So let’s get right to it- should you share Instagram posts to Pinterest?
Short answer- no.
Long answer- I’m going to explain why in this post, so keep reading 🙂
Why you shouldn’t share an Instagram post to Pinterest
Pinterest has the ability to connect to your Instagram account and access analytics for it, so I’ve seen a lot of people just post directly from Instagram whenever they have a new Instagram post go out.
If you are very active on Instagram and not very active on your website or Pinterest, it can be beneficial because you’re adding more content to Pinterest to help your account grow. But is that content actually going to benefit you and get you results in the long run? I don’t think so, so let’s talk about why.
Not everyone has an Instagram account
Plain and simple, if someone clicks from a pin that links to your Instagram post, they might not even be able to see it at all if they don’t have an Instagram account. Even if they can see it, they won’t be able to like your post, follow you, message you, or take any action.
So why would you lead them to Instagram if they can’t even do anything?
And even if you have an Instagram account, it can be a pain to click on an Instagram post from Pinterest (or any other platform). I can’t tell you how many times I’ve clicked on a pin that links to Instagram, and it takes me to a browser instead of the app and wants me to log in, and I can never remember my password in the moment so just give up! (And that’s just on my phone, being on my desktop and clinking on an Instagram post is even more annoying).
That is way too many hoops to jump through, and it makes the process so frustrating. You only have a few seconds to capture someone’s attention, and if it’s too complicated to try to even see your content, they’ll lose interest and move onto the next pin.
You can’t track what visitors do
So you can track how many impressions and clicks your Instagram post pins are getting on Pinterest, but once they leave Pinterest and get to the Instagram post (or don’t and give up trying), you can’t track what they do.
There is no way to tell if someone coming from Pinterest to Instagram follows you, likes your posts, watches your Stories, or anything. So you can’t know if your Instagram content is performing well for Pinterest anyway.
On the other hand, if you have a pin that links to your website, you can send up Google Analytics (please set it up if you haven’t yet!) and you can see data like how long people coming from Pinterest are staying on your site, how many pages they’re visiting, if they’re completing any goals you’ve set up, how many are new or returning visitors, etc.
You can get a lot of data from Google Analytics to help you create content that people on Pinterest will love and convert more of those visitors to clients and customers.
You’re giving Instagram the traffic instead of your site
As an SEO Consultant, directing people to a platform that you don’t have any control over instead of your website that you own, this makes me cringe.
You OWN your site, you don’t own Instagram. You have no guarantee that your account won’t be hacked or Instagram won’t go down (and we’ve all seen it go down several times this year already) or that Instagram won’t delete your account for no reason. And if you’re losing out on traffic to your own site, you’re missing a big benefit to SEO and helping your site rank higher in Google (if you’re interested in learning more about this, check out my post 5 Stress-Free & Easy SEO Tips for Small Businesses).
You’re making it harder to convert people
Not only is it annoying to jump through all those hoops I mentioned before, but it’s much harder to find out how to contact you or view your services or products from Instagram in order to convert visitors. If you pin directly to your site, you can include a clickable CTA on a blog post and have a menu bar to navigate!
For service-based businesses, your website is set up for people to quickly find who you are, what services you offer, who you serve, and how to contact you for your services. If you’re a product-based business, people can quickly see what products you offer and purchase them in one place.
Whereas on Instagram, people have to scroll to see different posts or watch your Story Highlights to try get an idea of what you do, and there are more hurdles for them to jump through. And they may have to visit your website to book your services or purchase your products anyway, so why not lead them directly there in the first place?
I have many more reasons why you shouldn’t share Instagram posts to Pinterest that I could list, but I hope those few have convinced you!
If you’re creating amazing Instagram posts right now and want to repurpose them on Pinterest, I recommend taking a few on a similar topic and creating a blog post from them! That way you don’t have to write blog posts from scratch, the content will live on your site, you’ll get the SEO benefits from it, you have more opportunities to convert website visitors to clients and customers, you can share that link to your email list and multiple social media platforms, and other people can share your link and bring more visitors to your site (and if they link it from their site, they’re creating a backlink for you).
So there are lots of benefits to having your content on your site that you own that you’re sharing to Pinterest 🙂 If you have any questions or curious about other reasons why you shouldn’t share Instagram posts to Pinterest, leave a comment! And if you need more help getting started on Pinterest, check out my free Pinterest growth strategy guide!
