Should You Share Instagram Posts to Pinterest

Auto-sharing your Instagram posts to Pinterest sounds like the perfect shortcut. Two platforms, one workflow, zero extra effort. So why does it quietly hurt your Pinterest reach instead of helping it?

In this episode, I break down the difference between cross-posting and strategic repurposing, name the six specific ways auto-share works against you, and walk you through the one connection between Instagram and Pinterest that IS worth turning on. Plus, a simple five-step repurposing framework you can start using this week.

If you have been treating Pinterest like an extension of Instagram, this one is going to shift how you think about the whole platform.

What You Will Learn

• Why Pinterest and Instagram require different content, not duplicated content
• The six specific ways auto-sharing from IG quietly costs you reach, traffic, and algorithm trust
• The critical difference between claiming your Instagram and auto-publishing to Pinterest
• A five-step framework for repurposing Instagram content the right way
• Why linking to your website (not to Instagram) is a non-negotiable for growth
• The short-click engagement signal that penalizes your account without you noticing

Resources Mentioned

• Pinterest Business Account - Claim your Instagram account under Settings > Claimed Accounts
• Canva - For resizing content into 2:3 vertical pins (1000 x 1500 px)
• Pinterest Trends - Free keyword research for pin titles and descriptions
• The VEIL Method - Visibility, Evergreen, Intentional, Leads

You know how to repurpose Instagram content for Pinterest the right way now. Five steps per post. About five minutes per pin.

But if you are looking at your Instagram archive thinking, I do not have time for that math on every single post, the Styled Pin Collection is built for exactly this. Every pin is already sized native for Pinterest, keyword-optimized, and ready to link to your blog, freebie, or sales page. The repurposing math is done. You just upload and get back to your business.

Join the Styled Pin Collection: https://www.ddvirtualmanagement.com/styled-pin-collection

