Pinterest marketing can be an effective way to get more eyes on your Instagram account and grow your Instagram following.
If you’re using Pinterest to promote your Instagram account, you may be wondering, Can I claim my Instagram account on Pinterest?
This post is going to answer that exact question, and I’ll also share some tips that I have personally seen to be useful when using Pinterest for Instagram.
Let’s dive in.
Please note: Pinterest is always changing, and while I try my best to update my posts, not all information may be up to date. If you’re looking too see the most updated tips, strategies, and information, check out this resource page.
Can I claim my Instagram account on Pinterest?
In the past, claiming your Instagram account on Pinterest was possible. However, Pinterest has since removed that feature, so you can no longer claim your Instagram account on Pinterest.
Along with this change, Pinterest also removed the ability to claim an Etsy shop and a YouTube channel.
Pinterest verifies this in their Help Center, saying, “The claim your account feature is no longer available for Instagram, Etsy or YouTube.”
The options to claim an Instagram account, Etsy shop, and YouTube channel used to be available in the Claimed accounts section of Pinterest settings.
For now, Pinterest only allows you to claim your website (which I highly recommend) and a Shopify shop in the Claimed accounts settings.
However, this does not mean that you can’t still promote your Instagram on Pinterest! Keep reading this post to find out what it means.
Similar: Can You Claim Your Etsy Shop On Pinterest?
What were the benefits to claiming your Instagram account on Pinterest?
While Pinterest still allowed Instagram accounts to be claimed, there were a couple main benefits to doing this:
- Detailed analytics specifically for pins linking to your claimed Instagram account. In Pinterest Analytics, you used to be able to view the stats specifically for your pins linking to Instagram, which could give you great insight into how those specific pins were performing and could help you to build your strategy.
- Pins linking to your Instagram account would automatically be attributed to your Pinterest account. Any piece of content that was saved to Pinterest from your claimed Instagram account would automatically be attributed to your Pinterest account. This could help people to find you – the original source of the content and it would give you all the credit.
Pinterest mentions this in the Help Center, saying, “Previously, it was possible to claim your Instagram, YouTube or Etsy account so that your Instagram, YouTube and Etsy content was attributed to you when someone shared it on Pinterest. This meant that when someone shared content from your claimed social accounts to Pinterest, your Pinterest profile information appeared next to it.”
Can you still use Pinterest for Instagram?
Despite the inability to claim your Instagram account on Pinterest, yes – you can still use Pinterest to promote your Instagram account!
There are a variety of ways to do this, some that I recommend more than others. I will share more on this below.
What does it mean now that you can’t claim your Instagram on Pinterest?
So what does this mean now that you can’t claim your Instagram on Pinterest?
There two main changes:
- You can’t see analytics for pins just linking to your Instagram account. There is no longer the option to filter your analytics in such a way. Analytics for pins linking to your Instagram account will be morphed into your general analytics. So you will still be able to see stats for these pins, but if you have pins linking elsewhere as well, such as a blog, these stats will be jumbled together.
- Your Pinterest profile information will not appear next to pins that are saved from your Instagram account.
Even though there are a few changes, the ability to actually publish pins that link to your Instagram account does not change at all.
How to grow your Instagram using Pinterest
As mentioned earlier, you can absolutely still use Pinterest to grow your Instagram account.
However, you should be extremely strategic about how you do this. I have found promoting Instagram through Pinterest to be a very odd endeavor.
The main reason is because the classic way of Pinterest marketing (creating pins and adding links to promote) was not working well for me. It seemed that Pinterest pins linking to Instagram were suppressed. I wrote an entire blog post about this here.
In a short summary, I found that Pins that linked to Instagram received significantly less impressions, engagements, and more than pins that linked to sites other than Pinterest.
The image below shows an example of this.
(Now, this is based on my experience a year or two ago, so things may have changed. But last I checked, Pinterest seemed to be limiting the distribution of pins linking to Instagram. You can experiment and see if you have the same issue or not!)
Experimenting is the only way to see if it works for you! Who knows, you could have no problem at all linking your pins to Instagram. You could miss out on great results if you never tried!
That being said, here are some ways that I think can be effective for promoting your Instagram on Pinterest. (These ideas all come from my in-depth post on promoting Instagram using Pinterest. You can read more on each of these points here.)
- Make your website on Pinterest your Instagram profile link
- Put your Instagram handle in your bio
- Use call to actions to encourage Pinterest users to follow your Instagram
- Create Idea Pins to grow an engaged audience, then encourage them to follow your Instagram (Note: Idea Pins seem to be winding down on Pinterest, so even growing your account with Standard and Video pins and using these other tips can be effective!)
- Drive traffic to a website and promote your Instagram from there
- Include your Instagram anywhere and everywhere – especially experiment with pin titles and descriptions
- Put your Instagram username in your profile cover image
I share more on promoting your Instagram on Pinterest in 7 Easy Ways To Grow Your Instagram Using Pinterest.
Conclusion
I hope that this post has clarified your questions about claiming your Instagram on Pinterest and still encouraged you to grow your Instagram account using Pinterest with a variety of different ideas!
Have any other tips or ideas? Be sure to leave them in the comments below!
If you want more valuable Pinterest information so you can skyrocket your success, read more on my blog or join my email list (I provide some of my MOST VALUABLE INFORMATION to my email list!)
I hope to see you around again soon. Thanks for reading!
Leah Marie
SAVE FOR LATER
