Pinterest is definitely the way to go if you want to promote your blog. Whether you are a new blogger or a pro, Pinterest can help your blog’s reach substantially.
However, if you want to see results, you can’t pin a couple of pins every now and then and hope for the best. You do need a strategy.
You can decide to build your own strategy or take advantage of the strategy that someone that already knows the ins and out of Pinterest has already tested. But either way, you absolutely need to implement Pinterest best practices in your strategy.
In this post, we will talk about Pinterest best practices updated to 2020 and how following them will get you results and avoid the risk of being flagged as spammy.
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Creating your Pinterest profile the right way
Having your Pinterest profile set up in a certain way is really important for Pinterest SEO purposes but also to make Pinterest understand that you are legit.
I’m not going to talk too much about it as I’ve already written a whole post about the topic and if you need help getting started with Pinterest you can enroll in my FREE course Pinterest for New Bloggers.
But I want to reiterate that to be compliant about Pinterest best practices you need to get a business account and verify your website.
Having a business account will let Pinterest know that you are a creator and they will treat your pins differently.
By verifying your website, you are telling Pinterest that your website is legit and that they can trust your content.
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Pinterest best practices on pin graphics
Pin size
Using a 2:3 ratio, pins are organized into columns, so Pinterest wants you to create vertical pins. Everything that is different from this ratio will be shown less often than pins with the right ratio.
Pin image
Pick an image that is related to your topic. Pinterest uses the image of your pin to get data so as to show it when it is most relevant. Pinterest checks out the photo on your pin and decides what your pin is about. So, if on your pin’s image there is food as you can imagine Pinterest will categorise that pin as food related. Now if your pin is about working at home, you don’t want your pin coming up among recipes pins, do you?
Try not to use free stock photos. If you use a free stock photo that has been used too many times and for different topics, you run the risk that your pin will be shown for the wrong topic.
The best thing you can do is to get your own images but I understand that this can be really time-consuming. My advice? Buy the majority of your photos and use free stock photos only when you can’t avoid it.
We use DepositPhotos for our blogs.
Use lifestyle photos and avoid faces on them. People that go on Pinterest want to be inspired by your pins. To do this showing a product being used in a photo will work much better than a simple photo of the product itself. At the same time people want to imagine themselves in the photo so avoiding faces could be useful.
Note: you could read somewhere that exact images that you use on your pin has to be on the landing page (your blog post) That’s not true.
You can (and you should) create multiple pins with different images and have all of them in your blog post or none of them, it’s up to you.
Text overlay
Make your text overlay count! Use keywords. Use great headlines. Use fonts that are understandable. Use a font size that could be read from mobile. Use hierarchy: play with different fonts, use bold or italics, use different colours.
Put your blog name/logo on your pin
Always make sure that your pins can be tied back to your website. It can happen that someone steals your pin and uses it to link back to their own website. Therefore, having your blog name/your logo on the pin shows that you have created it.
Plus, it can be useful for branding recognition.
Create different types of pins
Different styles can appeal to different people. Also, having pins with all the same design could get people confused and reduce your click-through and re-pinning rates.
I use this to create all my pins and this to create multiple pins in a matter of minutes
Pinterest is a visual platform so your graphics are really important!
When to Pin
Pinterest’s algorithm doesn’t take into account when you pin your pins. However, you should pin when most of your followers are active on the platform as the followers’ engagement is one of the criteria that Pinterest uses to decide to show your pins more often and/or to a larger audience.
You can use Tailwind smart scheduler to understand which is the best time to pin for you.
need help with your Pinterest strategy?
What to pin
Pin high-quality content! This is what Pinterest wants. Pinterest doesn’t care if you pin only your own content or a mix of your own content and other pinners content.
However, there are three things to remember:
1) When you are new to Pinterest, Pinterest doesn’t know you, so it won’t trust you. My advice, in this case, is to use the so-called 80/20 rules (80% content from other blogs and 20% of your own) and then with time increasing the ratio – with more of your own content. Also when you first start you won’t have many pins of your own. Therefore to pin consistently without being spammy you do need to pin other people’s pins.
2) If you have verified your website, when you pin your own pin Pinterest will trust that pin more (and therefore distribute that pin more) as you are the author of that pin and they assume you know it isn’t spam.
3) Pinterest rewards fresh content (we will talk more about this later), so, usually, you can be sure that it’s fresh content only if it is your own pin
So, except for the beginning when Pinterest doesn’t know you yet, I would pin more of your own content. But, if it’s true that you have to follow Pinterest best practices, it’s also true that you have to pin interesting stuff for your followers. If you found something from another pinner that can help your followers I would still repin it.
You can found lots of high-quality content to share with your followers in Tailwind communities
Also, I would suggest keeping your profile as niched as you can. Pinterest has a search engine built on the platform, so having just one topic in your profile can help with SEO.
Great! You are ready to start with Pinterest but do you know what you should actually pin?
How much to Pin
Again, Pinterest doesn’t really care. What Pinterest wants is consistency, it wants people on its platform as often as possible. So, pin consistently! It’s better to pin, let’s say, only 10 pins a day but do so every day than to pin 100 in one day and then nothing for a week.
I know that being able to pin every day isn’t easy but get smart and invest in Tailwind so it can do the job for you!
However, even if Pinterest has not given a specific number of pins that you should pin daily, I would not go crazy. In fact, if you pin a huge amount of pins you could overwhelm your followers and even risk being reported as spammy.
Do not pin everything at once and if you have Tailwind take advantage of their new feature called SmartGuide which monitors your Pinning volume and lets you know if you are at risk of spamming.
