Pinterest Archives - Create If Writing

Pinterest is my favorite social media platform. Well. My favorite for TRAFFIC. As an introvert, it’s also my favorite because I DON’T HAVE TO TALK TO PEOPLE THERE. Pinterest is actually more search engine than social platform. Surprised? This interview with Alex Evjen from AVE Styles is going to give you Pinterest best practices so you can use the platform like a pro to drive traffic.

Listen on YouTube to Episode 70 – Pinterest Best Practices

Connect with Alex!

Find her on her blog, Pinterest, or Instagram. If you gel with her style, she also has some fabulous (and affordable) classes! I’m an affiliate for them (and you KNOW I’m only an affiliate if I love things, right?) if you want to dive deeper with Alex after this interview! Browse her Pinterest classes to see if one suits your current needs.

Pinterest Best Practices

Alex was an early adopter, using the platform for her personal stylist business. She was able to replace bulky binders of magazine clippings with a simple, easy-to-use digital format of Pinterest. As an avid user, she gained the attention of Pinterest’s founder and has actually been invited TO Pinterest headquarters where she has received training on Pinterest best practices. Who better to share with us today?

Tips for Using Pinterest

Be a great content curator. Share content from other people that lines up with your overall brand. Pin what you love and are genuinely interested in.
Being a curator establishes you as an expert.
Be an early adopter! Pinterest isn’t new, but it is rolling out new things like VIDEO. When you get on board with a platform’s new direction, that platform often gives back to you.
Even though there are some great tools and schedulers, you should log into the Pinterest platform daily and interact.
Alex repins 90% from other people and 10% from her own site. (That 10% includes repinning her pins that are from her site, not just pinning from her site directly.)
Use rich pins. This means that Pinterest has approved your site and knows it’s legit. It helps your pins show up higher in search.

Interaction on Pinterest looks like: repinning content mostly. Likes and comments can actually help, but most people don’t do them.

Tip: Power Pins are made up of comments, clicks, and repins. They are pins with a lot of engagement.

What’s Working Right NOW on Pinterest

Don’t hate the algorithm! It helps bring up the best content and doesn’t favor the power pinners like Alex with millions of followers.
Older pins have years or months of engagement, so those pins may surface higher. Don’t delete your old pins! Give them time to grow.
Create evergreen content that won’t become obsolete in years to come.
Seasonal content does do well, but
The half-life of a pin is 30 days, but the full life of a pin is well over a year. This means you won’t see the full potential for over a year and that you should be pinning time-relative content 30 or more days out.
You want content that’s attainable and actually will help someone.
Your descriptions should contain keywords and robust descriptions. Think of what people will search for. Describe what’s in the photo and maybe add how someone could use the thing or a context in which it might be used.
Board covers now show your latest activity, so you need to make sure you are pinning great images so that your board covers will show the things that are the aesthetic of your brand.
Every pin should be a quality pin that is an extension of your brand.

An Argument for Fewer Boards

People are more likely to follow ALL of your Pinterest board if you have fewer.
If Pinterest sees that your boards are active, Pinterest is more likely to recommend them and have them show up in the algorithm.
The algorithm scores your profile. Dead, inactive boards hurt you.
Don’t delete boards because that could get rid of followers. Repin those pins to other boards. Check analytics to see how many people follow those boards. (Tailwind is an approved third-party app that can help with that.)
You CAN move a board to secret, but that will take away the followers.

“No more short term strategy on Pinterest. You have to think long term.” -Alex Evjen

Alex’s Pinning Workflow

She logs in daily and uses Pinterest itself, not a scheduling tool.

Her perfect number of pins/repins is around 25 a day.

She shares 90% of other people’s content and 10% her own.

A Note about Group Boards

If you are on boards that are just made up of bloggers pinning their own and each other’s content, Pinterest KNOWS. These kinds of boards are having their content pushed down. It can hurt you to be on these boards and the boards can even be shut down.

