Pinterest Best Practices | Little Luna

Pinterest Best Practices | Little Luna

the best! ! This is what changed the game for most of us bloggers…or at least for me. I went from a few hundred thousand pageviews a month to a few million pageviews a month. Most importantly, it’s another great way to get my content seen.

Fast forward a few years and it’s still my #1 traffic recommendation. I will continue to use Pinterest to grow my business and had the opportunity to meet with the Pinterest team when I was in San Francisco teaching a class for their employees at Knit Con – their annual internal conference celebrating Pinterest’s mission (learn new things and Get creative!).

Today, I’ll share Pinterest’s current best practices. Since I always get a lot of questions about the platform, I thought it would be fun to share some tips on all the things you can do as a content creator to build your brand on Pinterest and get the most out of it, but first Share why you should use the platform:

Why use Pinterest?

People on Pinterest are actively looking for ideas to try tomorrow or someday — whether it’s a new recipe or a change in clothing. This makes them the perfect audience for any new idea you’re brewing. Pinterest can help you grow your business because it works differently than other sites you’re used to:

1. bring you more traffic– When people find an idea they want to try, they can click through to a specific page on your website to learn how to make, make or buy it. That means more dollars for you.
2. surpass your followers– On Pinterest, your followers are the first to see your thoughts. The more they engage with your content, the more it will appear elsewhere on Pinterest (such as search results, feeds, and recommendations) for discovery by hundreds of millions of Pinners.
3. your thoughts are always there— People can discover your ideas the moment you publish them or months later. It all depends on what they are looking for and when it will be released.

The first steps to building a brand on Pinterest

There are a few things to ensure you build your brand on Pinterest and make the most of it. This is the first step that should be taken.

• Convert to a business account to access insights and other professional tools
• Claim your website to unlock analysis of all Pins saved from your website.When you claim your website, Pinterest recognizes all of your content and gives you attribution across Pinterest
• Really increase your followers. Pinterest starts by distributing your content to your followers to find out what resonates. From there, your top-performing Pins are shown to others looking for ideas similar to yours. Building an audience that engages with your content is one of the keys to unlocking further distribution. You can help cultivate a real audience by encouraging your loyal customers to follow you on your website or through your other channels.
  • How do followers get involved?
    • By clicking, featuring and saving!
• Optimize your profile Appear in search results: Consider updating your username, your business name, and your bio to tell Pinners who you are and the type of content you create. You’d be surprised how much impact a good profile picture can make.
• Pin often for best results
  • A consistent routine for months on end is the best way to build a loyal audience.Pinners find your Pins through their homefeed, follow feed, search and other recommendations – Create Pins linking to your website every day to help Pinners discover your latest content.
    • You won’t get bored with having a lot of Pins! Just aim to keep your content organized on relevant boards and save your thoughts regularly, not all at once.
    • It is also possible to have multiple Pins pointing to the same web page. In fact, it may be beneficial to save various images that might appeal to different types of Pinners. Just make sure to add a unique description specific to each Pin – it will improve your SEO.
  • Be patient and stick with it. Unlike social networks that typically reach their entire audience within the first 24 hours, your content’s reach on Pinterest will continue to grow over time as Pinner discovers and saves your Pins. Posting consistently for months on end is the best way to build a loyal audience.

As mentioned earlier, it’s important to use the platform consistently. Most of this means optimizing your images, but what’s the best way?

Image Optimization for Pinterest

• Avoid busy images; lifestyle images are often more effective and eye-catching than product photos.
• Fashion and style-related Pins showing products in real-life scenarios have a 30% higher click-through rate than Pins showing products on a plain background.
• Beauty Pins that showcase products in real life have an average 50% higher click-through rate, while Pins that focus on people have a 21% higher click-through rate.
• Use vertical aspect ratio
  • The ideal aspect ratio for Pins is 2:3, with a minimum size of 600×900 pixels. Pins that are much longer than this are not recommended as they may be cut off in places and the Pinner needs a close-up to see the entire pin. The outline coverage area also uses 2:3 pins, so longer pins are cropped when shown here.
• When people click on a Pin, they want to be taken to a landing page so they can learn more about your idea. Pins that lead to 404 pages or broken links will be penalized, so this is critical.
• Adding text to food images can help explain benefits or unique characteristics that the image itself may not explain, such as “5-minute dessert” or “no bake brownies.” Food Pins with these callouts had a 23% higher click-through rate and a 31% higher save rate
• To make your Pins easy to recreate, add step-by-step instructions.
  • Home and DIY Pins with instructional content have an average 80% higher retention rate.
  • Beauty pins with step-by-step instructions have a 78% increase in save rates.
  • Step-by-step instructions can save you up to 90% on food pins.
• Think like a Pinner! – Not necessarily your inner creator, stylist and photographer: scroll through the feed and instantly see text callouts and step-by-step instructions to let you know something is possible or possible
• To add new content, use up to 20 hashtags describing the content of the Pin. Hashtags should be used as broad search terms, not niche humor (#dinnerrecipes is great, #feedme is not). Recipe: Describe the main ingredients of the dish, how to cook it, what event it should be served at, and specific hashtags like #cleaneating, #slowcooker (no need to go back and hashtag old content)
  • What is the difference between hashtags and keywords?
    • Tags are sorted by recency
    • Keywords sorted by relevance

