Is Your Pinterest Account Suspended for Spam? Find Out How to Fix It

In this post I am going to explain what happened when I somehow managed to get my Pinterest account suspended for spam. I’ll outline:

• The circumstances around my suspension.
• How I found out my account was suspended.
• How I managed to get my account reactivated within 10 hours.

It’s not a pleasant experience, but you can learn from what happened to me and follow the steps I took if Pinterest suspends your account for spam too.

Of course… this assumes you haven’t actually knowingly spammed Pinterest!

Protect Your Pinterest Account With Tailwind

Tailwind’s SmartGuide function monitors your Pinterest activity to help avoid Pinterest account suspension. Read my review of Tailwind App for Pinterest for more details.

The Background to my Pinterest Account Being Suspended

Recently, I read a blog post about what to do when Pinterest’s spam detectors ban your account. By some ironic quirk of fate, the following day I checked my emails and saw the following email notification from confirm@account.pinterest.com, advising that my Pinterest account was suspended for spam!

Why the $@*^ Would Pinterest Suspend My Account for Spam?

I’m not an expert in Pinterest (yet 🙂 ), and I know right now I’m not especially good at creating highly pinspiring (did you see what I did there!) graphics to incite the Pinterest hoi-polloi to hop up and down in a re-pinning frenzy.

But spam?

I create all my own images for Pinterest and at up to two pins per day (yes, I know the gurus say you need to pin much more than this), I wouldn’t say with any degree of confidence I’m the most prolific of pinners the social media world has ever seen!

On the other hand I feel pretty confident that my pinning volume isn’t even remotely spammy.

Before I vent(ure) any further though, I’ll tell you that an account suspension for spam is the latest in a fairly confusing series of Pinterest experiences, which have seriously irritated me. Not just irritated me… but frustrated, annoyed and discombobulated all at the same time!

Did I mention I’m irritated?

My Account Suspension

On the day my account was suspended, I logged into Pinterest as usual, around 08:15. I looked at my analytics reports and then decided I’d browse some of the accounts of people who follow me.

I clicked on one account, browsed around a few of the boards and then “close-upped” one of the pins I liked the look of.

The moment I clicked on the pinned image, my screen refreshed and up popped the following image:

My first reaction… WTF! As I mentioned earlier, I’ve never (knowingly) done anything spammy. I’m not even a minor pinner! The only thing I’m really guilty of is curating my own pins and not really engaging with others… which may or may not be a spamming signal.

At 08:35 (GMT) confirm@account.pinterest.com sent me an email explaining in a little more detail (but no specifics) why my Pinterest account was suspended.

It’s not a big account, but the posts I’d created up to that point had likely taken me many days of work over the months I’d been pinning. I was pretty flummoxed to say the least.

I decided to research to see if there was anything I could do. The following are the steps I took that resulted in my account being reinstated within 10 hours.

What to do if Your Pinterest Account is Suspended for Spam

The first thing I did was to click the link in the email confirm@account.pinterest.com sent me.

This auto-submitted my appeal at around 08:40.

Having hurriedly looked around for anything else I might do I came across the Pinterest Business Support email (creators-support@pinterest-business.zendesk.com) and thought… what the heck, I might as well send them a direct message too.

So at 08:44 I forwarded the Pinterest account suspension email along with the following message.

Almost immediately after I sent my email, I received the following auto-reply from creators-support@pinterest-business.zendesk.com.

My first thoughts? There’s not a lot of love in the creation of this Zendesk mail template for such a big social media player… but thanks for sending me a link to best practices!

At 08:44 I also received the following email from creators-support@pinterest-business.zendesk.com.

My first thoughts? There’s not a lot of love in the creation of this mail template either! But I was glad to have heard something back from the Business Support team.

All went quiet… and I went about my business until…

The Final Part of the Suspended Account Saga

At 17:12 I received this mail.

My first thoughts? Wow… and Pristine is a really lovely name.

That was that it seems. An over-zealous spam filter had picked up something about my account or my activity it didn’t like. No detailed explanation as to what specifically triggered my Pinterest account suspension so I can ensure it doesn’t happen again… which is a pity.

However, taking a positive view, I only had a small account I’d been working on for a few months and I managed to get my account unsuspended within 10 hours. I’ve heard of cases where people have lost their accounts after many years building them up. Some have lost thousands of followers and pins in the process.

How would you feel about that? Knowing how I felt when as site I worked on suffered a Google manual penalty and the devastation that caused… I’d feel completely floored.

In terms of my account, without any detailed explanation from Pinterest the only reasons I can think of as to why I was suspended for spam are that I left a spammy footprint:

• Only pinning my own images.
• Not actively involving myself in the Pinterest community and this might be a spam signal.
• Joining a group board where perhaps someone or something has been penalized?

So… I’ve begun pinning my own posts tentatively at a rate of two a day again and I’m going to be more active within the Pinterest community!

Update

I’ve gotten a lot smarter since I had my account suspended and decided to use a scheduling tool to help me grow my Pinterest account in the right way. After researching, I chose Tailwind.

Tailwind is primarily a scheduling tool for Pinterest but it does way more than just manage a queue of pins for you. It also provides detailed analytics about your Pinterest account, boards and individual pins.

More importantly for this post, Tailwind provides a super important function that monitors pinning frequency to ensure you don’t get your Pinterest account suspended.

I’ve been using it for several months and I’m seeing some very pleasing results… read my Tailwind App review to see my full appraisal and why I feel it’s a vital tool to help you manage all your Pinterest activity and prevent account suspension at the same time.

Alternatively, you can try Tailwind for free and use it to schedule 100 pins and 30 Instagram posts with no time limit. Click the banner below to set up a trial account.

Summary

• Make sure you read and understand the Pinterest Community Guidelines.
• Pinterest spam bots get it wrong!
• If you manage to get your Pinterest account suspended for spam, you CAN get it reinstated… as long as you are not actively spamming!
• Click the link in the suspension notification email to auto appeal the decision.
• Forward the suspension notification email to creators-support@pinterest-business.zendesk.com along with a polite request for them to reconsider, explaining your case.
• Use a Pinterest scheduler like Tailwind to help monitor your pinning frequency.

I guess the one big takeaway for me is that none of us can rely on one channel for traffic. We have very little recourse if our only source of traffic disappears suddenly, so it’s vital to diversify and work across the board to look for traffic in many places.

That’s it from me for now. I’ll update this post in a week or two, with details about how my account is performing and whether I am receiving impressions again!

Thanks for visiting.

Paul

Have you had your Pinterest account suspended for spam? What was your experience. Drop me a comment and let me know.