Creating beautiful pins is just one aspect of a Pinterest marketing strategy. While you can grab the viewers’ attention with an attractive pin with the right messaging, there other aspects to consider. Let’s look at the elements of a good pin that leads to great content.
Recently, I had a job interview. I was well-prepared for the job. My portfolio beamed with graphic design projects, SEO examples, and winning strategies that I felt would benefit the company. My audience was the company–a wellness center looking for a marketing guru.
I walked in the door, put on my best face, and answered the questions. I noticed from the get-go that the interviewer was not all that interested in me. It was a husband-wife team and it seemed maybe the wife was interesting in what I had to offer, but the husband had already made up his mind. He didn’t ask me anything about my work experience, didn’t want to look at my portfolio, and seemed to ask questions like “What animal are you and why?”
When you start an interview off like “You are obviously charming, so if you don’t get this job–don’t worry–you’ll find another one”, you know that they have already pegged you as out of the competition. Despite my background and qualifications, he had some preconceived ideas about me. I was just “charming” and nothing else.
This lesson taught me something huge: First impressions make a huge difference. Whether they pegged me from my resume or when I walked in the room, they figured I wasn’t a good fit. Maybe they thought I was pretty, but not intelligent. Maybe they assumed from my resume I was overqualified and they didn’t want to pay me what I was worth. Who knows? The take-away is that first impressions matter. Period.
Whether I was at fault or not, the company never got past the first impression of me to learn about the “content” of my character, work skills, and past experiences. Although unfair, it’s important to give the best first impression in real life as well as in our digital world.
The DNA of a Pinterest Pin
Let’s look again at your graphics. Here’s a recent example of a pin of mine.
Pin Titles
Your pin titles should speak to your specific audience. Not only that, keywords should be the biggest text on the pin. Check out my post about designing the perfect pin for help with this.
Attractive Images
Be mindful of what message your image is sending. Not all Pinterest images have photos. Some are just backgrounds or patterns. That’s ok if you want your text to be the main eye-catching thing. But most pins have images and it’s important to find images that speak to your audience and draw them in to your content.
You can read more about finding images here.
Pinterest Strategy & Call to Action
What do you want your users to do when they see your pin image? Download something? Go to your website? Get something for free? Use the call-to-action to direct them to take action and “do something”. In the example above, my images text states, “learn more” and an arrow is directing them to my website. Think through what action you want your readers to take.
Branding
Use your logo or website link consistently in each image. Not only that but use the same colors and look and feel for each pin image for memorability.
Alignment
Keep your text alignment consistent in each image. If you choose to right-align an image, then right-align all text to the right. Important: Avoid putting anything in the lower right corner as that gets covered up by product icons.
Free Pinterest Resources
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Final Touches
- Gradients / Overlays – Use an overlay or gradient to add more of a “pop” to your text. (Canva hint: Create a rectangle box that covers the entire image, then change the color and opacity to show the image through it or use a patterned overlay for texture.)
- Doodles – Use arrows or smaller icons to create some variation in your image.
- Shapes – add circles or triangles to help text stand out.
- Contrast – Use contrast like black and white or a dark color and white text to help your images and text pop off the image.
Attractive Images Should Lead to Attractive Content
While pin images are one element to your Pinterest strategy, another important factor is your content. How does your website, visuals, usability, and content stand out and keep the reader engaged?
Here are some things to consider:
User-friendly website
When someone visits your website, do they bounce or do they stay and sign-up? It’s important to remember when you first start your website, it will seem like this is happening a lot. Sometimes it just takes time to build your audience. But if you have high amounts of people coming to your website and not sticking around, you might want to look at your website.
Is it user friendly? Is it easy to navigate? Are there a lot of ads and pop-ups? These all affect the user experience. Your images also should be compressed where possible. Make sure you also check your website out on mobile devices and tablets. Test your site speed as well. Here are some helpful links for your website:
Beautiful Visuals
Are your visuals cohesive and attractive? Do they speak to your audience or repel them? Look at your visuals as if you were a reader and evaluate if you need to update and make changes to your strategy.
Compelling Copy
Just as your images need to speak to your audience, so does your copy. When you write a blog post or write up a sales page, it needs to be written in a way that attracts your audience and causes them to want to take action. Offer value instead of writing about yourself and how smart you are. This will do a lot to keep your audience engaged.
Call to Action
Make sure your posts and pages have one call to action. A call to action is exactly how it sounds. It’s a prompt to sign up, download, or get something. Usually a lead magnet is the action you want the reader to take, but it also might be a prompt to buy something or use an affiliate link.
Instead of having several of these, it’s important to just have one direct action you want your audience to take. If it’s to sign up to an email list, put the opt-in box at the top of the post and at the bottom. It’s ok to use the same CTA in a few places in your post because it’s one “ask”. Having too many “asks” leaves the reader a bit confused to the point where they jump off the post.
Branding
Just like on your pin image, you need to make sure your branding is consistent. Colors, fonts, look and feel, logo, and other elements should all be the same throughout your website and social accounts. This creates memorability and consistency.
SEO
A simple tool to use in WordPress for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is Yoast. Yoast allows you to use keywords and reminds you of other ways to optimize your posts for Google and other rankings.
If you want your website to be found, it’s important to optimize each post and page with long-tail keywords that get searched. Think about how you search on Google. Do you put in “Pinterest” or “How to create Pinterest graphics”. The longer version is important to keep in mind because that’s how humans search for websites that will help them.
Read more about blog post SEO.
Value
You can offer value in many ways. The first way to offer value and also attract readers is to offer a lead magnet. A lead magnet is valuable content that the reader will want to get from you. You offer the lead magnet in exchange for their email address. Most people will gladly sign up if they think what you have to offer them is something they will need or want to use.
Examples of lead magnets include:
- Ebooks
- Videos
- Email Series
- Presentations
- Swipe Files
- First chapter of a book
- Song download
- Free Trial
- Free Consultation
Think through what would be the most valuable to your audience and work on creating a free resource that will get them to hand over their email for future usage.
Continue the Relationship
Use an email list to keep your audience engaged. Once they sign up for your list, you will be able to send them other emails that keep them engaged. Don’t just use your email list to spam them with offers, but learn to write emails that continue offering value and engagement.
In addition, try using a tripwire. Tripwires are usually shown on the “thank you” page once a person signs up to your list. The tripwire is an inexpensive offer. The reason for this offer is that once a person buys from you, they’ll want to make future purchases from you as well.
Your Pinterest Strategy
Creating images is just one element of a good “pin” strategy. In order to benefit from Pinterest, you also need to look at your website and branding.
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Free Pinterest Resources
Join the list and get access to my Pinterest Resource library which contains guides, cheat sheets, templates, and more!