What to Expect in Your First Four Months on Pinterest (and Beyond!)

So, you’ve decided to invest in Pinterest as a marketing tool—great choice! You’re about to see why this platform is a game-changer for book creators, educators, and sellers. But here’s the thing: Pinterest success doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a long-term strategy, not a quick fix.

To help you understand what to expect, I’m breaking down the first four months of building a strong Pinterest presence. Each phase plays a critical role in setting you up for long-term growth, engagement, and visibility.

Let’s get started.

Month 1: Laying the Groundwork for Success

Think of Month 1 as setting up your house before guests arrive. Everything needs to be polished, inviting, and easy to navigate.

• First, we’ll make sure your Pinterest business account is set up properly.

• Your bio will be crafted to clearly communicate who you are and what you offer.

• A professional and on-brand profile image will help establish credibility.

• We’ll create 10 to 15 keyword-rich boards that reflect your niche and are optimized for search.

The most important step in this phase is keyword research. Pinterest functions as a search engine, so understanding what your audience is looking for is key to making your content discoverable. By the end of Month 1, your profile will be fully optimized and ready to attract the right audience.

Month 2: Creating and Organizing Your Content

With a solid foundation in place, it’s time to start filling your boards with quality content. Rather than posting randomly, we’ll take a strategic approach.

This month, we’ll:

• Develop a content calendar to ensure a steady and organized posting schedule.

• Establish a mix of fresh pins, repins from other creators, and trending content.

• Maintain consistency, which is essential for growing an engaged audience.

• Begin tracking analytics to identify which content is resonating most.

By the end of Month 2, you’ll have a structured pinning routine in place, making Pinterest an active and strategic part of your marketing plan.

Month 3: Fine-Tuning, Optimization, and Promoted Pins

At this stage, your content is flowing regularly, and it’s time to refine your strategy to maximize engagement.

• We’ll experiment with different pin designs, fonts, and formats to see what attracts the most clicks.

• Analytics will be closely monitored to understand which pins and topics perform best.

• Your posting schedule will be adjusted based on data insights to reach your audience at the most effective times.

• Now that Pinterest has indexed your content, we’ll have valuable insights into what’s performing best organically. This is the perfect time to explore promoted pins—paid advertisements that amplify the reach of your most successful content. By leveraging Pinterest’s data, we can ensure we’re promoting the pins that will drive the most engagement, clicks, and conversions.

By the end of Month 3, you’ll have a clearer understanding of what works best, an optimized pinning routine, and a strategic approach to using promoted pins for maximum impact.

Month 4: Expanding Reach and Building Engagement

Now that your content strategy is running smoothly, it’s time to focus on expanding your audience and deepening engagement.

• We’ll develop an engagement strategy that includes commenting, liking, and interacting with others to increase visibility.

• Group boards will be explored as a way to connect with new audiences.

• Collaboration opportunities with influencers or brands will be considered to expand reach.

• If applicable, we’ll continue testing and refining promoted pin strategies to accelerate growth.

This is also a great time to create pins that lead directly to your website, book sales pages, or lead magnets to drive conversions. By the end of Month 4, your Pinterest presence will be well-established, and you’ll start seeing real momentum in engagement and audience growth.

Looking Ahead: What Comes Next?

At this point, your platform is running efficiently, but the work doesn’t stop here. The next phase focuses on diving deeper into analytics, optimizing top-performing content, and planning for seasonal trends.

Pinterest success builds over time, and with consistent effort, your content will continue working for you long after it’s posted. If you stay committed, you’ll see long-term growth, increased visibility, and an audience that keeps coming back for more.

If you’re ready to make Pinterest a key part of your marketing strategy, now is the time to put these steps into action. 

Explore the Possibilities of Pinterest with The Impact Map

For book creators and sellers, the dream of reaching more readers and selling more books is always top of mind. But Pinterest offers something deeper than just sales—it’s a platform that helps you connect with your audience in a way that educates, inspires, and delights. Success here isn’t about quick wins; it’s about strategy, audience understanding, and building a lasting presence. That’s where The Impact Map comes in.

Pinterest: A Unique Opportunity

Unlike traditional social media platforms, Pinterest is a visual search engine. While eye-catching graphics are essential, the real power of Pinterest lies in discovery—helping people find solutions, inspiration, and ideas. And when they do, your website becomes the next step in their journey.

For Pinterest to work its magic, your site needs more than just the basics. It should be a rich, welcoming space that encourages visitors to return, offering valuable content that answers their questions, solves their problems, or sparks their imagination. That’s why building a Pinterest presence begins with understanding how your web content and strategy can align.

Introducing The Impact Map

The Impact Map is more than a starting point—it’s an opportunity to gain clarity about how your books, programs, or services might resonate on Pinterest. Whether you’re simply curious about the platform’s potential or ready to take action, it provides a clear, thoughtful plan tailored to your unique goals.

Here’s how it works:

• Schedule a Fit Call: A conversation to explore your needs and whether The Impact Map is right for you.

• In-Depth Interview: We spend 90 minutes diving into your content, goals, and target audience. It’s a collaborative process aimed at uncovering opportunities.

• Personalized Impact Map: Within a week, you’ll receive a PDF detailing strategies to help you connect with your audience and achieve your objectives.

• Follow-Up Review: A one-on-one session to discuss the findings and ensure you’re ready to implement the plan.

Whether you’re an indie author, a small press, or a publisher with a marketing team, this process is adaptable to your needs. The Impact Map isn’t a commitment to long-term services—it’s a resource to help you make informed decisions about how Pinterest can support your work.

