It can be really difficult to grow your Substack publication from zero. And trying to cross-promote it on social media is its own ball game. Post on Instagram and the reach is disappointing, try Threads and wait for people to find you, and then finally rely on Substack’s internal discovery and hope the algorithm is feeling generous.
I found that there’s another option, and it might not be the one you expect. Pinterest for Substack growth is something most writers haven’t considered, because they don’t yet know that Pinterest is a visual search engine where many of their ideal readers scroll.
I tried using Pinterest for my own Substack publication, and here’s what happened when I did.
In under three months, Pinterest became my number one social traffic source — driving 21.4% of all referrals to my Substack. One pin, published in late 2025, is still bringing in new subscribers today.
This isn’t about going viral on Pinterest. It’s about understanding how Pinterest actually works, and why that makes it uniquely suited to writers on Substack.
Why Pinterest and Substack are a surprisingly good match
The serious mistake most Substack writers make is treating Pinterest like a social media platform. It isn’t one. And if you’re running a Substack, whether it’s a personal essay newsletter, a business-focused publication, or anything in between, understanding this distinction changes everything.
Pinterest is a search engine. People open it with intent — they’re looking for something. A book recommendation, an essay on a feeling they can’t name but will recognise when they see it, a guide to something they’ve been meaning to figure out. Or ideas for what to read next, how to think about something, how to do something better. They’re not scrolling to be entertained. They’re actively searching on Pinterest for the feeling of discovering something new.
Added to this is Pinterest’s taste graph algorithm that notes thousands of interactions, which makes every user’s feed personalized to see only the things that they would search for. So a user who is interested in books and essays is more likely to keep seeing pins on that topic, and the clearer the pin is about its intended audience, the more likely it is to be shown to the users who search for it.
That intent and history of taste is important, because it means the people who click through from Pinterest to your Substack aren’t passive audiences — they’re readers who wanted exactly what you wrote, and might have always been looking for it. The Pinterest Substack connection in this sense is extremely intentional.
There are a few other things that make this pairing work particularly well:
- Pinterest content has a long shelf life. A pin you publish today can still be surfaced in search results in two years. Compare that to an Instagram post, which is effectively dead within 48 hours.
- Substack content has natural hooks for Pinterest. Essay titles, book lists, and personal writing on specific topics — these can be mapped directly to particular user interests.
- Pinterest brings cold traffic. Unlike Substack’s internal recommendations (which mostly circulate within an existing audience), Pinterest puts your writing in front of people who have never heard of you but are actively searching for, or have previously liked what you write about.
- The Substack format lends itself to pinnable content. Clean layouts, strong titles, and readable screenshots are Pinterest-friendly by design.
Types of Substack content that do well on Pinterest
This is where things can become a bit vague. So let me be specific about what has performed from my own account, and my own experience that can give you Pinterest Substack ideas you can create and use right away.
Substack content ideas that work on Pinterest
- Essays, think pieces, deep dive articles, and topics on productivity, business, internet culture, and essays about motherhood can all do well.
- How-to posts. Practical content always travels well on Pinterest. If you write about craft, productivity, creativity, or any skill-based topic, it would be easy for your pins to get picked in popular search terms.
- Deep personal writing around a defined theme. Posts about journaling, brain rot, media consumption, and reading habits — these tap into active search behaviour. People are genuinely looking for this kind of writing.
- Book-related content. Lists, reviews, recommendations. ‘I Read 25 Books About Women vs The Void‘ — a pin I published in late 2025 — went viral to exactly the right audience and still drives subscribers today. The specificity of the title did most of the work.
- I also find that using the term ‘Substack’ in either the pin title or description helps your pin be found by Substack readers on Pinterest, or users who tend to save Substack articles, or just long-form articles in particular.
Pin design: what actually gets clicked
- Keep it minimal. Clean, uncluttered pins tend to outperform the busy ones.
- Make the title clearly readable. Someone scrolling on their feed should be able to read your pin title or essay newsletter title at a glance — this is really important for pins for Substack content.
