[Case Study] How to Delete Pinterest Pins My Results

Guess what, they probably do. But the only way you will find out if they work for you is to test things out.

Testing Things Out

At the time of this writing, I’ve been running a case study for about 2 weeks. I was tired of struggling to get blog traffic to my blog.

Related: How to Use Pinterest for Business Trying A New Strategy

You might or might not know that I started this blog with the intention of walking away from my freelancing business.

I’m tired of trading my time for dollars. Plus I really don’t make a lot from freelancing and I definitely don’t want to be stuck in that cycle of always having to find new clients.

So I started this blog to share my WordPress knowledge with you. I also share my blogging tips and journey with you.

Focusing On Pinterest

In the middle of January, I sat down because I was frustrated. I was working so hard to try to drive traffic to my blog and guess what, I couldn’t seem to break 3,000 pageviews.

No matter what I did, so I finally decided that it was time to try some new things. After all, we’ve heard that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Now I know what you’re thinking, pageviews don’t mean anything. But I’m here to tell you that the more page views you get the better chance you have of people clicking on your affiliate links, buying your products and services and subscribing to your email list.

When I checked my Google Analytic stats and realized that Pinterest was my biggest traffic referrer, I realized it was time that I start paying more attention to it.

Enter My Case Study

That’s when I decided to start my case study to see if I could improve my traffic. As I mentioned I’ve been running the case study for two weeks at the time of this writing.

>> Read My Case Study Here <<

You probably want to know if I’ve been noticing a difference in my Pinterest Traffic? Well, let me quickly show you what my traffic looked like when I started my case study.

As you can see, I wasn’t getting a lot of traffic. What’s worse is that the Activity on my blog was terrible. I was pinning like crazy, but I wasn’t getting a lot of results.

That’s actually, why decided to put more emphasis into learning how to use the platform more effectively.

My stats are nothing amazing compared to other people’s traffic from the social media platform. That’s okay, we can’t compare ourselves to other people anyway. You just need to keep your head down and focus on your business.

I had been reading blog post after blog post. Heck, I had even purchased a few courses and eBooks, but yet nothing worked. (of course, I hadn’t really done much, other than scheduling my pins using an automated scheduler)

That’s when I decided it was time to sit down and start deleting pins. However, to tell you the truth, I had to learn how to move copy or delete pins because I had no clue how to do it.

I’m going to show you just how easy it is to delete one from your board.

How to Delete Pins

Click on the board that you want to delete a pin from. Locate the pin that you want to delete and click on it.

You’re going to see a pencil icon at the top left-hand corner of the image.

Click on the pencil icon and then click on delete.

Don’t forget to hit save at the bottom right-hand corner to make sure that your changes take effect.

Why I Am Deleting Pins Manually

So far, I’ve managed to clean up four of my Pinterest boards manually. I still have a few boards that need to be cleaned up.

There’s so much controversy about whether or not you should actually delete pins.

Some people say that you shouldn’t worry about it. Then there are others who say that you should.

I figured that I would take the time to clean up my boards and see if it helped me improve my traffic.

After all, what could it hurt? It’s not like I was getting a ton of traffic from the social media platform before the case study.

You’re probably thinking, why didn’t I just pay to clean up my boards using the Board Booster Pin Doctor?

Well, I did pay $5.00 to test it out and clean up some pins. But then when the results came back, I still found myself going into my boards and checking the pins before I deleted them.

Plus if I am going to go through the trouble of cleaning up my boards, I want to make sure that I am taking the time to learn as I go.

You can’t really learn anything if all you do is allow the Pin Doctor do the clean up for you.

So I figured why not just take the time to manually clean up my boards little by little. I’m doing a little bit of cleanup every morning and focusing on one board at a time.

It really doesn’t take me long, I spend about 15-20 minutes per day cleaning up my boards.

While this process is definitely NOT exciting. It has allowed me to see which pins are getting thousands of shares and what catches people’s attention.

There’s no way that I would be able to find this out if I let the Pin Doctor clean up everything for me.

Plus when I first started using Pinterest, I would pin anything and everything. So this is a great time to clean up my boards and put my best foot forward.

My Pinterest Traffic Tanked

When I first started deleting pins, I went ahead and deleted 3 boards. Well, I didn’t actually delete them, I just set them to a secret board. I had read that you don’t want to delete a board, you just want to turn it into a secret board.

