9 Things You Need To Know About Fresh Pins on Pinterest
Pinterest came out with several big changes to its best practices over the last couple of years.
Historically, their move towards what we now know as “fresh” Pins started when they essentially put Board Booster out of business.
Board Booster worked by looping your Pins over and over again across different boards and group boards. It was a set-and-forget system that many people found worked well for them to build their Pinterest profiles.
Problem was, this created a user experience that wasn’t in line with Pinterest’s goals. Pinterest wants relevant, useful, new content for their users to see in their feeds - not the same old viral pins seen over and over.
So while Pinterest officially came out with the fresh Pins guidelines in early 2020, this shift in best practices had been brewing for quite some time.
TL;DR - fresh Pins means a new graphic or video that hasn’t been seen before. That means more Canva work for you to have lots of templates. Make it easier on yourself with a subscription to Ivory Mix for new monthly stock photos (you can get some photos for free too!).
(This website is reader supported - which means when you purchase we may receive affiliate commissions. We never recommend anything we don’t love and it helps with the coffee fund.)
Let’s Dive into Fresh Pins on Pinterest
1) Pinterest wants “fresh” Pins.
So what, exactly, is a “fresh” Pin?
A fresh Pin, according to Pinterest, is an image or video that hasn’t been seen before.
Ok...but what does that mean, exactly?
It means you can create as many Pins as you want for a single URL, as long as the image/video is different.
“It’s not about creating new content - it’s about creating new Pins for the content you have.”
2) Do not create duplicate Pins.
A duplicate Pin is essentially the opposite of a fresh Pin - they are a Pin with the same image and URL combination that has already been pinned before (by you or someone else).
This is basically how Board Booster functioned and is now something you have to be careful about. Read more from Tailwind.
3) Good stock photos are key.
No one wants to use the same old stock photos! Having a good selection of photos to choose from that aligns with your brand look and feel is essential.
Plus, good stock photography is going to make creating fresh Pins so much easier for you.
Pro Tip: Lifestyle photos do really well, particularly for products, on Pinterest.
Here are my favorite places to get stock photos for designing Pins:
IvoryMix (free + paid)
Beach Babe (paid)
Canva (free and paid)
Pexels (free)
Tailwind Create (free + paid)
4) What are some examples of content you can use for fresh Pins?
Remember, it’s not about a new blog or new product (but it can be) - it’s really about having a fresh Pin image.
You could create a fresh Pin for:
A new Pin for a new post or product
A new Pin for an old post or product
A new Pin for any landing pages (like a lead magnet or sales page)
A new Pin based on an old Pin that’s doing well (just change a few elements like the font or colors)
A new Pin using different images of the same product
5) How different do your Pin images have to look?
It’s not simply going to be enough to bump over an image a few pixels and think you’re going to fool the algorithm.
According to Tailwind:
“The following changes would NOT be considered creation of a Fresh Pin:
Pinning the same image and changing the Pin title, Pin description or alt text.
Making small, imperceptible changes to an image that has already been Pinned before (for example, shifting your background image a few pixels or moving your logo slightly to try to “fool” Pinterest into thinking it’s a Fresh Pin.)”
6) You can still repin your Pins - here’s how:
Let’s start with what you don’t want to do when repinning your own pins.
❌ Do not create a Pin on Pinterest and then immediately repin it to another board. Pinterest makes it really hard to do this because they don’t want you to!
❌ Do not schedule a repin to a different board closer than 2 days apart (Tailwind defaults to 7 days).
Ok, simple enough right? Let’s move on to how to repin properly.
✅ You can create your original Pin on Pinterest, then click the Tailwind button to send it to your schedule queue in Tailwind. Remember: no sooner than 2 days apart, if not more.
Pro Tip: Pinterest best practices say that you should create a Pin to your closest subject board FIRST, then you can repin it to other relevant boards.
✅ You can repin the same Pin to UP TO 10 relevant subject boards. I recommend at least 4-5 boards, and I usually land at 5-6 boards.
Can you do this all manually on Pinterest? Technically yes, due to their new scheduling feature.
However, doing this all manually is complicated (can you say spreadsheet hell?) and time-intensive.
I don’t know about you, but those are 2 words that guarantee I won’t stick with it.
Tailwind is a time vs. money exchange - and in my opinion, an absolute must if you make Pinterest a large part of your content marketing strategy.
Tailwind also has a fantastic new feature called SmartGuide that will make sure you are pinning according to Pinterest’s best practices for fresh Pins.
