When you lot first join Pinterest, pinning seems uncomplicated. Yous upload an paradigm and a link to a board y'all accept, and voila -- you've got a pin. The fervor sets in and yous begin to pin all the things you can find: photographs, infographics, logos, icons. As long as it's an epitome, it gets pinned.

Merely if you're trying to grow your business through Pinterest, that strategy won't assist you at all.

Free Resource: 12 Pinterest Templates for Business

Sadly, y'all can't pin a million things and wait people to click through to your content every time. You lot've got to brand each pin count.

Optimizing pins instead of posting willy-nilly isn't hard. It but calls for more than thought into your make: What exactly are yous pinning? What does it say about your business organisation? Why should your audience (and ultimately, your customers) care?

Continue reading to learn how to create your ain pin, as well as the most important parts of a pivot your audience will want to pin themselves.

How to Create a Pin on Pinterest

  1. Click the plus sign (+) at the summit of your Pinterest profile.
  2. Select "Create Pin" from the dropdown menu.
  3. Upload an image file from your computer and add a destination link.
  4. Enter a destination link from which to relieve an epitome from that website.
  5. Championship your pin.
  6. Add together a pin clarification.
  7. Choose a lath to add your pin to.
  8. Select "Save" to create your Pinterest pin.

1. Click the plus sign (+) at the acme of your Pinterest profile.

To create your starting time pin, navigate to your profile past clicking your proper noun and/or profile moving-picture show on the height-righthand corner of Pinterest.

2. Select "Create Pivot" from the dropdown menu.

On your profile page, above the involvement boards you selected when creating your Pinterest profile, click the plus sign icon ("+") and select "Create Pivot" from the dropdown carte du jour that appears, equally shown beneath.

create-a-pin-button

3. Upload an image file from your figurer and add a destination link.

If you're using a desktop calculator, clicking "Create Pin" from your Pinterest profile page will bring you to the pin-creation class shown beneath.

create-a-pin-on-pinterest

The start affair you'll practice is upload an image to represent your pin. You can do this in two ways:

  • By uploading an prototype file y'all take saved on your desktop and adding a destination link (if you use this method, keep reading through this pace)
  • Past inbound the URL of the website hosting your image then selecting your desired image (if you apply this method, skip to step iv)

To upload an image file from a folder on your computer, but click the gray box and select the image file from the window that appears on your screen. You tin can besides drag the image file itself direct into this gray box.

Once your epitome is uploaded, click "Add together a destination link" on the lesser-righthand corner of the class and enter the website you want this pin to link to when users click on it.

4. Enter a destination link from which to save an image from that website.

If the image yous want to pin already lives online somewhere, click "Save from site" beneath the greyness prototype-upload box, and enter the URL of the website. This will be the website your prototype automatically links to when your pin goes live.

In the window that appears, you might see more than than 1 epitome to choose from -- these are all the images Pinterest found living on the webpage you're linking to. Roll until yous discover the epitome you desire to pin, and select it.

5. Title your pin.

With your image successfully uploaded, information technology's fourth dimension to optimize your pin with appropriate text. Click the "Add your championship" preview text and give your pin an enticing preview that all-time represents the content of your pin -- and the website to which the image links.

For case, if you're pinning an image of a denim outfit, and linking to the purchase page of that outfit, you lot might title your pivot "New Denim Article of clothing by [Company Proper name]."

6. Add together a pin description.

Add together a description for your pivot below your title, up to 500 characters. Keep in listen but the first 50 characters of your pin description will appear beneath the prototype in user's Pinterest newsfeeds. We'll talk nearly how to optimize your pivot description in the next section of this blog mail service.

7. Choose a Pinterest board to add together your pin to.

Your concluding task earlier saving your pivot is to add this pin to a "lath." As a Pinterest user, you tin can create boards that sort your pinned content based on your various interests.

select-pinterest-board

To select or create a board for this pivot, click "Choose a board (required)" beneath your pin's destination link. Y'all'll be taken to the page shown above, where you lot can choose or create a lath that best represents the type of content you're currently pinning.

eight. Click "Salvage" to create your Pinterest pin.

Once you've selected a lath to add your pin to, return to the pin-creation form and hitting the red "Save" button at the acme of your screen. Follow the prompts to button your pin live, and you lot'll be all set.

The Anatomy of a Perfectly Optimized Pinterest Pin

pinterest-pin-example

i. High-Quality Prototype

This seems like the almost obvious of them all ... but it has to be said. Images should exist about 736 pixels wide (when expanded) with no pixelation. In general, alpine images work best every bit they will announced on the screen longer while people are scrolling through their feed, but you don't desire your images to exist overwhelmingly long.

There are lots of ways to make your pins look more cute, but if y'all're just getting started, sticking to a large, high-resolution image will work. Yous don't have to create every image you pin (though if you want to, here are some free tools to help you), just yous should stay away from pinning cheesy stock photos -- Pinterest users love inspirational, cute photos or graphics, or images that are extremely helpful, clever, or informational.

2. Accompanying Title and/or Descriptive Picture

As well beingness high quality, the paradigm should exist indicative of what's at the pin's link. You don't desire to mislead your Pinterest followers with an image that doesn't match up with the accompanying link -- it feels like a bait-and-switch.

