Pinterest is consistently growing, and it’s a great platform to share content on.

Due to the long lifecycle of pins, tons of content that is shared is designed to be evergreen, meaning that it will stay relevant for long periods of time. This is a solid strategy, and it’s one I highly recommend.

That being said, timely content does have its place on Pinterest and can perform incredibly well.

In this post, we’re going to take a look at why sharing timely content on Pinterest can be difficult or frustrating, and 5 tips to get better results from your timely—and time-sensitive—pins.

Timing can be everything in marketing, and having the right content be cycled through at the right time can provide huge results. Education companies can benefit from having content like “10 Products All Teachers Need to Go Back to School” go live in August, and a landscaping business could get a ton of business from relevant content just in time for spring gardening.

Let’s not even get started on the drool-worthy, holiday-specific recipes that pop up every Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Superbowl.

What Makes Sharing Timely Content on Pinterest So Difficult?

Timely content can be challenging in a way that is unique to Pinterest. Because pins have a longer life cycle than most social media posts, content may take some extra time to get traction compared to other platforms. This can result in your valuable, relevant content never getting enough traction at the right time, which means that it won’t get the kind of results that it could have.

There’s another challenge with timely pins. When pinners find a pin and share it, it replicates as being a new pin from that day; we don’t necessarily see the date of the original pin unless we go digging (and let’s be real, nobody does that). Because of this, time-sensitive pins (like pins advertising contests or sales) may be shared long after the relevant deadline has passed. This can result in confusion and frustration.

Looking at this image, there’s no way to know if the contest is still actually running. Sometimes this leads to expired pins continuing to circulate long after a sale or contest is over.

Simply put: if your pin has a time limit before it’s no longer relevant, it can be difficult to get it the visibility or traction needed before that deadline is up.

To make sure all your timely content is being shared at the right time (and not after), and your pins are always as accurate as possible, we’ve got 5 tips to help you share timely content on Pinterest for better results.

#1. Use Rich Pins

The biggest problem with the average pin is that it’s a stagnant post that continues to be shared as if it’s current.

While we can go into Facebook and comment on an old post to keep users updated on what’s happening, or they can see a time stamp on the original post, this isn’t necessarily true for Pinterest; our pins can be repinned again and again until we lose track and can’t update everyone. This makes Pinterest a difficult platform to use when advertising products, especially when listing timely content like sales prices.

Rich pins are the solution. Rich pins are synced up to your website, and will automatically update themselves will relevant information. If price changes on a product, for example, the price on the pin will automatically update, without any efforts on your part. This allows us to share timely product information in a pin, without worrying that a temporary price discount will aggravate users later when they click to our site after the sale has expired only to see the full price. If your products are out of stock, this will also be reflected in the pin.

There are a few different types of rich pins, including recipe pins, app pins, product pins, place pins, and article pins. To see how to install rich pins, you can see an awesome guide here.

#2. Place End Dates on an Image

This tip can be important for content that’s not only timely, but also time sensitive. If you have a pin with a deadline, like a contest, event/ event registration, or a sale, you want to make it clear to everyone looking at your pin when that deadline is. This can prevent the pin from continuing to circulate after it’s no longer evident.

While mentioning end dates for the sale/contest/event/etc. in the description can be helpful, plenty of users will repin a pin and change the text, sometimes without ever reading the original text. For this reason, placing a date on the actual pin image (in the text) can be useful.

This can also help increase urgency when a user first sees the timely content. With nothing inspiring action quite like a deadline, this can help drive immediate results in both engagement and clicks to your site. When an expiration date is in plain sight, users are also much more likely to convert immediately instead of just saving the pin for later.

#3. Change Visibility (with Third Party Tools)

On Facebook, there are scheduling tools that allow your posts to no longer show up in the Newsfeed after a certain period of time. This allows brands to share time-sensitive and relevant content, but can keep it from continuing to appear once it’s no longer relevant. While Pinterest doesn’t offer a tool like this (at least not currently) there are third party tools that do.

Shortstack’s contest software, for example, has an awesome visibility feature for Pinterest. With this tool, you can control what your audience sees at different times. You can, for example, display discounts, sales, and contests, for a limited time.

Image from shortstack.com

I haven’t seen any other tools yet that offer adjustable visibility settings like Shortstack (though there are some incredible scheduling tools like ViralTag that I do recommend), but I’m keeping my eye out for more!

#4. Promote Your Pins

If you’ve got timely content (especially if it has a deadline) and want to get a lot of eyes on it fast, Promoted Pins is your best bet.

Promoted Pins has been popular with marketers, and can give your content the instant visibility boost that is sometimes necessary with timely content, launching it in front of the right people instead of waiting for it to be seen. If you’re actively promoting a campaign, like a contest or a sale, and want a ton of eyes on this particular campaign, paying for increased visibility, engagement, and clicks is completely worth it.

You can see more about how to run promoted pin campaigns here.

#5. Capitalize on Keywords

If you’re posting timely content that’s relevant based on a specific event, holiday, or season, users might come to Pinterest searching for it. You want to make sure your pin is the one that pops up when they hit enter on that search button. A deliberate use of keywords will help with this.

This image will rank for keywords “fall wedding ideas” and “autumn wedding,” which keeps them covered regardless of which terminology their audience uses.

Keywords are just as important on pins as they are on blog posts. Pinterest’s search engine is frequently used by pinners who are looking for specific content, and you want to make sure that yours is what you find. Having relevant, timely content is a great way to help you rank well in a lot of those searches, as there will be a surge of interested users looking for your content at exactly the right time (think wing recipe searches come Superbowl time).

“First week of school checklist” and “teacher survival kit” could be powerful keywords for this image this time of year.

Keywords can be placed both in the pin title and in the pin description, and you can use both opportunities to try to rank for a different keyword. These keywords can even help your pin show up in Google search results, increasing reach and visibility further.

Final Thoughts

It can benefit you to have the majority of your content on Pinterest be evergreen, but Pinterest can still be a great platform to share timely content.

Timely content has the potential to get a ton of engagement and sales alike. It also has the potential to perform well in searches, especially if you have it posted just in time for the timely searches to come rolling in.

What do you think? Do you share timely or time-sensitive content on Pinterest? Which tips do you use to get better results? Leave us a comment and let us know what you think!