Then I picked one board and started deleting no more than 40 pins per day. I had read that you don’t want to delete a bunch of pins in one day if you’ve never deleted any.

This will set off a flag on Pinterest.

I was on a roll and my page views had managed to get up to 200 per day. But about 4 days after deleting my Pinterest boards, my traffic fell.

It was crazy, I went from 200 page views to about 100 pageviews per day. Thank goodness Pinterest isn’t my only traffic source.

Why I Kept Deleting

To tell you the truth, I almost quit deleting pins and went back to my old routine. But I figured what the heck at least I am getting rid of those pins that don’t have any repins.

Since I wasn’t getting great results before, why would I just continue doing the same thing I’ve been doing the past year?

We’ve all heard that saying of insanity.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

– unknown

Plus I logged into Tailwind to see if it was helping my board out. Guess what, it was. Here’s a screenshot of my Make Money Blogging board before I started deleting pins.

You can see that the board scores are not very good.

• Virality: .97
• Engagement: 2.64

Well, after cleaning up the board I waited a few days and checked my scores again to see if there had been any type of improvement. Guess what, there was.

Check out the new scores on the board and I wasn’t even completely done cleaning it.

• Virality: 1.13
• Engagement: 3.03

I’ve also waited a week to see if the scores will continue to climb and guess what, they are. After a week of cleaning up my board, I’ve gotten a higher virality score and the engagement for that board has gone up as well.

These are what the scores look like after I finished cleaning the board.

• Virality: 1.20
• Engagement: 3.18

I have no doubt that those numbers will continue to rise. Especially, since I’ve noticed that people are starting to repin more on that board now.

At first, I thought maybe it was a fluke, so I thought, I’ll test another board to see what happens. Here’s the score before I started manually deleting pins from my Pinterest marketing for bloggers board.

• Virality: 1.79
• Engagement: 4.85

It took me about 4 days to clean that board up and now take a look at the scores.

• Virality: 2.11
• Engagement: 5.68

Take a look at the board after about 4 days of cleaning it up. The scores are just continuing to climb.

• Virality: 2.27
• Engagement: 6.09

So when you hear people saying that it is worth cleaning up your boards, I have to say that I can definitely say it’s been proven and tested on my end.

Of course, I can’t guarantee if it will work for your account. You’re just going to have to experiment and test it out for yourself.

My Overall Analytics

My Pinterest reach has finally broken into the 200k, which I’ve never done that since using Pinterest for the past year.

Not only that, but I actually have a pinning strategy now. As before, I was just pinning anything and everything hoping that my traffic would change.

Overall, deleting pins has been a time-consuming thing. But if that’s what I needed to do to finally start getting some traffic from Pinterest, then I’m glad that I am finally doing it.

Getting More Repins

I’ve also noticed that since I’ve been taking the time to clean up my boards, I am getting more repins. I used to be lucky if my pin would get repinned at all.

Now I am getting notifications saying that my pins have been saved. It’s pretty cool.

I still have a lot more boards to clean up, but the plan is to go through all my boards and clean them up.

Am I Getting More Traffic and Subscribers?

The only thing that matters is are you getting more traffic and subscribers? After all, you don’t want to spend time cleaning up your Pinterest boards if it isn’t going to turn into subscribers.

Well, I can definitely say that for me, I’ve seen more traffic from Pinterest. Not only that, but I am getting more subscribers. Of course, I’ve noticed an increase in my subscribers when I started using PostGopher. (I’ve written a tutorial on the plugin here)

My Traffic Increased

I’ve been able to increase my Pinterest traffic in January compared to my December traffic. Take a look at the traffic comparison stats. Check out all my traffic reports.

Overall, I’m happy that I’ve been able to increase my Pinterest traffic. But to tell you the truth, I still have a lot to learn.

My Pinterest reach is still very low in the 200,000’s. Which is nothing, when you think about the fact that there are over 200 million active users on Pinterest.

I’ve read Pinterest success stories from bloggers who have managed to increase their Pinterest reach to over a million.

You can see that my Pinterest reach is barely a drop in the bucket. I have a long way to go. Although, I finally feel like I am on the right track.

I completely understand that the Pinterest algorithm can change tomorrow, and what works today may not work tomorrow. That’s why I don’t put 100% of my focus on Pinterest. But it’s nice to finally say that Pinterest is sending me traffic.