Group boards are supposed to be collaborative and share great content, not a way for bloggers to game the system. Consider your group boards and how people behave. If your traffic is dependent on this traffic, then beware because this is not going to last.

About Alex’s Classes

She has four classes (or a package of all) that are affordable and deal with creating the perfect pin, how to create a strong business profile, driving traffic to your blog, and how to grow your following. Find her classes through my affiliate link HERE.

I’m starting a new series! It’s called Social Media Mondays and I promise that I will mostly post every Monday about something social media. My hope is to give some kind of actionable tip or share other great resources! Today I’m going to talk you through two ways to hide vertical images for Pinterest in your blog post.

Why do you need vertical images in your blog post? And why would you want to hide them?

Great questions! I wrote a post for Jane Friedman last week about Pinterest for Authors, so if you want to know the best practices, you should check out that post. (It gives a step-by-step on getting started with things like rich pins, getting verified, and using alt tags with keywords.) As I mention in that post, vertical images are king on Pinterest. (A big thank you to Kathy from Penney Lane for teaching me that way back in the day when I was just starting to use the platform!) The first step to success in social media is to know the rules of each platform. On Pinterest, you need vertical images. Period.

I love vertical images, but I also think that horizontal images look better, especially on my small computer screen. Some people keep a horizontal vibe or have an RSS set up through email where those images obliterate or slow things down. Maybe you just want to be difficult. Whatever the reason, here are three ways to hide vertical images for Pinterest in your blog post.

Note: Some of these are ways to create a vertical image for your post OUTSIDE of your post, so it’s not technically hidden but not actually there. The overall point here is to create Pin-worthy images that aren’t clogging your blog, whether you hide the image in the post or not.

1. Upload the Image from Your Computer and Add the URL.

I had almost forgotten about this method, which I haven’t used since my early Pinterest days. When you are in Pinterest, there is a plus sign over to the right by your profile photo. Click it and a dropdown menu appears. Click the Upload from a Computer option and choose an image. Then choose a board to pin it to and click pin.

DON’T STOP THERE. That gives a pin with no description that leads to exactly nowhere. Click on your profile and then on Pins just under your description. It will pull up your most recent pins. Click the one you just uploaded from your computer and then click edit to add a great description with keywords and the web address.

The downside to this method is that if someone else pins from your site, they still will not get the vertical image you want. If that person ONLY pins vertical images (that would be ME), then you might lose a pin. Or you could have someone pin a non-Pinterest-friendly image, which may not perform well. This leads to option number two!

Tip: Always pin to a particular post, not a general website. If you are reading a blog on its home page and pin from there, the next time the blog updates, that post gets pushed down, so when people click the pin, they will not find what they are looking for!

2. Use Code to Hide the Image in Your Post.

I love this tip from Pinch of Yum. With a few lines of code, you can hide the image altogether in your post. But when people click to pin from the post, the lovely vertical image will show up as one of the options. They go into a longer tutorial complete with video if you need it, or if you’re comfortable, you can skip down to get the code at the bottom of the post.

I use this method a lot! The downside is that you have to remember the code or search “Pinch of Yum Hide Vertical Image” in google every few days. Not a big deal, right?

Tip: After you have pinned your fantastic vertical image, get the URL for that particular pin. Go back to your blog post and add that pin URL to your image, so that if someone clicks the image (which people sometimes do), it will take them right to the pin. It’s like telling them exactly what you want to do with the image: PIN IT.

For those of you who don’t want vertical images, but want to see some traction from Pinterest, choose one of these two ways to hide the image from view in your post. Or…just be simple and have the full-size vertical images. Pinterest recommends at least 735 x 1102 pixels. I generally use 800 by somewhere between 1100 and 1200.

Need to know how to size images in Pinterest? Here’s a quick YouTyube tutorial video on how to create a Pinterest-friendly image in Picmonkey.

Any questions? Any social media issues you’d like me to explore in this new series? Let me know in the comments!