As we began to dig into the best way to connect with our audience on Pinterest, we ran into an interesting question: How can we create better visual content for Pinners to Pin?
We are not in one of the top niches for Pinning: food and drink, crafts, home decor.
How can we make sure that every blog post we write is as Pinnable as possible?
It’s been a fun experiment to see what worked. I’d be happy to share with you some of the best practices we uncovered from our research and how any brand, regardless of niche or visual orientation, can succeed in creating Pinnable content.
What Makes the Best Pinnable Images
We’ve found that the best Pinnable Images have a (or more) of the following:
- Vertical orientation (portrait)
- At least 600 pixels wide, with 736 pixels optimal
- Aspect 2:3 or 1:3.5 ratio
- Up to three separate images in a tile
- Text overlay on image
- Rich, descriptive alt text (more on this with continued)
Bonus: You can place a bit of branding in the corner of the image, also. (As we did in the image above.)
The big challenge we’re eager to solve is how you can make your pages Pinterest-ready when a visitor wants to share on Pinterest.
For example, what do your visitors see when they use the Pinterest browser extension on your site?
Do they see this?
Or this?
Here are seven ideas for how you design your pages and blog posts in a pinnable and visual way, no matter your niche.
1. Add a Cover Image
One thing every blog post has, no matter the niche or topic, is a headline.
A headline is an image that’s just waiting to happen .
This might be the most common way to add a visual component to your content. It’s a tactic you’ll find on blogs like Rebekah Radice, CoSchedule, Get Spokal, and many more of the most influential blogs out there.
We also tried to create them for the Buffer blog posts. Our formula:
You can mix several different elements to create your own:
- Title
- Subtitle
- Keywords
- File Photo
- Icon
- Background Pattern
- Background Color
- Your logo
As for location, we like to place ours right after the intro and the “more” tag. Some bloggers put it before the introduction. You can definitely play around with this to find the place that works best for you.
Another consideration: Size.
We’ve created our cover images in a Ratio of 2:1 aspect, which is optimized for Twitter and Facebook, but doesn’t take full advantage of the Pinterest layout.
You can see how other bloggers have opted for Pinterest-sized images. These take up a bit more scroll depth in the post; Coincidentally, many studies have found that there is no harm in placing things well below the parchment.
2. Create an Infographic
One of the best pieces of visual content you’ll find is an infographic.
And infographics work in a lot of niches and topics.
For inspiration, you can do a search for “infographics” on Pinterest and discover some really cool boards. Aly Juma, for example, has pinned infographics on psychology, vegetable farming, data science, and vacation planning, just to name a few.
So how do you go about creating an infographic for your content? ?
We’ve had a chance to try a couple of different methods here on the Buffer blog. The first is to partner with a designer to create a custom graphic for us. We partnered with designers from SumAll on a collaborative infographic that we could both share.
If you have a blog from a design-interested friend or neighbor who could help you, this might be a great option to try. Also, you can find help on Visual.ly or Fiverr.
Second, we’ve experimented with creating our own infographics using some useful free tools. Courtney made a Pinterest infographic for the launch with Piktochart. Many of the free tools listed below allow you to create a complete infographic by incorporating graphics, photos, and more. You can start with a pre-built template (and then customize it) or you can go really minimal and create the entire infographic however you see fit.
- Piktochart
- Infogr.am
- Visual.ly
- Easel.ly
- Revenge
3. Create an Instruction Chart
The Instruction Chart = An infographic of instructions.
When you browse Pitnerest, you may see many instructions for DIY projects, crafts, or recipes.
And really, you could create one for almost any post on how to get you to write.
Take, for example, a recent post on how to build a social network. media report card (maybe not the most visual concept you can think of). These were the steps involved in creating the report card:
- Download a copy of our free Report Card spreadsheet and add it to your Google Drive.
- Export analytics from your Buffer dashboard.
- Import data into Google spreadsheet.
- Adjust headers or titles to suit your style. The rest of the data is pulled automatically!
To build the how-to chart, we could have taken screenshots of some of the main steps here and put them together using a Canva tile. voila! How-To!
Bonus Tip: If you want to share a screenshot, one way to add a bit of visual flair is to place the screenshot in a PlaceIt template. You can choose from any device or orientation, set to a series of professional photos and backgrounds. Here’s a quick example from the Buffer blog:
4. Share photos of your process
If you scroll through Pinterest, you’ll see a fair number of photos. In fact, photography is one of the most popular categories among men on Pinterest, according to a study by the University of Minnesota and Georgia Tech. And the influence of photography is a major factor in the visual attention of categories like food and drinking, home décor, and fashion.