Connect With Dana

• Website: www.ddvirtualmanagement.com
• Instagram: @danas.desk.nc

If this shifted how you think about cross-posting, the best way to support the show is to leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast app. It takes thirty seconds, and it helps more business owners find episodes like this one. Thank you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Unapologetic Pinner. I'm your host, Dana, here to help wedding professionals and creative business owners like you elevate your organic marketing strategy with Pinterest. Each week we'll dive into practical tips and fresh insights to keep your pins engaging and your business growing. So grab your coffee, tea, or any other beverage of choice, and let's get started. If you have ever wondered whether you should just connect your Instagram to Pinterest and let your posts auto share over there, I have a straight answer for you today. The short version is a flat no, but the longer version is more useful to you because it tells you what to do instead. And that is where the real Pinterest strategy lives. Here's the reframe I want you to hold on to for the whole episode. Cross-posting is not a good Pinterest strategy. Strategic repurposing is knowing the difference is what separates business owners who treat Pinterest like a search engine from the ones who treat it like another social feed and then wonder why nothing is working. And we all know any conversation you have with me, I love repurposing content. And I will cross-post across different platforms. However, what you need to know is auto sharing from Instagram is quietly going to waste your Pinterest potential. And the one connection between the two platforms that is worth turning on is going to be talked about in this episode. And I will provide you with a simple five-step repurposing process you can actually use so you aren't just robocross-posting, but you are repurposing with an intentional strategy. To kickstart, let me frame why this question matters. And I do get asked this question in almost every workshop that I have done in the last year. Pinterest brought back the ability to claim your Instagram account and auto-publish your posts in 2024. And a lot of business owners saw the setting, toggled it on, and figured they had to solve their Pinterest strategy in three clicks and never have to think about it again. And I understand the appeal because I'm all for saving time and automating things in my business, but you're already making content for Instagram. Pinterest feels like one more platform demanding your attention. And auto sharing sounds like the smart, sustainable choice from a capacity standpoint. But the two platforms do not operate in the same way. And that's the problem. Instagram is a social network. It is where people build relationships, follow personalities, and consume content in a scrolling feed from people they already know. Pinterest, however, is a visual search engine. It is where people go with intent looking for a specific idea, product, or solution they can act on. Different jobs, different rules. So different content is needed for the graphics and images that you're sharing. When you take a piece of content built for one job and just drop it into a platform built for a different job, it does not just underperform. It's quietly signaling to the algorithm that your content is not a good fit at all, which is going to affect everything you publish after it. So this is not just about one auto-shared post. It's about what the setting is teaching Pinterest about your account over time. And that is the visibility piece of my veil method. If your content is not optimized for how Pinterest actually services content, your visibility is never going to compound. So let me walk you through what is actually happening and what to do instead. Let me name the specific ways cross posting from Pinterest or from Instagram to Pinterest works against you because it will not tank your account overnight. And that is what makes it the most dangerous. It's going to slowly erode your potential while you think you are doing the right thing. First, there is no pen title. When Instagram auto shares to Pinterest, the pen does not get a title. It shows up blank or with just your name. Pin titles are one of the strongest search signals on Pinterest. Skipping them is like publishing a blog post without a headline and hoping that Google can figure out what it's about and put it in front of the right people. Second, your Instagram caption becomes your pen description, which sounds convenient, but it's not. Instagram captions are written to slow the scroll and start conversations. I hope you're thinking about those. Leave a comment, comment this word, or some other engagement push. They are story driven, emoji-heavy sometimes, and every so often hashtag loaded. Pinterest descriptions, however, need to be concise, keyword rich, and written for how people actually search. The mismatch is huge, and Pinterest reads that confusion. Third, the format is wrong. Pinterest is going to reward those tall vertical pens in a two to three ratio, ideally 1,000 by 1500 pixels. Instagram is squares or shorter rectangles, so it's close but not quite the same. So your auto-shared Instagram content looks small and skippable in a Pinterest feed, and you're competing against pins built for the platform, and you're probably gonna lose. Fourth, carousels get destroyed. That beautiful Instagram carousel where each slide kind of builds on the last one. Auto share is gonna break it into four, five, six separate pins that make no sense on their own because the story is gone. And each pin now looks like a fragment of something incomplete. Next is this is probably the biggest one for business growth. Every auto-shared pin links back to Instagram instead of to your website, which means you are handing your Pinterest traffic to a platform that you do not own. And this is a big, big, big thing. Instead of routing it to your site where you can actually track it, convert it, and build SEO value off of it, you lose the traffic and the data. And there's one more piece that I want to name that most people miss. When someone clicks a pin that leads to Instagram, they're gonna hit friction. They might hit a login wall, an app switch, a password they can't remember. Most people will bounce. They'll then start doom scrolling and not ingesting more of your content. Pinterest reads that fast bounce as a short click, which is a negative engagement signal for that pen. So not only do you not get the traffic to your website, but you get quietly penalized for the poor experience from the user. Cross posting feels like consistency. And so this is the trade-off that I want to name clearly. What it actually creates is quiet, invisible drag on every other piece of Pinterest content that you hopefully are publishing. Now, here's the nuance most people miss. Claiming your Instagram account on Pinterest and auto-publishing your Instagram content to Pinterest are two different settings. And one of them is worth using. I do want you to go and claim your Instagram account. It's gonna tell Pinterest that your Instagram handle actually credited to you. You're gonna show up in the analytics, you get the follower boost, and you can actually see which of your Instagram posts are quietly