How to Create a Successful Pin for Pinterest
What makes a successful pin? Pinterest is a dreamy, visual website where people go for inspiration and planning. To create successful Pins for Pinterest, you melt into the aspirational aspect and inspire people to save your Pins to their boards.
What’s new is that Pinterest favors new, fresh content. Let’s look at how you can incorporate the idea of “fresh Pins” and incorporate it with the essential Pinterest elements to create beautiful Pins.
You’ll be at an advantage if you create new Pinterest Pins every week.
The most shared Pins are helpful and beautiful. I want to share the elements of a successful Pinterest Pin with examples to help you be more proactive in your execution.
Steps to Add a Pinterest Pin:
Step 1: Click the + sign at the top on desktop or on the bottom on mobile
Step 2: Choose your image or graphic – make sure that you name your file to help with Pinterest search
Step 3: Give your Pin a title – you can use up to 100 characters
Step 4: Write a description of up to 500 characters with clear text to inspire and educate
Step 5: Add a link to your website or blog
Step 6: Publish now or schedule for later right on Pinterest!
Step 7: Describe your Pin's visual details with Alt text – This makes your Pin more accessible to people with visual impairments by helping them understand what’s happening in your Pin
Why You Should Make Pinterest Pins
- Bring traffic to your website from Pinterest – social media traffic has been dropping, but Pinterest isn’t social media. It’s a visual discovery engine.
- Create resources for your community.
- Build search traffic on Pinterest and Google by using keywords and SEO tactics.
- Be a part of the positive, inspiring community that Pinterest has built. Pinterest boasts 478 million users as of 2021!
- Create brand awareness for your products and services.
- Inspire your Pinners with your ideas and DIYs.
- Gain leads by using lead magnets to gather email leads.
Pinterest is the ultimate wish list. Pinterest is moving towards a creator platform and loves to see fresh content added in the form of Pins, Idea Pins, and Video Pins.
Think of your Pinterest Pins as your visual portfolio, and make your images as appealing as possible.
Design matters
On Pinterest, long, tall images command the show taking up the most visual real estate in the Pinterest feed. Pinterest’s preferred image aspect ratio is 2:3 to 1:3.5.
To create pins that generate interaction, design images 1000 x 1500 pixels. While this size might not be optimal for your blog, you can create a pin on Pinterest with your custom graphic and embed your pin into your blog post. This size creates an engaging invitation to repin your pinned article.
You can highlight your Pinterest Pins by showcasing them on your profile cover. From your main Pinterest profile, select the pencil in the top right corner and choose to show a specific board or recent activity: Pins people saved from your claimed website and linked accounts.
On my Pinterest profile, I share my board for my blog.
Add context to your content
Your Pinterest pin images should help tell the story of your article, recipe, or craft that you’re sharing. The image is a breadcrumb leading to the main meal, and people don’t want a surprise when they arrive.
Adding a text overlay to your image can help add context. Make sure that your font is easy to read and that there's enough contrast for the text to be read easily. When adding text, think about how it will educate and inspire people – this isn't the place for a pushy call to action.
Use high-quality images
85% of the Pinterest activity is up close and personal on mobile phones, so people look directly at your graphic. Depending on the size of the images, three to four images will be shown in the stream, or only one picture if people tap to see more.
Are you creating Pinterest images that will stop scrolling and entice a tap?
Your image must capture attention quickly and hold it with exciting text or visuals.
I created this example in Canva. It's on-brand, easy to read, and describes the article. With a Canva Pro account, you can use all the photos and elements in Canva at no additional charge! This was a great update, as they used to charge extra for Pro images and elements. You can see this image animated on Pinterest here.
Add your link
Sometimes, people get so caught up adding images to Pinterest they forget the crucial step of adding their URL by editing the image once it's uploaded.
One of the most popular things people ask me is how to add a new Pin to Pinterest – many people only repin items already on the website. It's really easy to create your own Pins. Here's how!
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Click + at the bottom right corner of Pinterest and click Upload a Pin
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Click Choose Image and find the file on your computer
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Add a URL to your Pin and add a description
- Pick a board for your Pin
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Click Save
Craft an interesting description
Write thoughtful descriptions with user-friendly language, and include keywords in the text. Beware: don’t stuff in keywords that aren’t of value to the pin. Make sure the information is helpful, minimal, and appeals to pinners. Plus, avoid overly sales-like text.
Add keywords for search
Pinterest images are essential, but text counts too. Optimize your pins for search by including industry or niche-specific keywords.
Consider your target market and determine what they’re typing in search when looking for your product or service. Now use those in your Pin text areas:
Pin text
- Title
- Description
- Link text
- Board name
- Link alt text
- Image caption
- Page title
- Page meta title
- Page meta description
- Page meta keywords
The key is to use natural language for your Pinterest descriptions. Tell people what your article is about to inspire them to click through to read it on your blog.
Create Relevant Content Using Pinterest Trends
When prepping your content to keep it fresh, use Pinterest Trends to inspire and make it relevant. Use the Pinterest trends tool to gauge the potential reach for topics you might want to post about. Just type in a keyword and see how many people have searched for it over time. That data can help you decide where to focus your content.
See it in action on this search for “autumn bucket list.”
Successful pins do not have hashtags.
Hashtags were a thing on Pinterest for a hot minute, but Pinterest again recommends that you don't use hashtags on your pins. Add keywords in your descriptions for the same results as using a hashtag.
Pinterest says, “Hashtags aren't needed on Pinterest to help Pinners discover the freshest content.
I hope these ideas make your Pinterest Pin creation more effective and natural as you follow these best practices images. Spending time and effort will pay off for your Pinterest presence and bring more traffic to your website.