Instead, cull an image that reflects the link's contents. If you're struggling to convey an abstruse concept, feel free to add text to your image to describe it. The above example didn't need that -- the icons themselves conveyed what was behind the link: free downloadable icons. If you want an example of a smashing pin with text on it, cheque the one out below. Without the title on the image, the pin wouldn't about be as strong -- people would take no idea that this was an ebook they could download.

Moral of the story hither: make sure that people know what'due south within the pivot then they feel enticed to click. If you experience similar the image isn't pulling its weight on its own, add text. That little flake of text could make the difference between someone clicking on your pin or not.

iii. Links With UTM Parameters

Although you might provide a link to the content you're promoting in the pin's description (which we'll talk about in footstep 5, below), it'southward just as important to include this link in the epitome you're pinning. If the paradigm you're pinning already lives somewhere online, this is piece of cake to practise -- y'all'll simply add the website link starting time, and so select the image yous want to pin once this link has been entered.

What Pinterest won't prompt you to do, merely you should practice anyway, is add a UTM code to the end of this link. UTM codes, also known equally tracking tags, allow you lot to identify where your website traffic came from if it didn't come up organically from a search engine. In this case, you can add a UTM code indicating when your website traffic came from a Pinterest pivot.

New to using UTM tracking codes? Get the low-down on how they work here.

iv. Attribution

Attribution goes both for pins you create yourself and pins yous post from other people's content. It's actually like shooting fish in a barrel to become content stolen on Pinterest, and so you lot want to make sure you're always giving credit where credit is due and protecting yourself if others won't do the same for you.

It'due south pretty elementary: If you lot're pinning someone else'due south content, give them credit in the clarification or the link y'all're connecting to your pin. If you're pinning your original content, add your logo or website URL in the photograph -- if folks share your content without attributing it to yous, people will still know where it came from. In the example higher up, this is a design HubSpot fabricated, so nosotros threw up our logo in the background -- it'south not intrusive, only it helps identify the paradigm as ours.

5. Snappy, SEO-Rich Clarification

A pin's description is one of the most overlooked parts of a pin -- scroll through Pinterest and you'll see lots of pins without any at all. Fifty-fifty though others are doing it, you lot shouldn't. If y'all're trying to use Pinterest to build your business, you can't forget the description -- it could take besides big of an impact on your results.

Keep your copy curtailed, nevertheless enticing. Tell readers what they'll get if they click on the pivot. Pinterest allots upwardly to 500 characters of space for a pivot description, reserving the beginning 50 characters for what will appear on nigh user's Pinterest newsfeeds. All things considered, pins with descriptions effectually 100 characters are often ideal to maintain brevity while enticing users to click your pin.

Also make certain you lot're using SEO-friendly terms to depict the content behind the pivot so your pins tin successfully rank in search engines. Notice in the case above nosotros also include the phrase "we're hiring" in Castilian to optimize the pin for keywords used by Spanish-speaking professionals -- the target audience for this particular pivot.

6. Call-to-Action

Even on Pinterest, where it's a standard practice to click on links, people demand a fiddling overt reminder to click. Even though you have a link in the pin itself, add together a footling telephone call-to-activity in the description to the pin's link -- it could pay off big-time for yous.

*Rich Pin Information

I know what you're thinking: Why is this one a star instead of a number? Did Ginny make one huge typo in the eye of her blog post?

Nope -- this is a special placeholder for Rich Pins. You lot'll observe that the image isn't one. Rich Pins pull extra data into a pin whenever you lot or someone else pins specific things from your website. If yous're a spider web programmer, you can apply to Pinterest for permission to feature information on products, movies, articles, recipes, or places. Here'due south an example of a Rich Pin featuring an adorable greyhound:

etsy_rich_pin_example

Encounter that information right below the championship of the pin? Y'all tin meet that this wall art is in stock and costs $15 without having to click through.

The reason I included this every bit a star is because not all businesses can realistically use Rich Pins ... but if your business can, you absolutely should. Rich Pins can perform much better than their not-so-rich counterparts. In fact, co-ordinate to Shopify, 39% of "pinners" on Pinterest are more than probable to be active shoppers than not-pinners, and 93% of Pinterest users are on the platform to explore potential purchases.

If y'all're looking to optimize your Pinterest presence to the fullest and have content that could fall in a Rich Pin category, effigy out how to get them enabled for your website's content.

seven. A Lot of Other Great Pins

This is kind of a play a joke on element because information technology'due south non technically in the pin itself, but because of the way the pin layout looks when expanded, I had to include it here. Try clicking on a pin in Pinterest -- when you aggrandize the pin, all the other pivot images from the user'southward board are pulled in. This gives you lot more opportunities to appoint with your Pinterest followers all without doing a thing.

To make sure you're optimizing the other pins on the board, all you have to practise is follow all of the tips to a higher place for each pin. With a footling more mindfulness when pinning, you'll have more and more opportunities to grow your business through Pinterest. Sounds like a sweet deal to me.

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Originally published Mar 26, 2019 9:27:00 PM, updated March 15 2019