NEED HELP WITH PINTEREST?
Take my FREE 9-day email course and start with Pinterest the right way! Enroll now – it’s FREE!
Create new content as often as you can
This is essential! As per its final goal, Pinterest needs to give its users the best experience and to do so it always needs new content to show them. Therefore it counts on us as creators to produce that new content.
Pinterest rewards the creators of fresh content by showing their pins more often.
So I recommend creating new content as often as you can. Even if you’re not able to post new articles all the time, you must make new pins weekly.
Pinterest considers a new pin a new image. If you think about it, Pinterest is a visual platform, hence what it wants is new images to show to its users.
You can easily take advantage of Pinterest’s reward for new content by creating a new image for an old blog post.
NOTE: You might read somewhere that Pinterest considers a pin as new if you change its description. This is wrong… Pinterest wants new images. You can still use the same image with a different description but the purpose here would mostly be to try to rank for different keywords or to try a new CTA. However, be aware that just changing the description won’t be considered a new pin.
As this is a really big topic, I have got a whole blog post about it.
But just to let you know what my view is on the worthiness of creating fresh pins take note. Will your Pinterest marketing benefit from them? Absolutely! However, creating new pins is not the only task that you need to accomplish while being a blogger. Find a way that lets you create multiple pins in a really short time.
What I do is create my best pins with Canva pro (you can start for free here) and then I use Tailwind Create to create multiple pins for the same blog post.
Tailwind Create is a Tailwind’s feature that automatically creates graphics for you, and of course, they have pins! The only thing that you need to do is writing your pin title and it will create pins with different styles that you can use. After it creates pins for me I tweak them a little but honestly, you could use them directly.
Here are some examples of pins that I’ve created in less than 1 minute (for all of them) with this tool
Once Tailwind Create creates your pins you can change everything you want. Font, colours, photos, everything! They have lots of fonts and stock photos but you can still upload yours.
Also, I want to give you a little gift so that you can start making new pins right away! I have created 10 pin templates on Canva pro (if you don’t have Canva pro yet, you can get it here for free) just for you 🙂
FREE Pinterest Canva PRO Templates
Save time and increase page views with these Pinterest templates that convert
These templates are created
- Following Pinterest best practices
- Following graphics design best practices
- To stand out on a crowded feed
- To attract more clicks to your website
- To be completely editable to relate to your brand
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What to put in your pin description
The description of your pin gives Pinterest the info it needs to understand what your pin is about so use keywords in your pin description.
Also put the title of your blog post in your pin description as Pinterest wants to know if your pin is related to the content of your website. Something that is happening a lot on Pinterest is that people steal pins and then use them to link to spam websites. So, Pinterest is trying to contain the problem checking that your pin matches the article to which it sends. Having the exact title that the user will find on the page to which the pin sends in the description of the pin is perfect proof for Pinterest.
Do you know that you should put your post title in your pin description? Learn here why!
Pinning
Pinterest considers you as an active user if you pin consistently.
As I’ve already said Pinterest rewards new content so it is recommended that you pin fresh pins as often as you can but this doesn’t mean that you can pin one pin only one time.
Pinterest encourages you to pin your own pins to all the relevant boards. The only way for Pinterest to give your pin some contest is to look at the boards where it has been saved to. More boards, more data to analyse. If you publish your pin and never repin it that pin doesn’t have enough data for Pinterest to understand when to show it.
So, please, keep repinning your new pins to all the related boards. But make sure that they are really relevant (usually around 10 boards are relevant for a pin) and don’t go crazy with repinning. Always, space them up to avoid being considered spammy by Pinterest. You can easily do so with Tailwind.
You can even repin the same pin to the same board if you do so after some time (so that your followers won’t be shown the same pin too often) and especially if you change something so that the pin is relevant once again for the same board.
If one of your pins is not performing well do not delete it. It could start working in the future and anyway it doesn’t have any influence on your other pins.
Even if Pinterest rewards fresh pins this doesn’t mean that you don’t want other people to repin your content. Engagement still shows Pinterest that your content is great and therefore they will show it to more people.
These are Pinterest best practices updated at 2020. Everything that you have learned today is already implemented on the strategy that I teach in my advanced Pinterest course Pinterest from P to T (from Pinning to Target visitors) where I also put a lot of emphasis on how to show Pinterest that your pin is relevant.
Pinterest from P to T
Related Posts to Pinterest Best Practices Updated 2020
- What Are Fresh Pins on Pinterest and How to Make Them
- How to Create the Perfect Pinterest Profile for Your Blog
- How to Choose Pinterest Boards Names to Get More Blog Traffic (Today)
- Tailwind for Pinterest and Its Best Features: Should You Use It?
- Tailwind Tribes: How to Use Them to Boost Your Blog Traffic
NEED HELP WITH PINTEREST?
Take my FREE 9-day email course and start with Pinterest the right way! Enroll now – it’s FREE!
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4 thoughts on “Pinterest Best Practices Updated at 2020”
Thanks for a really outstanding post Marina. Well done! To date I have just used Pinterest to share new blog posts and fresh graphic designs. But thanks to great content like yours I’m sure I will master Pinterest in good time. After reading your post, I have many changes to apply I can tell you that.
Great article. Really useful tips here. Thanks.
These are great tips Marina. It’s interesting you say not to delete under-performing pins since there are many who say you should. I’m of the opinion that deleting pins for this reason might mean that you lose an opportunity for someone to find your more niche pins that may serve a need at some point. In a sense it also seems like an attempt to manipulate results, which may or may not count against you.
Thanks Marina for the great tips for new bloggers