You’re an enthusiastic pinner, but… Have you ever wondered whether how you’re using Pinterest is in alignment with best practices? Are your pins driving traffic to your site, Etsy listings, or even app downloads?
Pinterest is one of the older social networking sites at this point, having first come online back in March of 2010. It gained a lot of visibility in the early years but now seems to have settled into a comfortable spot as a visual sharing service with a focus on home decor, food and drink, DIY and crafts, and fashion. Many fans say it is one of their best sources of traffic for their Web site or online shop, and since you can tag products, some users don’t even have a separate site, but just focus on making Pinterest their lead generator.
You can even post videos on Pinterest now! You’ll need a business account, but you can post videos tht are up to 30 minutes long (tho whether anyone will watch a video on Pinterest for 30 minutes is another discussion entirely).
On average, Pinterest sees about 500 million active monthly users, which means that traffic’s going up and it’s a great time to revisit best practices with posting content on Pinterest. I’ll use an article I just wrote about the 2024 BMW X2 M-Sport SUV for this demo; you can read it on my PlanetDave site if you’d like.
BASICS OF POSTING TO PINTEREST
To start out, note that for a site focused on user generated content, it’s surprising how often the “Post” or “Add Post” button seems to move around. I tend to use the web interface since it’s universal, but sometimes Post just vanishes from the home page:
In this instance, it turns out that the “Post” button is actually hidden under the “Home” button. That’s why the tiny “v” shows up. A click and the main navigation menu appears:
Choose “Create” to proceed.
Now you’ll see a blank screen that invites you to upload the image you want to pin:
Before taking this step, either grabbing an image from elsewhere on the Web or adding one of your own, let’s talk about images for a moment. The general rule of thumb is that the best performing images have a 2:3 image aspect ratio. That means that it’s taller than it is wide (so, 1000px x 1500px). You always want bright, crisp, high resolution images that are visually appealing too. Many of the most successful Pinners have essentially gained the skillset of pro photographers for just this reason.
Since I’m posting a car photo, it’s not really possible to have it be taller than wide, but I can certainly ensure that it’s a beautiful, high resolution image. Then it’s as easy as dragging the image onto the drop target…
The two fields shown under the image are critically important.
TITLE AND DESCRIPTION
While the image is what catches people’s eye, it’s the title and description that make your pin findable for search. You might only browse Pinterest but millions of users are searching for specific products, services, images, artwork, fashion, and so on. As a result, you want to have a pithy and enticing title and a description that slips in common keywords.
Here’s what I came up with:
Notice in the description that I’ve also included some hashtags; best practice is to include 3-4 hashtags that help people find the content. But you can see that the duplication of “BMW” and “X2” on both the title and description mean that it’s a very good match for anyone who searches either for the vehicle brand, or for the specific model. Findability.
Below the title and description are some additional fields that are also important:
The link is where you want people to go once they (hopefully!) click. In my case, it’ll be my article about the BMW X2, but it might lead to your craft listing on Etsy, a board game that you sell through Amazon, a client’s app store page with handy download link, and so on.
You’ll also want a thematically appropriate board and remember board names should be keyword rich too. Here are a couple of mine:
Notice my board isn’t “Cool Stuff to Drive” but instead includes both the words “cars” and “auto” to help my pins be maximally findable. Look at your own board names in this regard; are they cute and witty names, or do they help people find your content through savvy use of keywords and common industry expressions?
TAGGING THEMES AND TOPICS
In this regard, Tagged Topics are also really good because its where you can add additional keywords and keyphrases that describe the pin you’re about to post, but they’ll never be shown to the viewer. Load ’em up with keywords (that are directly relevant, of course). While there isn’t a “bmw x2” tag, there are a couple that will undoubtedly help:
You can see that I’ve already chosen Luxury SUV and BMW, and am now checking whether “sports car” is an option. Worth noting is that you can only add these tagged topics during the initial creation sequence. If you edit a pinned image later, this will not be shown or accessible.
In addition to tagged topics, you can also directly tag products as appropriate:
Posting something that evokes strong feelings, good and bad, from others? Consider disabling comments by turning off “Allow people to comment”. If you don’t want people to get sidetracked by your competitors, “Show similar products” might be worth disabling too.
LET’S POST THIS IMAGE ALREADY!
Done with everything? Double checked your spelling and grammar and made sure to add at least one tagged topic? Then click on the big, red “Publish” button on the top right.
You’ll see this:
Then after a few moments Pinterest will take you back to your own home screen. It used to then include your pin in the latest updates, but that seems to have been removed so you can check on your latest post by going to your profile, then clicking on “All Pins”. Here’s my BMW post:
Looks good, and notice that there are even some analytics at the top. Not useful yet, but in 30 days? Could be very helpful to allow you to analyze which of your pins is gaining the most visibility and generating the most clicks!
The only other observation I’ll make is that, like so many other social media channels, regular posting is very beneficial for gaining the best results. It doesn’t have to be daily but try to figure out what you can post at least a couple of times each week and you’ll start to build up a following. Good luck!
Pro Tip: I’ve been writing about Pinterest for many years. Please check out my extensive Pinterest help area and don’t forget to follow me on Pinterest too! I’m @d1taylor on the service!