Building Authority with The Impact Map

At its core, The Impact Map is about building authority and trust on Pinterest. It provides clarity on how your books, programs, and services can resonate with the platform’s audience. Here are a few ways it helps:

1. Discovering Your Audience

Pinterest’s potential goes far beyond traditional audiences like teachers or parents. Through The Impact Map, we explore unexpected niches—whether tied to your book’s themes, seasonal trends, or academic connections.

2. Strategizing Content: The Power of Organic and Promoted Pins

Pinterest success often comes from a thoughtful mix of organic and promoted pin strategies, each offering unique benefits:

• Organic Pins focus on building a natural, long-term presence. These unpaid pins are crafted to engage your audience over time, teaching Pinterest’s algorithm how to index your content and connect it with the right users. Organic strategies ensure that your content stays relevant and discoverable, making them ideal for evergreen topics like educational resources or timeless book themes.

• Promoted Pins, on the other hand, provide a way to amplify your reach quickly. These paid ads help you target specific audiences, boosting visibility for time-sensitive campaigns like book launches, holiday promotions, or special events. Promoted pins blend seamlessly with organic content, making them an unobtrusive yet effective way to drive traffic and engagement.

When used together, these strategies reinforce one another. Organic content builds a foundation of credibility and relevance, while promoted pins accelerate your visibility, introducing your work to new audiences who might not have discovered it otherwise. The Impact Map outlines how to strike the perfect balance between the two, ensuring your Pinterest strategy works effectively for your goals and your audience.

3. Optimizing Boards

Boards are the foundation of a Pinterest platform. The Impact Map outlines how to create keyword-rich, audience-focused boards that enhance visibility and connect with user searches. Thoughtful board optimization ensures your content not only gets noticed but stays relevant over time.

4. Maximizing Web Content

Pinterest thrives on robust web content. From landing pages and book lists to blogs and opt-ins, The Impact Map analyzes how to leverage your website effectively, ensuring it supports a strong Pinterest presence. Pinterest loves depth, and your site’s content plays a crucial role in building your platform’s success.

A Tool for Clarity and Direction

One of the most valuable aspects of The Impact Map is its flexibility. It’s a resource that provides direction—whether you’re new to Pinterest or already building a platform. There’s no obligation to continue collaborating with us. Instead, it’s about offering insight and guidance, empowering you to make decisions that align with your goals.

This approach makes The Impact Map particularly beneficial for smaller indie publishers or individuals curious about Pinterest’s potential. It’s also a welcome addition for publishers with established marketing teams who want to fine-tune their strategies.

Why Pinterest Matters

Ultimately, The Impact Map is about more than selling books. It’s about creating a space where your audience can discover, connect, and engage with your content. Pinterest’s evergreen nature means your efforts can continue working for you long after a pin is posted. For book creators and sellers, this isn’t just a tool—it’s an opportunity to build something lasting.

If you’ve ever wondered how your books, programs, or services might resonate on Pinterest, The Impact Map offers a thoughtful starting point. Let’s explore the possibilities together.

Welcome to the "Pinterest for Publishers" Blog Series!

Pinterest for Publishers is a new blog series dedicated to exploring how authors, illustrators, and publishers can use Pinterest to promote their books effectively. This series will take you step-by-step through the strategies I’m using to promote the relaunch of my nonfiction picture book, GIRLS WITH GUTS: THE ROAD TO BREAKING BARRIERS AND BASHING RECORDS.

This book celebrates girl power while introducing young readers to historical figures and events that inspire courage and determination. With a new paperback edition and a Spanish edition (¡CHICAS CON AGALLAS!) set to release in January 2026, I’ll be using Pinterest as a key marketing tool to ensure this empowering story reaches even more readers.

Why Pinterest?

Pinterest is more than a social platform—it’s a visual discovery engine. Unlike other tools, Pinterest content stays relevant for months or even years, making it an excellent way to build long-term visibility and engagement for books.

With Pinterest, authors and publishers can:

• Amplify book visibility to a wide audience.

• Foster engagement with readers, teachers, and librarians.

• Drive discovery by connecting books with the right audience.

The 4-Step Pinterest Strategy

This series will focus on my signature 4-step Pinterest approach, which can be applied to any book marketing campaign:

1. Analyze: Understand your audience, goals, and current platform performance.

2. Strategize: Develop a plan tailored to your book’s unique story and themes.

3. Implement: Create eye-catching, keyword-optimized pins that align with your strategy.

4. Assess: Evaluate analytics to refine your efforts and ensure continued growth.

I’ll share actionable tips for each step, along with real-world examples of how I’m using this method for GIRLS WITH GUTS.

What to Expect

Each post in the series will offer insights into using Pinterest as a tool for promoting books, whether you’re a seasoned author or just starting your publishing journey. From building a visually engaging profile to crafting pins that resonate with your target audience, we’ll cover it all.

With the release of GIRLS WITH GUTS and ¡CHICAS CON AGALLAS! coinciding with the Winter Olympics, I’ll also explore how to tie book promotion strategies to timely events, themes, and trends.

Join the Journey

If you’ve ever wondered how Pinterest can work for you, this series is for you! Whether you’re looking to promote a new release, boost the visibility of backlist titles, or simply learn more about marketing your books online, you’ll find practical advice and inspiration here.

Let’s dive into the world of Pinterest and discover how to connect stories with readers in creative, impactful ways.