Pinterest Best Practices for 2020?

[Potatoe]

Heyo, big Pinterest newbie here.

So, we've been re-pinning a bunch of niche-related stuff on a new account for the past 3-4 months, we have a dozen or so boards with a few thousand pins that we've re-pinned from other people, and now we want to start seeding our own content into Pinterest and I'm curious if anyone has any advice about the best way to go about this.

I have a designer who I was going to hire to create Pinterest-optimized images for each of our 50 posts, then upload those images to the Social Warfare plugin, add a little description - then what? Is that a good way to go about this?

I noticed Pinterest has a "pin builder" of sorts, but it seems to just grab one of the images from the article, so I think I'm still better off using Social Warfare to add a big, catchy image (and use the 'hidden' setting so it doesn't slow down my load time etc - or maybe it does, I dunno, either way I'd rather not have this giant image in my post..)

It seems like creating our own custom images for each post will be better than just grabbing random pics from each post using pinterest.com's submission tool (a lot of the in-image articles are pictures of an individual product etc, not super interesting on their own and not the ideal size.)

So...
1) Create Pinterest account, use it for a few months, create and populate a bunch of relevant boards, get some followers [check]
2) Create Pinterest-optimized images (Big, attn catching) and either upload them to Social Warfare - OR add them directly when submitting the pin via Pinterest.com - which one's better? Same diff?
3) If using the plugin, do I just add the image behind the scenes and then visit the article and click the Pin button and voila? Or is there any advantage to doing this through Pinterest.com's own interface? OR should I use Tailwind to pin it to multiple boards and tribes at once?
4) I know some people will cycle through their best performing pins and re-pin them on a semi-regular basis. I imagine there's also some value to split-testing different styles of featured images for each pin.
5) We have about 100k monthly impressions, 500 monthly saves, 150 link clicks, 100 followers (I guess just link clicks to random other articles we've re-pinned since we haven't added any of our own yet.) Is this enough to even bother pinning our own stuff yet or should we keep just growing the account for now before adding our own stuff?

I'm over-thinking this, right?

How does this sound:
- Create a nice custom image for each article, upload it to Social Warfare.
- Schedule each Pin using Tailwind.
- ???
- Profit.

Thanks in advance for your advice and guidance!

 

[Sutra]

I've been using Pinterest for a couple months now. Set it up according to the guide here (written by @Kevin )

Summary:

• Set up Social Warfare to show the specific Pin you create for the post (you need to buy the upgrade for this feature). That way when people share the post to Pinterest they'll share that specific image rather than be prompted to shares various images found on the page. Set it in the Social Warfare settings so that the image won't be seen on the actual article. Then in each individual post in Wordpress, after the article you'll see the Social Warfare section and a spot to add the Pinterest image with description. After that is set, when someone clicks the Pinterest button on the article they will be prompted to share the specific image you set up (even though it doesn't show in the article itself)
• Create a Featured board, on Pinterest, that only shows your content
• Create various other Pinterest boards (around 30 - 50 boards, or as much as you can keep up with) related to your niche that will have your related content and content from the various people you'll share
• Create good descriptions for the boards that contain relevant keywords (so people searching Pinterest will find your board/pins). The pins themselves should also have good descriptions and keywords.
• Join Tailwind and get the upgrade to join Tribes
• Join related Tailwind tribes both open and those that get approved via request
• Add your pins to Pinterest to your Featured board - you can do this directly in Pinterest or in Tailwind. There is no penalty for adding it in Tailwind instead of directly in Pinterest.
• Add pins to your various other relevant boards
• Go into Tailwind tribes that you've been accepted into, then schedule pins from those tribes to your pinterest boards. Most tribes want you to share 1 - 2 posts from the Tribes board to your boards BEFORE you schedule your pins to the Tribes board
• After that, then schedule your pin to the relevant tribes (4 - 7 tribes at most as members get annoyed if they see the same pins from the same person spammed to be bunch of different boards and will be less likely to share your stuff in the future)

Pinning through Tailwind is easier and faster than doing it in Pinterest as you set it up to go to multiple boards at once. I recommend using the Tailwind list function if you have lot of boards that can be grouped together. Will save a lot of time by scheduling to the boards on the lists automatically. Also, use the Interval function so that you don't post it to a bunch of your boards all at the same time. Keep an interval of 2 - 3 days or so for it to look more natural.