When you first join Pinterest, pinning seems elementary. You lot upload an paradigm and a link to a board y'all have, and voila -- y'all've got a pin. The fervor sets in and you brainstorm to pin all the things you lot can notice: photographs, infographics, logos, icons. As long as it's an image, it gets pinned.

Merely if yous're trying to grow your business organization 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 fourth dimension. You've got to make each pin count.

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

Go along reading to learn how to create your own pivot, also as the about of import parts of a pivot your audience volition desire to pin themselves.

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

To create your first pin, navigate to your profile by clicking your proper noun and/or profile moving-picture show on the summit-righthand corner of Pinterest.

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

On your profile folio, above the interest boards you selected when creating your Pinterest profile, click the plus sign icon ("+") and select "Create Pivot" from the dropdown menu that appears, as shown beneath.

create-a-pin-button

3. Upload an image file from your computer 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 below.

create-a-pin-on-pinterest

The commencement thing you'll do is upload an image to represent your pin. Y'all can do this in two ways:

  • By uploading an image file yous have saved on your desktop and calculation a destination link (if you utilize this method, continue reading through this stride)
  • By entering the URL of the website hosting your image then selecting your desired image (if you use this method, skip to footstep 4)

To upload an image file from a folder on your computer, simply click the gray box and select the image file from the window that appears on your screen. Y'all can also elevate the prototype file itself directly into this gray box.

Once your paradigm is uploaded, click "Add a destination link" on the bottom-righthand corner of the course and enter the website you lot want this pivot to link to when users click on information technology.

four. Enter a destination link from which to save an prototype from that website.

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

In the window that appears, you might meet more than one paradigm to cull from -- these are all the images Pinterest found living on the webpage you're linking to. Curlicue until you discover the image you desire to pin, and select it.

five. Title your pin.

With your epitome successfully uploaded, it's time to optimize your pin with appropriate text. Click the "Add your title" preview text and give your pivot an enticing preview that best represents the content of your pin -- and the website to which the epitome links.

For instance, if y'all're pinning an image of a denim outfit, and linking to the purchase page of that outfit, you might championship your pivot "New Denim Wear by [Company Proper noun]."

half-dozen. Add together a pivot description.

Add a clarification for your pin beneath your title, up to 500 characters. Proceed in mind only the first l characters of your pivot clarification will appear beneath the prototype in user'southward Pinterest newsfeeds. We'll talk most how to optimize your pin clarification in the next department of this blog mail.

7. Choose a Pinterest lath to add your pivot to.

Your terminal chore before saving your pin is to add this pin to a "lath." Every bit a Pinterest user, y'all can create boards that sort your pinned content based on your various interests.

select-pinterest-board

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

8. Click "Save" to create your Pinterest pin.

One time you've selected a board to add together your pin to, return to the pin-creation form and hitting the red "Save" push 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

1. Loftier-Quality Image

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

At that place are lots of ways to make your pins look more beautiful, but if you're only getting started, sticking to a large, loftier-resolution image will work. You don't have to create every image you lot pivot (though if you want to, here are some gratuitous tools to help you), only y'all should stay abroad from pinning cheesy stock photos -- Pinterest users love inspirational, cute photos or graphics, or images that are extremely helpful, clever, or informational.

2. Accompanying Championship and/or Descriptive Picture

Likewise existence high quality, the image should be indicative of what'south at the pin's link. Yous don't want to mislead your Pinterest followers with an image that doesn't match upward with the accompanying link -- it feels like a bunko.

Instead, choose an image that reflects the link'south contents. If you're struggling to convey an abstract concept, feel free to add text to your image to describe it. The above case didn't need that -- the icons themselves conveyed what was behind the link: free downloadable icons. If you lot want an case of a great pivot with text on it, cheque the one out beneath. Without the title on the epitome, the pin wouldn't almost be equally strong -- people would have no idea that this was an ebook they could download.

