With over 450 million active users, Pinterest is a traffic beast. It also has one of the most active shopping communities, with 80% of users claiming they’ve bought something off the Platform.
Whether it be to build a following, get leads, or drive sales, Pinterest is an absolute goldmine for individuals, brands, and businesses.
And just like every other social media, to make the most out of Pinterest, you need to ensure your efforts are optimized.
The time you post on Pinterest is a crucial factor to success.
This article will walk you through everything you need to know about the best time to post on Pinterest for growth.
Pinterest Smart feed – Does Pinning Time Matter Anymore?
Pinterest featured a chronological feed in its early years.
It was a basic display format where a user’s feed would be organized with the latest pins posted by brands or influencers that they followed.
When you pin was of great importance, because pinning at an inconvenient time would reduce the possibility of your content being viewed by users on the platform, let alone your followers.
In the fall of 2014, Pinterest introduced a new format called Smart feed. It was designed to align the user’s feed with their search intent.
The Smart feed generator ranks a pin based on three factors –
- Mixing different pins together.
- Pin quality.
- Putting them in a following, related, and interest pool.
While smart feed uses different criteria to select the best set of pins, the root factor that decides the final result remains the same: initial engagement.
The most important aspect for growth is that your target audience sees your pin when they are more likely to use, interact, and engage with the platform.
Initial clicks, saves, and repins are crucial attributes of content quality and virality within Pinterest.
Schedule your pinning frequency to align with peak engagement hours, and if Pinterest deems your content to be high quality, it signals the smart feed algorithm to rank your content higher in the search results.
So Yes, pinning time does matter.
But when exactly is the right time to post on Pinterest?
Which is the best day? Which are the best hours?
Let’s find out.
Best Time To Post on Pinterest – Generic Overview
What is the Best time to post on Pinterest?
Leading SaaS Businesses and Marketing agencies have published data-driven reports on this topic, each with different results.
For example, Coschedule compiled a report with data from multiple digital marketing companies using Pinterest.
Here’s a summary of the report –
- Peak times – (8 pm- 11 pm), (1 am – 3 am).
- Worst times – (12 am – 1 am), (5 am – 6 am)
- Best days – Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays.
- Worst days – Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.
- Best time zones (US) – Central and Eastern Time zones.
On the flip side, another study from Sprout Social found –
- Best day: Saturday.
- Best time: 2-4 pm (EST) and 10 pm-1 am (EST).
Here’s a summary of the results from other leading brands, businesses, and publications –
Notice the difference?
Based mainly on a broad comparison, these results can vary.
But still, there are a few general rules to help you get started.
Best Time to Post on Pinterest – Monday
Optimal Pinning hours – Monday (ranked best to worst)
Best Time to Post on Pinterest – Tuesday
Optimal Pinning hours – Tuesday (ranked best to worst)
Best Time to Post on Pinterest – Wednesday
Optimal Pinning hours – Wednesday (ranked best to worst)
Best Time to Post on Pinterest – Thursday
Optimal Pinning hours – Thursday (ranked best to worst)
Best Time to Post on Pinterest – Friday
Optimal Pinning hours – Friday (ranked best to worst)
Best Time to Post on Pinterest – Saturday
Optimal Pinning hours – Saturday (ranked best to worst)
Best Time to Post on Pinterest – Sunday
Optimal Pinning hours – Sunday (ranked best to worst)
Best Time to post on Pinterest – User Specific
While the above results can help you start growing on Pinterest, these results aren’t universal.
Solution? Manual analysis of data, constant experimentation, and outsourcing.
Here are three ways to do this –
1 – Google Analytics
Google Analytics (GA) is a free tool that provides basic statistics and web analytics services for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
While Bloggers and marketing professionals use this tool to identify top traffic sources, individuals or businesses trying to grow on Pinterest can leverage GA to find the right time to schedule your pins.
Here’s how –
Recent Traffic Patterns
On GA, if you select Acquisition > Channels > Social > Pinterest, you can see a detailed report on recent traffic patterns.
Set the timeline for the last 30 days to see which days your site had the highest traffic from Pinterest.
Top performing Posts
You can also use Google Analytics to see which of your posts performed the best in the past.
Go to acquisition > Social > Network referral > Pinterest.
Select a Blog post and set the time frame to 60 days.
Is there a pattern of days with peak traffic?
By tracking these peak performance days, you can schedule fresh pins on related blog posts for those top performing days moving forward.
2 – Pinterest Analytics
Just like GA, Pinterest analytics (PA) provides users with various metrics to analyze their performance on the platform, including impressions, engagement, top pins, boards, and many more.
Or, you can find detailed information like audience location and use that information to schedule your pins for your audience’s time zone.
Pro-tip – Combine the audience insights from PA with the top referring pins in Google Analytics.
3 – Third Party Tools – Tailwind
While self-analysis gives definite results, the easiest way to find the best time to pin is to let an expert work it out for you.
And the best choice here? Tailwind.
Tailwind is a scheduling tool for social media, designed specifically for Pinterest.
Unlike other scheduling tools that publish pins like blindly throwing darts at a wall, Tailwind has a feature named Smart Schedule that works out the best time for pinning based on your account activity.
Even if you’re a beginner, it still can calculate accurate time slots for pinning based on popular pinners within your Niche.
All you have to do is choose the frequency you want the pins to be posted.
For instance, if you select 3 times a day per week, it might post more on a Tuesday, if that’s the sweet spot for your Niche, rather than on a Sunday when no one’s likely to interact with your content.
You can also periodically refresh your Smart Schedule to have your time slots stay updated with changing engagement hours.
To enable Smart Schedule, go to –
- Tailwind dashboard < Your Schedule < General Queue.
- Click “recreate schedule” and select the preferred pinning frequency.
With Smart Schedule, you’ll have access to the right number of timeslots. It’ll even warn you if you choose above the ideal pinning limit.
Select ‘shift previously scheduled pins to newly-created timeslots’ and then hit the green button at the bottom.
Congrats, you’ve automated your way to consistent engagement on Pinterest.
Takeaway
The right time for posting on Pinterest can significantly influence your visibility within the platform.
Generic results can help you start off, and user-specific results can keep you going for a while. Performing regular analysis and experimentation is a crucial attribute for long-term engagement.
But ultimately, what determines your growth on Pinterest is the consistent output of quality reflected through your content.
Analyze your data. Follow what works. Pin at the right time.
But always remember – “Quality over Quantity.”
