as you may have seen last week on instagram, i made a visit to the pinterest offices for a little ‘tune-up’ shall we say on my account. it was rather eye-opening to say the least, especially when i realized i had not been using pinterest to its full potential for many many years (I’ve been on the platform since the beginning in 2010!). i do very well on the platform and it’s actually the number one driver of traffic to my blog (for instance 7,000 views per day from pinterest, versus 300 from Facebook), but to think that i could have been doing far better was a wake-up call, and as one of the original pinners, i’d like to share what i learned with you. also, i don’t know about you, but while other social platforms have gotten super political, or violating our privacy, or simply messing with the algorithms, i’m really just so happy to hop on pinterest and find joy and inspiration, and never a political ad.
so, if you’ve been looking to improve your following on pinterest, or support a business, or just want to have a better experience searching for the kind of content you’d like to see, i’m going be doing some creative consulting with pinterest on what it can do to improve (more on that soon) and i’d like to let you in on what i learned in an on-going blog series of tips i’ll call pinterest practices for pros. i don’t want to overwhelm you, so i’m going start with the main priority in using pinterest — the all-important description.
pinterest descriptions:
• First off, what you may not know is that you may not have been describing your content to the best of your ability. a great Pinterest strategy is about frequency, quality, and SEO (search engine optimization). The better you get at this, the more your pins will be seen, and the more your following has the opportunity for growth. For good SEO on pinterest you’ll want to focus on doing the following:
• prioritize writing 1-2 human-readable sentences that describe your content or idea with great, search-friendly keywords. Think about how you search on Pinterest and what keywords you would use to find what you’re looking for.
• Remember this: You have 500 characters per Pin description. here’s an example of a sample pin with description and hashtags (just below).
• don’t do what I was doing and name your boards or content with something you might find clever or fun if no one can find it. For example, I had a board called Aqualand (just above) which I just thought to be so fun — but seriously, when you’re searching for aqua blue or pale blue or turquoise inspiration would you ever on earth search for Aqualand? I doubt it. I’ve renamed it simply Aqua Blue, which is an easy to find board.
• Then, you can add up to 20 hashtags to reiterate keywords, capture other keywords you might’ve missed, or of course hashtag brand sponsors or #sponsored if applicable. hashtags describe the image to the best of your ability, so for instance: #vintage #black #eameschair #chair #diningchair — anything you’d think of to search to find the image if you were on the hunt.
pro tip:
• If you get stuck on what good keywords are, just plug in something like “socks” or “guest room” into Pinterest search and see what the top related terms are. to see some Good examples within the ‘home category’, for instance, check out Hunker or Remodelista’s content — they do a great job that i plan on emulating.
Board titles:
• Special characters such as | * ~ etc. will “break” the search-friendliness of your board titles, so don’t use any special characters to describe your boards. i was doing that and it made them rather difficult to search.
• Also, consider search-friendly keywords in the titles themselves, ie: Jewelry — i was using ‘Baubles’ which again, may be witty and fun if you think like me, but people rarely search for ‘baubles’ when searching for jewelry, right?
okay, that’s it for this lesson! if you have any questions of comments please let me know and i’ll do my best to guide you! cheers, and here’s to pinning!
Thanks Victoria. This is great information and so helpful.
You’re so welcome, Cece! Have fun!
Thank you! This is helpful and I like bite size lessons
Yay! Me too – otherwise I forget everything!
Wow! Thank you so so much!! You made that so clear and easy to understand! Can’t wait to read more!! Xo
Thank you, Erin! I’m glad it was easy to understand!
Thank you Victoria! I fin found you on Pinterest in 2014 and have been following you everywhere ever since
thank you so much, Saramarie!
Thanks so much for the useful tips Victoria! Makes so much sense! I’m going to rename my boards asap, mine are also more witty than searchable :)
mine were too! or so i thought! ;)
Thank you for sharing, However, these pinned images are not yours right? You have found them and pinned them and then you relabeled? So, this is more about directing people searching for say, ‘eameschair’ and then seeing your name and clicking through to see your Pinterest page and then finding your blog. Is that right? I’ve never thought to use Pinterest like this, it’s clever.
Ok! You’ve set me straight. Time to get back to Pinterest! Thanks!
I’m always using fun weird boards titles !! I guess I have to think about it !!
Thanks a lot for your tips Victoria XO
Interesting topic and such good tips! I’m going to re-evaluate my boards!
Victoria Awesome! I see how I think like you! Your tips and examples were great. Now how to find time to implement.
Thanks Andrea Houck
Thanks! This is very helpful for fine-tuning and improving my boards, pins, and visibility for my design and art websites! I’m applying your tips now.
oops. left .com off website URL on comment just sent:
Hi Victoria:
You introduced me to Pinterest back in 2010 and I have been pinning ever since, using fun titles, changing things up and re-pinning to my hearts content. I have close to 100 boards from all those years of pinning. I here that may be too high and I was wondering if you can guide on best practices for # of boards, # of pins per board and feeding your own content vs. re-pinning.
I am going to be starting a new design website and blog and can’t wait to use these tips you shared!
So glad you shared this info! and I would definitely consult with you once you decide when you are doing it!
Hi Sarah! Yes, will address this in the series. Let me talk to Pinterest and see what they recommend. Coming soon!
hi victoria, i love your aesthetic so much! where do you find all your cool images on Pinterest? I always want a cool layout but i struggle to find the images…yours are always soooo great.
Oh gosh – everywhere. From Instagram, from my favorite blogs and Tumblr pages. From my favorite online magazines, too. Thank you!
Great article. I came over from Instagram. Ready to wrestle Pinterest. I wish I could just create, my art, my handmade knitting project and not spend so much time on all this “busy” work of marketing.
Cheers and Happy Thanksgiving to all, my favorite holiday :)
The special character lesson is invaluable. Had a special character in almost all of my boards! Thanks for paying this forward ;)
Me too! Ack!
Hello! Nice tips, I can start using them. I have a question, but it might be silly: do you pin your blog imagens and then aplly these tips or these are referred to the ones you basically pinned on your boards and not necessarily will bring the user to your website? Thanks a lot!
Hi Kalany,
I apply these tips (adding a good description, hashtags etc.) to both pins from my blog, and others that inspire me to share. That way, more people will see my pins, and therefore my blog if they look around at my other pins. I hope that makes sense. Thanks!