All of this focus on photography naturally leads to opportunities to take pictures of what you love.’ doing.
Author Austin Kleon has made a living this way, sharing photos of his notebooks and works in progress.
If it makes sense to include in your blog post a photo of your process, perhaps a photo of your stepping through a How To, or your sharing an early drawing of an early version of something – these are great opportunities for images.
For a good example, check out Copyblogger’s interview series on how famous writers write.Each post includes an image of the space of the writer. These images make great pinnable content.
5. Highlight quotes, block quotes and snippets
Another common denominator in many articles is the presence of quotes or memorable one-liners or interesting sections of research that deserve to be featured.
These are great opportunities to create Pinnable content.
One of our favorite ways to create these images is to use Pablo, which allows you to go from text to image in 30 seconds or less.
- Copy and paste the desired text into Paul’s text box.
- Add a line or logo to the image
- Choose the font you like best
- Choose a background image (you can also blur the image for a cool effect)
- Download and add to your blog post
We found these to have been a useful addition to the #bufferchat roundup posts we publish each week. In lieu of other images, we’ve been able to create some nice images to accompany these posts and give readers something to share and pin.
6. Create an image for each headline
Here’s a Pinterest tip provided to us by Andrianes Pinantoan on Canva. Although Canva is very visual, any type of brand can steal this secret, and even use Canva to help achieve it!
Instead of a featured image (the norm), place one below each caption and for every point you make. Since doing this on the Canva blog, they have seen a 62.5% increase in Pinterest traffic.
Want to see this concept in action? Check out this post, which got 1,300 shares on Pinterest alone.
You can also see what types of images get pinned from the Canva design school site – you’ll notice that the vast majority of images are post graphics.
If your industry lends itself well to curation like Canva’s, then select some amazing images for your posts. Or, of course, you can create amazing custom images with Canva and other free image editing tools. Using templates is an incredibly efficient and effective way to increase the amount of visual content you can use.
7. Include Statistics, Charts, and Graphs
If you’re writing a blog post that includes numbers (our posts tend to include research and statistics, for example), you can quickly put these numbers into a pinnable image.
What we’re looking for with Pinnable Numbers are those that lend themselves well to charts and graphs.
- Pie Charts
- Bar Charts
- Line Charts
One of our most recent examples of this was a blog post about how we spend our time writing Buffer blog posts. The total of three hours was easily divided into a pie chart that we could use as a pinnable image.
How could you make images like these?
Our quick tip (and the one we used above) is to build the graphs in Spreadsheets Google or Excel. The complete workflow goes something like this:
- Add the numbers to a Google spreadsheet
- Select your data and click the “Insert Chart…” button. .”
- Design and format the graphic however you like
- Take a screenshot of the graphic
- Place the screenshot on a Pinterest-sized template at Canva
- Cover Images
- Infographics
- Instructographs
- Photos of your process
- Quotes and excerpts
- Images for each headline
- Statistics, tables and graphs
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Once in Canva, you can add any additional text, backgrounds, or design elements that feel best. And the finished product fits as a useful, pinnable image for your blog post.
Bonus tip: Add rich, descriptive alt text
Not only can you help For those looking to pin it from their site by including great visuals, you can go the extra mile by suggesting some keyword-rich, contextual descriptions.
To do so, simply add your description in the alt text of your image.
When someone pins from your page, the description of each potential pin is populated from the alt text of each image.
We use WordPress to write our blog posts here at Buffer, and WordPress has the alt text option built right into it. n the media library. When you upload a new image, you can edit the alt text directly from the editor. Alternative text can be found in the “Title” field here:
Alternatively, you can add and edit alt text manually by working with the page’s HTML code. Inside the image tag, add an “alt” attribute with the desired text.
Summary
We like to think that it is possible for any brand, visual or not, to create amazing content that can be pinned. We are working to improve in this area and to get a visual mindset for the content we create Here are our top seven strategies:
Bonus: Add detailed, descriptive alt text to every image
So far, we’ve seen an increase in Pinterest engagement by focusing on creating great images – we’d love for you to experience the same!
Which strategies have you found most useful for creating pinnable images for your content? Which of this list have you tried or would you like to try? It would be great to hear your experience!
Sources of Image: Pablo, IconFinder, Unsplash
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