working on Pinterest without you even trying. Second, your Instagram handle becomes clickable directly from your Pinterest profile. Anyone who lands on your Pinterest page can see your Instagram handle sitting right next to your website link and go straight to your Instagram account with one tap. That is a small trust signal that ties your platforms together in the audience's mind and it costs you nothing. So here's the specific move for you to do this week. Go to your Pinterest business account settings, claim your Instagram. Then when Pinterest asks if you want to turn on auto publishing, say no. Skip that toggle. Claim the account, get the analytics and the profile link, and stop there. If you have not already claimed your Instagram on Pinterest, that's really what I want you to do this week. It's two minutes of setup with a real long-term benefit, no strategic downside. Now let me give you the actual repurposing process because this is probably the thing I am known for the most is repurposing content as much as possible to attract more and more people. Your Instagram content is not useless for Pinterest, it just needs to be rebuilt for the platform. And when you do it correctly, repurposing is one of the highest leverage moves in your marketing ecosystem. This is the framework that I use with clients and inside my own business. So step one, we want to pick the right content. Not every Instagram post belongs on Pinterest, just like not every blog post deserves to go on Pinterest. Skip the memes, the day in the live posts, the hot takes, and the time-sensitive announcements and repurpose the evergreen search-driven pieces, tutorials, tips, resources, guides, how-to content, inspiration, product roundups. If someone would search for it six months from now, then it belongs on Pinterest. Step two, resize for Pinterest. Take your Instagram graphic or reel and rebuild it as a two to three vertical pen. Canva has templates for this. It also now has the option for you to take a graphic and resize it to a different platform. So if you are repurposing a reel, download it first, remove any watermarks, and then re-upload it as a native Pinterest video. That watermark is gonna tell Pinterest that you did not create the content for their platform, and that is gonna hurt you or hurt your reach. Step three, rewrite the copy for search and discoverability. This is the step people skip the most. And the one that honestly matters the most, your pen needs a keyword-rich title and concise keyword-rich description. Not your Instagram caption paste it in. Think about what someone would type into the Pinterest search bar to find this type of content. Write those words into your title and description. This alone can two to three times your reach on a single pen. Step four, match the pen to the right board. Pinterest uses your board as one of the strongest signals about what your pen is about. A pen about summer outfits belongs on a summer outfits board, not on a catch-all board called Instagram content. Specific specificity is strategy on Pinterest. Step five, link to your website, not to Instagram. Every repurposed pen should send traffic to a blog post, a product page, a freebie, a sales page, something that you own, something that you can track, something where a visitor can convert. If your Instagram post does not have a home on your website yet, that is a signal to build one, not a signal to just link back to Instagram. I will say the only time I am comfortable, so to speak, with sharing a link back to Instagram is if it's a post like to share a guide or a resource and it has that trigger word, comment, pins, and I'll send you my free guide. That way you are sending it and you do own that. They can comment directly, and then they're on your email list, and you now control that nurture sequence and that relationship. Other than that, everything needs to go to your website. And I still would prefer it go to your website, but it is something that I have done for clients in the past and we have seen success. So this does feel like it takes a little bit more time than flipping on the auto-published toggle. It is about five minutes extra per pin, but those five minutes are the difference between content that gets seen and content that quietly disappears. And that math is working. So let me pull this all together. Three things to remember from this episode. One, cross-posting is not a Pinterest strategy. Auto-shared Instagram posts hurt you quietly through missing titles, mismatched captions, wrong graphic formats, broken up carousels, and short click engagement signals. That setting is convenient, but the math is wrong. Two, claim your Instagram account on Pinterest, skip the auto-publish, like I've mentioned before, and two settings, and remember that there's two settings, two different jobs. One is worth doing and one is not. Lastly, number three, real repurposing is the five-step process. Pick the right content, resize for Pinterest, rewrite the copy for search, match it to the right board, and link to your website. Five extra minutes per pen is the difference between visibility and disappearance. And here's the deeper point I want to leave you with this week. The reason cross-posting is so tempting is because it treats Pinterest like a duplicate feed, and it's not. Pinterest is a visual search engine, and search engines reward content built for how people actually search. Every shortcut around that reality is a small cost you pay in reach, in traffic, and in trust from the algorithm. Strategic repurposing costs a little more time up front, but it's gonna compound for you for years. And this connects directly to why I built the style and pen collection the way that I did. Because I know most business owners hear this episode, they're gonna nod along because it does make sense, and then look at their Instagram archive and think, I do not have time to rewrite, resize, and re-optimize every post I want to repurpose. That's real. I get that, I feel that, and that's why the collection exists. Every pen inside the style pen collection is built for native for Pinterest. You have the correct vertical vertical format. All graphics are keyword optimized with titles and descriptions written for how people actually search. Ready to link to your blog, your freebie, your sales page, your uh galleries, your landing pages. You do not have to repurpose anything because the rep repurposing math is already done for you. You just upload and get back to your business. The link is gonna be in the show notes for you. And if you want Pinterest content that works without turning your Instagram archive into a full weekend project, come and check it out. The shortcut that costs you more than the long way is not a shortcut. Cross posting is a shortcut. Strategic repurposing is the long way that pays you back for years. So we want to pick the long way in this very unique case. Your Pinterest and your business will thank you in the long run. I can't wait to see you in the next episode. If you enjoyed today's discussion, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. Your feedback helps shape future episodes for future listeners. For more tips, follow me on Instagram at the Unapologetic Pinner and check out my weekly newsletter for trending Pinterest searches. And as always, you can pin that.