!
With the nature of Pinterest, since it’s a search engine, you really need to be pushing out seasonal content anywhere from ~45-60 days in advance.
This tip applies for all businesses and niches who are marketing on Pinterest – not just teacher business owners! But for the purpose of this post today, we’re focusing on TpT sellers and their organic Pinterest strategy.
You have the summer off and it’s important to take some time for yourself. However, I also want you to capitalize on the back-to-school boom and demand for teacher resources, ideas, inspiration, and content.
3 Ways Teachers Can Plan Their Organic Pinterest Strategy for Back to School
Just as a quick refresher, your organic Pinterest strategy is the creation and sharing of your content on the platform without paid ad spend.
This means you’re not paying to have your content seen. You’re relying on the platform and your keywords to help you be discovered by your target audience.
That is why planning in advance will give you the most success in your organic Pinterest strategy. You need to know what’s coming up in your marketing calendar!
This brings me to my first point:
Tip #1: Have Your Most Important Content Ready And Strategically Repurpose Old Content
I’ve seen this happen before. Let’s say you have an amazing product or bundle that you want to share through a fabulous blog post, but you wait until the beginning of August to hit publish.
I hate to break it to you, but it will most likely only gain minimal traction. Pinterest takes time to index content. So when you publish content when it’s in the midst of the peak season, your Pins just don’t have enough time to get distributed widely before the season has already passed.
This means you should really be publishing your most important blog posts before the back-to-school season. That way you can start getting those seasonal Pins for that specific piece of content circulated.
Let’s say you do wait to publish the blog post and those Pins do not get a lot of action.
Was that blog post a waste? No!
The next season, you can repin the original Pins you had created for that piece of content and you can also create fresh Pins for it as well!
Then, be sure to start scheduling and pushing out that seasonal content 45-60 days in advance before that season comes back around the next year.
So for this current season, if you want to make sure Pinterest has time to index your Pins the first time, you’ll need to start publishing them in advance of the holiday/season.
Don’t forget, you can also create fresh Pins, like I’ve mentioned, for pre-existing products and blog posts.
Creating fresh Pins for older content is a great practice. It’s just not realistic to think that every Pin you’re hitting publish on is going to be linked to a brand new blog post or product!
If you’re pausing here and thinking, “Okay Emilee, I need to focus on this first point WAY more before going on…” I got you. Download my FREE Pinterest Strategy guide today!
Tip #2: Prepare Your Video Content Now
I’ve found with my clients that video content is usually not in abundance.
Let’s be honest, video content takes more time to create and edit. It can easily be put on the back burner, especially if you feel like you’re still checking off the box of “getting Pins and fresh content published daily”.
I find that this can really be a weak spot for many business owners, which is why I want you to start working on your video content now!
It’s as simple as creating video content for products and blog posts.
Here are some ideas for ways that you can market your products/resources and blog posts:
- Make a video that shows hands completing the activity.
- For classroom decor/organization/management you can do a classroom tour with a voiceover.
- Show a video of you decorating an area of your classroom and speed it up so viewers stay engaged.
- Try speaking directly to the camera and explain how you love using a resource in your classroom (speaking directly to the camera is a great way to connect with your audience).
- Do a mixture of demonstrating and speaking directly to the camera.
Don’t forget that you can also repurpose content from TikTok and Instagram! You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Check out this blog post if you want to learn more about how to repurpose your content for Pinterest the right way!
When you’re planning out your video content for Pinterest make sure to think about your Video Pins and Idea Pins.
For Video Pins, I find that shorter videos perform better. Whereas with Idea Pins, I might use multiple pages of a 60-second video depending on the idea I’m conceptualizing.
Tip #3: Balance Your Content
I get it, you have spent a lot of time and energy creating your amazing TpT resources. It’s a no-brainer to share them like crazy, especially during the back-to-school season, right?
Wrong!
Well, sort of. Yes, you can absolutely share your paid products, but it’s all about balance and strategy.
When we’re sharing content that’s not linked to our confirmed domain, for example, the Teacher’s Pay Teachers website, the Pin is actually indexed differently. This means it can impact the distribution of the Pins and can play a role in the fact that Pins linked to TpT historically just don’t perform as well.
Then there are also the other obvious reasons why these Pins might not perform as well; not everyone is ready to buy right away and they’re less likely to click/save Pins that are for products.
This is why I want you to share more content/Pins to your blog posts and make it a softer sale. This is where you can also prompt people to sign up for your email list!
Getting people on your email list is so powerful because you can nurture them more. Then you can also sell to them throughout the year and remind them of sales coming up, etc.
I want you to think about balancing your content for all of your Pin formats. This means you’re not just creating Idea Pins for products, but you’re also creating Idea Pins where you share tips, inspiration, tutorials, etc.
This goes for your Video Pins and your Standard Pins and where you’re linking them.
That’s a Wrap
As a quick recap, now is the time to get everything lined up and prepared for your organic Pinterest strategy for back-to-school.
Here’s a quick rundown of the 3 tips that will help you get ready for a great back-to-school season on Pinterest for your TpT business:
- Have your most important long-form content ready before the peak of the back-to-school season, and strategically repurpose old content
- Prepare your video content now
- Balance your content, and share a mixture of both paid and free ideas, inspiration, guides, lists, tips, etc.
If you want to learn more about marketing on Pinterest, you can download my FREE Pinterest strategy guide and get on the waitlist for my signature course, Pinterest Marketing Magic.
If you’re ready to hire out, you can book a FREE Discovery Call with me if you’re ready to hand your account over to an expert!
