Most people know that visuals are becoming increasingly more important for online marketing.
Through the years, I’ve studied visual content and the channels in which visual content is promoted.

Here are 5 Pinterest myths that many people still believe. Are you guilty of believing these popular visual marketing myths?

Myth #1 – Due to Pinterest’s Smart Feed Algorithm, When You Pin Doesn’t Matter Too Much

Pinterest implemented it’s smart feed algorithm which displays older pins to users, even if they are a day old or older. So even if you pin something during non-peak times, it can still get a good amount of exposure due to how Pinterest displays pins to people.

So does this mean that old advice to pin during peak times in the evening is no longer true?
A lot of people think so, but let’s take a closer look…

While it may be true that most people are on during the evening, Pinterest doesn’t function like Twitter, especially now that it has implemented its Smart Feed algorithm.
Pinterest seems to know that people can pin good content at any time during the day, including days and times when traffic is lower than average.

And Pinterest does want to display high quality pins to its users. Quality pins keep users engaged and encourages them to keep returning to the site.

While Pinterest does display recent pins, it’s not a 100% real time feed like Twitter’s feed. In fact, many images that it shows you will be from the day before or older.

When I log into my Pinterest account and click on the first few images in my feed, all of the images in the top row are from the previous day.

1) Log into Pinterest. You should see a bunch of pins on your feed after you log in.
2) Click on any pin you want to inspect
3) Notice the date that the image was pinned (the pin in this example was at the top of my feed, but it was pinned yesterday)

While some pins are shown in real time, you’ll notice that many are not. At the top of my feed, some pins were from within the past few hours but some pins were as old as 7 days old.

If you are not going to be online or working in the evening, you can use a tool like Buffer to schedule your pins.

Tip #1: So when should you pin an image? Pinning in the evenings is still optimal if you want to reach the most people.

Pinterest will also display your pin to other people long after you originally pinned it, if it is popular, including to people who are on during non-peak times.

Myth #2 – Only Women’s Stuff Does Well on Pinterest

A lot of people think that since most of Pinterest’s users are women that only niches that cater to women’s interests do well on Pinterest.
However, one of the things that Pinterest has focused on in an effort to grow and monetize the site is growing it’s male audience.

For example, in 2014, Pinterest introduced guided search, which displays search results based on the gender of the user. This feature and other changes have resulted in a 73% growth in male users in 2014.
The number of males using Pinterest is growing faster than new female users. And even though a majority of users on Pinterest are female, Pinterest already has a large male user base.

Tip #2: Even if you are in a niche that caters to men’s interests, Pinterest is worth examining. Before your write off Pinterest as a marketing channel, do a quick search for similar users and pins to see if Pinterest users are interacting with content that is targeted towards your audience.

Myth #3 – Creating Visuals is Too Difficult or Costly

Despite all the data on the effectiveness of using visuals, many businesses still aren’t using visuals in their content marketing.
One likely reason is that some people think that creating visuals is too difficult, time consuming or costly. People that blog often and aren’t active on sites like Pinterest, Instagram or Google Plus might not feel like adding visuals to their blog post is worth the time.

Sites like Pixlr and Buffer Pablo make image editing easy. But it still takes some time to learn how to use these tools and create visuals with them.

However, smart marketers know that creating visual content doesn’t have to be costly or time consuming.
Some people like to add a visual header to each blog post so that it can have at least some chance of getting shared on visual social media channels like Pinterest or Google Plus.

Perhaps one of the easiest ways to create visual headers consistently is to create a template that you can keep using and just change the background image.

You can even get free images that you can use as backgrounds from sites like Pixabay.
Another important thing to note is that as you create more and more visuals, you will be able to create them faster and more efficiently.

Tip #3: Invest the time to create visual content. With the tools available today, it doesn’t take a lot of time and can be done inexpensively.

Myth #4 – Pinterest Won’t Work in My Niche

A lot of people think that Pinterest only works for things like food, women’s clothes or arts and crafts. While these niches are some of the obvious winners on Pinterest, you may be surprised at some niches that are doing well on Pinterest.

A lot of people might be surprised to hear that real estate agents can benefit from marketing on Pinterest.
Bill Gassett is the #1 real estate agent in all of New England and a proficient social media marketer. He has grown a following of thousands on Twitter, Google Plus and other social media channels but said that Pinterest was his top social media referrer.

Tip #4: Pinterest has a large and diverse audience that is continuing to grow. Be sure to explore your niche on Pinterest and see if other pins are doing well on this channel instead of just assuming that it won’t work.

Myth #5 – I Don’t Have Time for Pinterest

Pinterest is one of the easiest social media channels to participate in. In fact, I can manage my Pinterest account in just a few minutes a day.

Unlike other social media channels, you don’t even have to log in every day. Popular pins can get re-pinned for months after they were first shared. So you don’t even have to log on every day to get traction from Pinterest, although consistency is still encouraged.
Asides from using Pinterest for traffic generation and building brand awareness, I use Pinterest as a way to organize useful resources that I find. As a blogger, keeping track of useful blog posts and data is something that I need to do anyways.

And Pinterest makes it easy to do.

Another important thing to note is that Pinterest is not a very “social” channel. In other words, people are mostly just pinning things and not sending messages to other members or even commenting.
The lack of social chatter on Pinterest can actually be a good thing as it reduces the chance that Pinterest will become a time consuming distraction.

Tip #5: If you haven’t explored Pinterest yet, try spending just a few minutes a day on it. You might be surprised to find how easy and even fun it can be.