Modern Crochet Designs for All!
So far we’ve covered we created a Pinterest business account and learned how to create boards, pins and best practices of Pinterest. Today we’re going to focus more on leveraging Pinterest for your creative business.
I have 3 boards that are created solely for Desamour Designs; one for all my features, magazine publications, guest designs and campaigns I have created, the second has all my patterns and the third has all my blog posts. It is important to have at least one board dedicated to your business for a few reasons.
The first being that people more often than not follow one board instead of an account. Having a board dedicated to you may be how someone who loved your patterns, blog posts, or youtube videos wants to follow. They may not be interested in the other content your pinning and only want to see your organic content so they can find your newest design or find out about your new vlog on Youtube.
If you were to partner with a company, blogger, vlog or anyone else, they may want to see what you have achieved or accomplished that is not on your Instagram. Sometimes your Instagram following does not reflect your true success in the community; that board will be a good place to refer them to. Add a short link to one or all of them in your media kit.
You may want to get a job that is somewhat related to your industry but you do not have a strong resume or a degree to show for it, having that board will show your progress, achievements and all in all what you can bring to the table for your potential new employer.
Before we jump into creating pins for you to share on Pinterest, let’s go over the meat and bread? Is that a saying?! Maybe it’s bread and butter… well you get the gist. Let’s get into the essential elements to need to create a great pin.
My current most clicked and most saved pin from my blog.
The average pin gets 9 repin so keep that is our benchmark for when we went to create a great pin. Pins located at the top of a search are usually the most popular ones so it’s good practice for you to look at what they’ve done right and how you can use that for your own pins.
A great pin should have a simple, clean, yet attention-grabbing photo, graphic or video (You can create some pins with videos and pictures together now!). Use the best image you have! Easy to read text, don’t use a lot of crazy fonts; keep them simple and legible. Use one or two fonts and verify they are still legible on both your desktop and phone since most of the users are on their smartphones. Minimal branding. By minimal branding I mean your logo or website should be on it but that shouldn’t be the most prominent component. Pinterest love when you keep your branding low-key. It should have the link to your website, blog or shop shown as found on http://www.yourwebsitename.com, it should be a rich pin; have a bold title and metadata at the bottom of it. A great pin should give people an idea of what it’s about and what to expect when they click it.
It should be helpful and relevant to your audience and most of all, when they click on it, it should lead to the source your graphic and caption describe. Try not to use a border on your pin as it is taking unnecessary space you could use for your lettering and image. It should be a vertical pin, currently, Pinterest is using 735 x 1102 pixels for their pins; make all your pins that size. It takes up more of the screen as someone scrolls through their phone (the most used device to scroll Pinterest), they get more time to see it *maximum view*. Horizontal pins don’t do well on Pinterest as they don’t stand out much and when they click on your pin from their feed Pinterest is not going to resize it so your pin shows clearer thus is more appealing.
Your caption is another element of making a great pin. Keep your pin description|caption at around 300 characters. Overload your caption with keywords; your potential audience will use them when searching Pinterest to find your pin. Pinterest uses not only images but the keywords in your description to show results for searches. Think of keywords your ideal customer or audience would use if they were searching for this specific information and use them.
Your image should be crisp, bright and clear of clutter (whether it be with your typography or the background of the image itself).
All sorts of things wrong with this image: clutter, bad lighting, awkward angle, not fully showing the project, etc.
Pins without faces get shared 20% more than those with faces showing. Play around with pictures where your product or typography is doing most of the talking; you can still be in them if your the face of your brand but try to look away or show your back etc.
I’m not good with Photoshop but you know what I’m great at using? Canva! I create about 97% of my Pinterest graphics myself using Canva.
They have templates that are already pre-sized to the 735 x 1102 px which is the optimal size for pins. You can edit them to fit your branding and create a cohesive look across all your social media platforms. You can also create your own Pinterest pin from scratch using their pre-sized format; that way your graphics stand out even more and you don’t have to mess around with complicated apps such as Photoshop.
Other sites you can use to create your pins are Picmonkey (it’s a great design site but unlike Canva it doesn’t save your designs in a library for you to re-use at a later time.) Relay is a very easy to use website which has been recommended to me a lot but haven’t tried yet.
Using Tailwind Extension
If you did create a Tailwind account, chances are you also downloaded the extension. With this extension, you can easily and quickly schedule pins by hovering over large images in your published blog posts, Etsy or other shops.
Be sure to click on the blog post or the product page, so you can ensure you have the direct URL and not your blog homepage or storefront. Remember, pinners don’t like having to hunt for the source, take them directly to what is advertised. Hover over the image you would like to schedule as a pin and tap the little blue wave that pops up. A popup page will open with all your Tailwind pins drafts, you can either select to schedule pins later or go ahead and select your boards and interval you would like the image to be published to on Pinterest.
Directly on Pinterest
To create your pin directly on Pinterest using an image, video or something you’ve created on Canva, log into your Pinterest business account.
From your dashboard, select the create pin (red plus). You can drag and drop or upload an image from your computer.
Fill in the description. Keep this section at 300 characters as it will not cut off your description and is the optimal number of characters. Load this description with all the keywords your target audience will use to find this specific pin.
Add a title to your pin. Use the AMinstitute website to test the best headlines for your pins. It gives you the emotional value of your title.
Add the direct URL to the product, blog post or page you would like the post to lead to. This URL cannot be your homepage URL, it must lead to what you described in the image, description, and title; pinners do not want to search for the content you’re advertising.
At the bottom of the page, you can select to publish immediately or at a later date. Click select (next to the publish button) and choose the board you would like your pin to go to.
*This will not sign you up for my email list for discounts, library access, and more*
Create 15 pins from your Esty, Shopify, Ravelry (any of your shops) and|or your blog. Attach schedule them using Pinterest or another app so they can be pinned at different intervals through the week in all the different boards we created last week.
Now that you’ve learned to the elements of a great pin and how to create your own pin, come back next week for part 4 where we will discuss group and secret boards.