- Screenshots directly from Substack work well. The Substack layout is clean and recognisable. A cropped screenshot of your post header, with your title visible, often performs as well as a designed graphic — sometimes better.
- Putting images that relate to the idea of your post, and a screenshot of the Substack article over it tend to do better. I think it just helps the user understand very quickly, at a glance, what this pin is about and if it is for them.
- You don’t need a Canva template for every pin. Consistency matters more.
How to create a Pinterest for Substack strategy
- Switch to a Pinterest Business account
It’s free. A Pinterest Business account gives you access to Pinterest Analytics, which tells you which pins are driving traffic, how many impressions you’re getting, and where your clicks are coming from. You need this data to understand what’s working.
2. Build boards around your Substack topics
Don’t create one board called ‘My writing’. Create boards around the topics you write about — the way a reader would search for them. If you write about books, personal essays, and living in your twenties, those are three different boards with three different search audiences. For example, some of my boards are “Essays to Read,” “Media to Consume,” and “Are You Afraid of Being Seen.” I made the last one for one particular essay I had written that did well on Pinterest, so I made a dedicated board to signal to Pinterest my ‘expertise’ of sorts in this subject.
3. Create a pin for every Substack post
Every Substack post you publish should become at least one pin. Create the pin, link it directly to the post, and don’t overthink it. You don’t need elaborate graphics. A clean image with the post title, or a screenshot from the post itself, is enough. The more pins you create over time, the more entry points you have into Pinterest’s search results. But always maintain a seven-day gap between posting the same Substack URL again.
4. Write SEO-first pin descriptions
This is the part most people aren’t aware of, and it’s where a lot of the value lives. Your pin description is searchable. Write it the way your ideal reader would search — not the way you’d describe your own work. Use the Pinterest search bar to look for searches that relate to your pin’s topic, and use the suggestions that come up as keywords to add to your pin description.
Instead of: ‘My latest essay on feeling lost in your mid-twenties’ Try: ‘Feeling lost in your mid-twenties? This essay explores the specific kind of restlessness that hits when life looks right on paper but feels wrong. For anyone navigating their late 20s.’
5. Batch create and pin consistently
Pinterest rewards consistency over time. Batch-creating pins — setting aside time to create several at once and scheduling or spreading them out — is far more sustainable than trying to pin every day. The goal is regular presence over the long term, not a single burst of activity. This is how Pinterest for Substack can become a system that sends your Substack readers and subscribers.
What to expect: a realistic timeline
Here is the most important thing I can tell you about using Pinterest for Substack:
The first two months will probably look like nothing is happening. That’s normal.
Pinterest content takes time to index, get distributed, and accumulate saves. The platform’s algorithm rewards pins that gather engagement gradually — saves, clicks, repins — and it surfaces content based on search relevance, not recency. That means your pins from two months ago might suddenly start performing because they’ve hit a critical mass of engagement.
My own experience: I started pinning in September 2025 and saw nothing for the first month. I stopped. Then I came back and noticed one pin had started picking up traffic. That was the signal I needed to take it seriously.
From that point, I posted consistently. By the time I checked my Pinterest analytics properly, I had over one million impressions. That figure didn’t come from one pin — it came from accumulated content doing its job steadily over time.
Month 1: Little to no visible movement. This is expected.
Months 2–3: Pins start accumulating saves and impressions. Traffic begins.
Month 4+: Compounding. Older pins keep working. New pins have a base to build from.
The writers who give up after three weeks are the ones who say Pinterest doesn’t work. The ones who stay past that threshold are the ones who end up with a traffic source that works while they sleep.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I claim my Substack on Pinterest?
This is a common question — and the honest answer requires a small caveat upfront.
If your Substack is on the standard address format (yourname.substack.com), you cannot claim it on Pinterest. Pinterest’s claiming process requires you to verify ownership of a domain through either an HTML meta tag or a DNS TXT record, and because the substack.com domain belongs to Substack, not you, you don’t have the access required to complete that verification.