I mean...no brainer right? Try Tailwind for free (*if you use my affiliate link, you’ll get a month for free and I’ll get a few bucks for more coffee at no cost to you☕).
Ok, let’s move on...
7) You can repin to relevant boards - but what does that mean and why?
When you have a board on Pinterest, that board will have a description. The board title and board description are 2 of the most important places to use your keywords on your Pinterest profile.
Related: Need a refresher on finding your keywords on Pinterest? Read this blog.
The “closest subject board” (where you want to create the original version of a Pin) is the one that most closely matches the content/url of your Pin.
For example, a Pin for this blog is going to be created in my Pinterest Marketing for Entrepreneurs board, not my CaraChace.com board or Social Media Strategy board.
The reason for this is really key - when someone (or you) repins this original Pin, the metadata of that board title and description is going to travel with it across Pinterest, making sure the most relevant keywords are attached to it.
When we repin our own Pins to other “relevant” boards (remember: minimum of 4-5; max of 10), we should repin to boards whose keyword descriptions are...relevant.
For example, I would repin a Pin from this blog that’s already pinned to my Pinterest Marketing for Entrepreneurs board to:
CaraChace.com (my brand board)
Tailwind Pinterest + Instagram Marketing
Social Media Strategy + Marketing
Blogging for Entrepreneurs
I would NOT repin the same Pin to:
Email Marketing + Newsletters
Planners + Printables + Bullet Journals
Self Care for Entrepreneurs
Does that make sense?
8) How to create enough fresh Pins for your content.
Now that we have limits on repinning our own content and to how many boards, that means we have to increase how many original Pins we’re creating.
I want to assure you though - it’s not really that difficult or intimidating.
There are shortcuts to making it easier, plus some basic understanding of batching your content to show you how much you’ll get out of each Pin.
Since my profile is optimized for my audience and industry, I can typically re-pin each of my pins to at least 4+ boards on my profile, and I do this through Tailwind.
Tailwind lets me set up a “smart schedule” that pins my queue of content according to when my Pinterest audience is online. I have my schedule set to about 10 pins per day, which is a combination of my own pins and valuable pins from other online entrepreneurs I think will benefit my audience.
So let’s do some math to see how Pinterest and Tailwind maximize your content.
I have one blog. I create 4 Pins for that blog. I can pin each of those pins to at least 4 boards. That means:
For each blog I’m easily creating 16 pieces of content for Pinterest.
Want to create 6 Pins to make sure you have enough fresh Pin content? That means (if you are pinning to 4 boards each), that you have 24 Pins for Pinterest.
Not too shabby of a return on your time and effort.
Each month I choose 4 or 5 pieces of content that I’m going to create Pins for to fill up my Tailwind queue. These are a combination of new content, high-performing content, and landing pages.
If every month I’m creating 6 Pins for 5 pieces of content (or products if you’re in ecommerce) - pinned to 4 boards, that’s:
6 x 4 = 24 Pins per content/product
24 x 5 = 120 Pins for Tailwind
I actually repin most of my content to 7-8 boards, which makes the numbers even better. If we’re doing 7 boards, that’s 210 Pins for your Tailwind queue.
About once per month I go in and fill up my Tailwind queue with my own pins, pins from Tailwind Tribes, and pins from my list of trusted peers.
9) What about repinning others’ Pins?
So, if we’re supposed to be pinning fresh Pins, doesn’t that make repinning of others’ Pins NOT a fresh Pin?
While that seems to make sense, Pinterest has said the key is they understand how a typical Pinterest user interacts with its platform.
And that means you’re on Pinterest collecting and saving ideas and inspiration from others.
While Pinterest would not be nailed down with black and white guidance on this question, they essentially said they would not penalize profiles for using Pinterest how the average user does (watch more here).
Pro Tip: When I’m choosing content from Tailwind Tribes, I will only use a single Pin a max of 2x in my queue - and it has to really be relevant to 2 boards to do so. Most content I repin only once.
Conclusion:
👉 Pinterest wants to make sure its platform is visually appealing and serving the best content to its users.
👉 Make creating fresh Pins part of your content marketing strategy to stay in line with Pinterest’s best practices.
👉 Save tons of time by batching your Pinterest content in Tailwind and using their SmartGuide feature to make sure your queue follows Pinterest’s guidelines.
👉 Easily create fresh Pins using the resources for stock photography, Canva, and Tailwind Create listed above.
