Pinterest Basics
Pinterest Basics
Pinterest is a social network like no other. It allows you to be collaborative, curate interesting information, fuel a baking or shopping addiction, and promote your business all in one. If you’re unfamiliar with the terminology, our Pinterest Glossary should clear things up for you.
Pinterest Glossary
of Terms:
- ·
PIN
(noun) : A piece of content shared on Pinterest; contains an image, description
and source
- ·
PINBOARD
(noun) : A collection of theme-based pins; also known as a board
- ·
PINNING
(verb) : The act of sharing visual content
- ·
REPIN
(verb) : The act of sharing an existing pin that was added to Pinterest by
another user
- ·
PIN IT
BUTTON (noun) : A website button that facilitates sharing on Pinterest.
Download the Pin It button for your browser here.
- ·
PINNER
(noun) : A Pinterest user
Now that you’re caught up with the jargon, let’s take a look at the basics of Pinterest and what you need to know as you’re just starting out.
Getting started with Pinterest is easy! Sign up for a business account or convert your personal Pinterest profile into a business page. This will unlock analytical data.
Fill out your profile completely! Include a photo, bio, location, and web address. This will help people find you and also recognize you as a legitimate business.
Now, set up your boards. Think of the topics that are associated with your business and create boards for them. If you’re a flower shop, you’ll want boards highlighting your flower arrangements and how to care for flowers, but you’ll also want to think of other things that people would associate with giving flowers: gift ideas, holiday decor inspiration, color combinations, etc. If you run a jewelry store, you’ll want to showcase your jewelry, but also some ideas surrounding jewelry: cleaning jewelry, types of gems, unique jewelry design. You get the idea.
Because Pinterest is a visually-driven engine, you want to make sure your photo game is sharp. Photos that are oriented portrait (instead of landscape) do best. The ideal size for a photo is 735 pixels wide by 1002 pixels tall. Pinterest will automatically adjust your photo to that width and the appropriate height for your photo.
When you pick images for Pinterest, think vertical. Most of our formats are vertical, and taller than they are wide. We recommend that you use a 2:3 aspect ratio for all of your Pins. “Aspect ratio” may sound complicated, but it’s just a way to talk about an image’s width, compared to its height. A 2:3 aspect ratio means that your image’s width is ⅔ its height. For example, your Pin could be 1,000 pixels wide, by 1,500 pixels tall. If your image falls outside this ratio, it could get truncated in people’s feeds and they won’t get to see your full Pin.
Pinterest image size is important to know if you want to showcase images (especially info-graphics) on Pinterest. Make sure that you maximize the allowable width of the image, but also be wary of not making your image ridiculously tall.
Photos that are bright and nicely styled do well on Pinterest. Make sure a photo that you’re pinning is lit properly, has plenty of white space or breathing room around the subject, and is visually appealing.
Because Pinterest is a social media network, you have to be social and interact. Pinterest operates with a Smart Feed meaning you don’t see the most recent content at the top (like Twitter), you see the most popular content and things you’re likely to find interesting based on your activity (like Facebook). This is why it’s important to interact; the more you pin and comment on others’ pins, the more valuable a user Pinterest considers you. This makes it more likely you’ll appear at the top of your followers’ feeds.
Be sure to follow your vendors, other team members, publications or bloggers who are in your niche or use your products, and even your competitors.
Pin in the evening after dinner when customers will be scrolling through on their phones during prime time commercial breaks. Saturday and Sunday mornings are also high traffic times for Pinterest, so be sure to capitalize on all of those eyeballs.
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