How to schedule your pins on Pinterest for FREE

When we talk about Pinterest Marketing, it’s inevitable that some form of scheduling or automation comes into the conversation. Pinning manually seems like a great idea to save a few bucks for a while until you realize that your audience is really active at midnight on Saturdays.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not staying up past 9 most days… and I’m definitely not staying up to manually pin anything on Pinterest.

That’s where automation and scheduling can come in handy. It takes Pinterest marketing your online business to a new level, but it’s not free. Or is it?!

In the past, I’ve outlined exactly how I use both BoardBooster and Tailwind to automate and schedule my Pinterest strategy. You can read one of those blog posts here.

You could go ahead and do the free trials that both BoardBooster and Tailwind give you, using the affiliate referral links indicated with an asterisk*

• Click here to try *Boardboooster for free(as of June 2018, Boardbooster is no longer available)
• Click here to try *Tailwind for free*

But, if you’re wanting to try a different way of scheduling and automating for free, then read on.

What you need to automate your Pin schedule for FREE

1. a free Google account (you’ll be using the google calendar)

2. a free account on IFTTT

3. a Pinterest account

Learn how to schedule your Pins on Pinterest for Free with this full video tutorial:

Step 1. Set up a NEW CALENDAR on your Google account (Name it to match one of your Pinterest boards) 

Thankfully, Google accounts are free and come with Google calendars. So, if you don’t have one yet, go ahead and click here to sign up for one now.

Once you have your free Google account set up, head to Google Calendars and add a new calendar.

This calendar will act as the source and schedule of your pins that you want to share with a specific board, so name this calendar something similar to the board you’re going to schedule pins to.

Step 2. Add an event to your calendar (a single event or a repeat event)

When you add an event on your new google calendar, you’ll want to grab the link of the URL you want shared on Pinterest and fill in the date and time you want the pin to be shared. You can schedule it once or on a repeat schedule.

Don’t forget to add a description too and use any hashtags, etc.

Step 3. Sign up for an IFTTT account and add a new applet on IFTTT

The tool you’ll be using to link your Google calendar to your Pinterest account is called “If this then that” or IFTTT.COM

IFTTT.COM connects various devices and services together using simple “If this then that” statements and logic. So, for this automation to work, we’re going to set up a statement that says “If any event starts on your google calendar, then add Pin that event to this board”.

Seems pretty simple, right? Let’s walk you through how to do it.

Click here to join IFTTT.COM. Once you make your free profile, click on “My Applets” and “New Applet” to start the process of connecting Google to Pinterest.

Step 4. Choose ‘Google Calendar’ as your first service connection

Step 5. Choose the ‘Add event starts’ as your first trigger

This trigger is called “Add event starts” and will turn on the automation of sharing your pin to Pinterest when that event on your Google calendar starts.

Step 6. Choose the ‘Google Calendar’ you wish to connect this applet to and click “create trigger”

Remember that Google calendar we created? This is where you add it to your IFTTT applet. You can choose when to have this triggered by selecting how many minutes before the event goes off. But, keeping in at zero minutes will make the trigger go off when the event happens. It’s okay to keep it at zero minutes.

Now that the “THIS” portion of your IFTTt statement is complete, the next step is to choose the service and steps to connect to the “THAT” portion of this statement, which involves Pinterest.

Step 7 – Choose ‘Pinterest’ as your second service connection

Step 8. Choose ‘Add to Pin Board’ as your  trigger

Step 9. Fill in the details of the action you want IFTTT to take (see the screenshot here for example)

This part is a bit tricky, so pay attention! You must enter your Pinterest Board name as it appears on your Pinterest account, exactly. Which means, if you ever rename the board, this applet will break.

Using the IFTTT ingredients, be sure to fill in the Photo URL and the Source URL as {{WHERE}}. This will tell IFTTT to grab the location URL that is on your Google calendar event. Also, be sure to add {{Description}} to the “Add a description” portion of this.

These steps ensure the pin will be linked to the proper URL you want your audience to be taken to when they click on your Pinterest Pin.

As for the photo that gets shared, there is a chance that this automation may grab a random photo from the URL you are sharing.  The fix for that is to add a direct URL link to the image you want to use in one of the other ingredient area’s. For example, you could add the URL to the pin image as the “Title” of your Google calendar event/

Step 10. Review your applet and click “Finish”

What happens next is the genius part!

Your new scheduled pin on your Google calendar will automatically be added to your board on the day and time you scheduled it too.

To see if everything is working correctly, you can even check your IFTTT account activity feed. It will show you when an applet is created, running, or if there are any failures.

Step 11. Don’t stop there. IFTTT has multiple automation applets for Pinterest. 

From automating the pins from one board to another board to syncing your Instagram posts to pin on your Pinterest account, the possibilities with IFTTT automations seem endless.

Want more tips? Click here to grab a free copy of this complete guide to Pinterest Marketing.

LOOKING FOR MORE PINTEREST TIPS? HERE ARE SOME OF OUR BEST BLOG POSTS:

• How I schedule and automate my pins on Pinterest using Board Booster and Tailwind
• How these essential tools and Pinterest helped our blog go viral!
• Clever strategies to improve your Pinterest Marketing and get more traffic
• How Pinterest and Sales Funnels Can Improve Your Blog Income