Moral of the story hither: make certain that people know what's within the pin so they experience enticed to click. If y'all feel similar the image isn't pulling its weight on its own, add text. That little chip of text could make the difference between someone clicking on your pin or not.

3. Links With UTM Parameters

Although yous might provide a link to the content you lot're promoting in the pin's description (which we'll talk almost in pace 5, below), it's just every bit important to include this link in the paradigm you're pinning. If the image you're pinning already lives somewhere online, this is like shooting fish in a barrel to do -- yous'll just add together the website link first, and so select the image you want to pivot once this link has been entered.

What Pinterest won't prompt y'all to do, but you should do anyhow, is add together a UTM code to the stop of this link. UTM codes, also known as tracking tags, allow you to identify where your website traffic came from if it didn't come organically from a search engine. In this case, yous can add together 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 piece of work hither.

4. Attribution

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

It's pretty uncomplicated: If you lot're pinning someone else'due south content, give them credit in the clarification or the link you're connecting to your pin. If you're pinning your original content, add your logo or website URL in the photo -- if folks share your content without attributing information technology to you, people volition still know where it came from. In the case above, this is a design HubSpot made, then we threw upward our logo in the groundwork -- it'southward not intrusive, but it helps place the image as ours.

5. Snappy, SEO-Rich Description

A pin's description is one of the most disregarded parts of a pin -- ringlet through Pinterest and you'll see lots of pins without any at all. Fifty-fifty though others are doing information technology, yous shouldn't. If yous're trying to use Pinterest to build your business organisation, you can't forget the description -- information technology could have too big of an impact on your results.

Keep your re-create concise, yet enticing. Tell readers what they'll become if they click on the pin. Pinterest allots upward to 500 characters of space for a pin clarification, reserving the first 50 characters for what volition appear on virtually user's Pinterest newsfeeds. All things considered, pins with descriptions around 100 characters are ofttimes ideal to maintain brevity while enticing users to click your pin.

Besides make sure you're using SEO-friendly terms to depict the content behind the pin so your pins can successfully rank in search engines. Discover in the example above we also include the phrase "nosotros're hiring" in Spanish to optimize the pin for keywords used by Spanish-speaking professionals -- the target audition for this particular pivot.

6. Call-to-Activeness

Fifty-fifty on Pinterest, where it's a standard practice to click on links, people need a little overt reminder to click. Even though yous have a link in the pin itself, add together a little telephone call-to-action in the clarification to the pin'south link -- it could pay off big-time for you.

*Rich Pivot Data

I know what yous're thinking: Why is this i a star instead of a number? Did Ginny brand one huge typo in the heart of her blog post?

Nope -- this is a special placeholder for Rich Pins. You'll detect that the image isn't one. Rich Pins pull extra data into a pin whenever you or someone else pins specific things from your website. If yous're a web developer, y'all can apply to Pinterest for permission to characteristic data on products, movies, manufactures, recipes, or places. Hither's an case of a Rich Pin featuring an ambrosial greyhound:

etsy_rich_pin_example

See that data right beneath the title of the pin? You can see 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 employ Rich Pins ... merely if your business concern can, you absolutely should. Rich Pins tin can perform much better than their not-so-rich counterparts. In fact, according to Shopify, 39% of "pinners" on Pinterest are more than likely to be active shoppers than non-pinners, and 93% of Pinterest users are on the platform to explore potential purchases.

If you lot're looking to optimize your Pinterest presence to the fullest and take content that could fall in a Rich Pin category, figure out how to get them enabled for your website's content.

7. A Lot of Other Great Pins

This is kind of a trick chemical element because it'due south non technically in the pivot itself, merely because of the style the pin layout looks when expanded, I had to include information technology here. Attempt clicking on a pin in Pinterest -- when you expand the pin, all the other pivot images from the user'south board are pulled in. This gives you more than opportunities to appoint with your Pinterest followers all without doing a matter.

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

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