My Clean Up Process

Okay, now that you’ve seen how it’s helping me improve my boards, chances are you might want to do it to your boards.

If so, I am going to share what I’m doing and what determines if I actually delete a pin or not.

When I Delete One

I’ll start at the very beginning of my boards, thank goodness most of my boards have less than a 1,000 pins on them.

Then I will go through each individual pin and make sure that it has at least 10 repins. If your Pinterest account is still brand new you can start with a lower number of repins.

I will not delete a pin if it has any engagement on it, regardless of the number of times it has been repinned.

Do I Delete My Own

Not all the time, if my pin has a very low number of repins, I will delete it. However, if I find one of my pins that has 7 repins, then I won’t delete it. (I know that’s kind of vague of whether to delete your own pins or not, but just do what you want)

I just don’t want to delete all my pins from my boards. It’s your board and you can decide whether you want to delete your pins or not.

If I delete one of my pins, I figure that I can always add it later once I get more repins on the pin. Just use common sense when it comes to deleting your pins.

You don’t want to delete all your pins from your board.

How to Delete Pinterest Pins

Deleting pins on Pinterest is very easy. Before you start deleting pins, go to Tailwind and find out which of your boards are performing the best.

Go to Track Your Brand >> Board Insights

I would recommend starting with your boards that have the best score. If you still haven’t signed up for Tailwind, then you can sign up here.

Now it’s time to go to that board on Pinterest.

Scroll down to the very first pin. Hopefully, you don’t have a ton of pins on your board.

I’ve personally been using my iPad to clean up my boards because I just think that it’s easier. But I’ll do my best to walk you through on cleaning up your boards using a desktop computer.

Checking the Pin

One of the reasons that I choose to use the iPad is because it’s easier for me to see the number of repins of a pin. I just think that it takes to long to check the stats on a desktop.

When you see a pin you’ll notice 3 little bars at the bottom of the pin.

Click on those little bars and the stats of the pin will open up. And you will see how many times that pin has been shown on Pinterest as well as how many saves (repins) it has.

Here are the following stats you will see on the pin.

• Closeups: When someone clicks on the pin to take a close look
• Clicks: A visitor clicks through the pin to visit the website
• Saves: Someone saves it or (pins) it to one of their own boards.

Based on those stats, you can decide if you want to delete it from your board or not.

As you can see, it is a lot of work. That’s why I clean up my boards with my iPad. I can see the number of saves or repins without having to take all those extra steps.

But I realize that not everyone has an iPad. You’re just going to have to use your desktop computer.

Are You Going to Delete Yours?

Now that you know what I’m as a part of my Pinterest strategy. If you do decide to clean up your boards, just remember to start off slowly.

You can’t expect to do all this in one day or one week. If your Pinterest traffic tanks, find out what you did wrong.

If Pinterest is your only traffic source, you might want to reconsider whether you want to do this. I’m fortunate to not rely 100% on Pinterest for my traffic.

Do this at your own risk and remember, don’t blame me if you don’t see the same results I’m getting. Although, I am pretty sure that it won’t hurt when you read how other bloggers have said it has helped them.

Here are some other bloggers who believe that deleting their pins have helped them improve their Pinterest marketing:

Sarah Titus – Should You Still Delete Pins On Pinterest

Brilliant Business Moms – Why I Proudly Delete Pins

Tiffany Griffin – How Deleting Pins on Pinterest More Than Doubled My Repins

Final Take Away

As I mentioned this method has helped me improve my traffic and stats. Plus I don’t mind taking the time to clean up my pins.

When I first started using Pinterest, I had no clue what I was doing. I have found tons of pins that needed to be removed. I’m just glad that by taking the time to do this has been helping me improve my blog traffic and subscribers.

Of course, if you want to check out the plugin that I think is responsible for helping me increase my subscribers, read this.

Hand Picked Articles for You

• How to Use Tailwind To Grow My Blog What You Need to Know
• How to Use Pinterest for Business
• 200 Tailwind Tribes That Will Help You Skyrocket Your Blog Growth

Have you ever deleted your pins on Pinterest? If so did you get good results?

Now that I’ve shown you my results, are you considering deleting pins on your account? If you do, please let me know how it goes, I’d love to hear about your results.