Trending on Pinterest

People use Pinterest to plan their lives well ahead of their planned season, vacation, or event! Take advantage of this by:

• Save Pins related to upcoming trends, seasons and holidays 45 days in advance.
• Then, keep adding more ideas each day at a steady pace.
• This may be much earlier than what you’re posting on social media, but it’s a uniquely future-proof aspect of Pinterest.

How to get more people to follow your Pins:

• Add a save button to your website: A save button is truly a must-have for your website. It saves up to 5x by making it easier, faster and more intuitive for people to save your content to Pinterest. Scale yourself! Having 10, 50 or 100 readers/viewers save your content for you is more impactful than doing it yourself day in and day out.
• Make sure the Pins in your site have good descriptions. If you run your blog on a blogging platform, you can use platform plugins to add descriptions and images that you want people to use when saving content from your website. Or, if you are not using a plugin, add your description to Data pin description or “alternative text” for the picture.
• Optimize your website for Pin clicks. We prioritize Pin clicks with a low bounce rate, so we prioritize fast page load times and avoid pop-up ads.
• Share with your audience via social, email or other distribution channels. Driving people directly to your Pin in this way builds engagement and helps your Pin gain momentum.

When and how to save Pins

• You won’t get bored with having a lot of Pins – just organize them in relevant sections. It’s a good idea to save your Pins regularly rather than all at once. A consistent routine is better than a weekly one.
• Save to the most relevant board first. Pins can be saved to multiple sections, but save to the most relevant section first – that Pin will get distribution priority. Saving to an unrelated board won’t help, and may hurt the distribution of your Pins.
• Add content to Pinterest when it’s fresh. We prioritize Pins that are new to the world and to Pinterest, so once you create new content on your site, save it to Pinterest as well.

The Best Way to Use Kanban on Pinterest

• Name your board wisely. Make sure your board name is specific and relevant to your audience (and includes good keywords). Avoid adding extra spaces between letters.
• Create at least 5 boards cohesive and specific
• Organize your board with sections, where it makes sense. For example, a spring fashion board can be divided into sections called “dresses,” “shoes,” or “bags.”
• Optimize your search board. Help Pinterest better understand your content by adding keywords to your section description and choosing a section category. You can add these two from the board editor.

New on Pinterest:

New information, new insights

• Your new profile features a dynamic cover image that allows you to highlight what you want your customers to see first. You can showcase your latest Pins, choose a specific board to focus on, or just follow recent Pinterest activity on your site. No matter what option you choose, Pinterest will make sure that the Pins in your cover image are always the latest and greatest.
• At the very top of your profile, you’ll see a new useful statistic – Monthly Viewers. This tells you the total number of people who have seen your Pins in the past 30 days, including any Pins you’ve saved to Pinterest, and any Pins others have saved from your site, so you and the people who visit your profile Can see your reach extending to Pinterest. Great for working with brands!

Follow the label

• Pinterest recently launched a new dedicated space for people to discover more ideas from people and brands they care about (like you!). The new Follow tab lets your followers see your latest Pins in the order you saved them.

  Your followers are your biggest followers on Pinterest, and they’re the first to see what you think. They also weigh their favorite content first. The more they interact with one of your Pins, the more it will appear elsewhere on Pinterest (such as search results, feeds, and recommendations) for millions of other Pinners to discover.

How to use your Pin stats

• Pin stats – Pin stats now give you a better understanding of your reach and performance on Pinterest. They’re an easy way to see how your Pins are performing, giving you more insight into impressions, features, clicks and saves, and which boards your Pins are saved to. This is what has been updated:
  • Now, count the Pin’s statistics by aggregating the data of all versions of the Pin. For example, if multiple people have saved the same content (same image, same link combination) from your site – one using your live save button, one using our browser extension,…

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This Article is produced by foodmorning.fr Staff which is a team of expert writers and editors led by Serena Robert trusted by millions of readers worldwide.