To claim your Substack on Pinterest, you need a custom domain. Substack offers custom domain setup for $50 USD per year. Once you have a custom domain connected to your Substack, the process is:
- Go to your Pinterest Business account and click the menu icon in the top right corner.
- Select Settings, then click Claimed accounts from the left-hand navigation.
- Click Claim next to ‘Website’ and enter your custom domain URL.
- Choose the Add a TXT record option. Pinterest will generate a TXT record for you — copy it.
- Go to your domain registrar (wherever you purchased your domain) and navigate to your DNS settings.
- Add a new DNS TXT record and paste in the code Pinterest provided.
- Return to Pinterest and click Continue. Verification can take up to 72 hours.
- Once verified, you’ll see a green ‘Connected’ confirmation on your Claimed accounts page.
Once your domain is claimed, all pins linking to your Substack will be attributed to your Pinterest account, which improves your analytics data and can give your content a visibility boost.
What Substack content does well on Pinterest?
These are the content types that tend to consistently perform:
- Essays with a specific hook. The more precisely you name a feeling, experience, or question, the more searchable and clickable your pin becomes.
- How-to and practical posts. Anything with a clear utility — ‘how to start journaling’, ‘how to build a reading habit’, ‘Supplement stack for moms’— does well.
- Deep personal writing on defined topics. Journaling, media consumption, brain rot, late-twenties life, and reading habits — these topics have active search audiences on Pinterest.
- Book-related content. Lists and recommendations perform strongly. Specific titles work better than general ones — ‘books about women in their thirties’ will do better than ‘my favourite reads’.
On the design side, minimal pins with the post title clearly readable tend to outperform heavily designed graphics. Screenshots taken directly from Substack, showing your post header and title, work surprisingly well and take almost no time to create.
How can writers on Substack grow their audience with Pinterest?
The short answer: treat Pinterest like SEO, not like social media.
The longer answer:
- Create a Pinterest Business account (free) for access to analytics. This is your starting point for any serious Pinterest for Substack strategy.
- Build boards around the ideas you write about, and not your publication name. Think about what your ideal reader searches for.
- Pin every post. Link directly to the Substack article. Don’t only pin new content — go back and create pins for older posts too.
- Write keyword-first descriptions. Ask yourself: what would my ideal reader type into a search bar to find this post? Write that.
- Design for clarity and search, and to some extent, aesthetics. Your title should be the hero of every pin. Screenshots from Substack are a quick, effective option.
- Be consistent over time. Batch-create pins if daily posting isn’t sustainable. What matters is regular presence over months, not bursts of activity.
- Expect a slow start. Budget at least a month or two before any visible movement in your metrics. Pinterest rewards patience and rewards the writers who create content steadily.
The writers who see results on Pinterest aren’t necessarily the ones with the most followers or the best graphics. They’re the ones who treat Pinterest for Substack as a long-term search engine strategy and stick with it long enough to let the content compound into a real business asset.
The Long Game
Most of the platforms writers use to grow their audience are built around recency. The newest post wins ot the most frequent poster wins. The algorithm decides who gets seen today, and tomorrow it resets.
Pinterest for Substack doesn’t work like that. A pin you publish in March can bring in a subscriber in November, because someone searched for exactly what you wrote, found it, read it, and liked it enough to subscribe.
If you write on Substack and you want more readers — the right readers, the ones who actually want to read — Pinterest for Substack is worth taking seriously. The ideas you’ve already published are sitting there, waiting to be found.
Want help setting this up for your own content?
Matcha Creative works with writers and content creators to build Pinterest strategies that drive consistent, compounding traffic. If you’re ready to stop relying on platforms that reset every 24 hours, let’s talk.
New to Matcha? We’re so excited to meet ya! We’re Shika and Shyla – Pinterest and email marketers for bloggers and lifestyle eCommerce businesses.
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