I love Pinterest. I know that as a middle-aged male I don’t fit into their target demo, but I do love checking out the site and seeing what cool new things I can add to my boards. Heck, I love it so much that I have multiple profiles that also cover my businesses. But how do you make graphics for Pinterest that will knock your viewer’s socks off? Well, let’s take a moment to break it down and figure out what makes for a cool Pinterest image to begin with, then find out how you can reproduce it on your own.
Examining the Stats
Now I know from being both a pinner and a fan that the popularity of the pin depends on two things: the quality of the image and whether the pin shows the content in the link accurately.
How do I know this? Well if you have a Pinterest business account, as I do for my companies, you can see the stats for your individual pins. For example, this is historically the most popular pin for my business:
What kind of impressions does it get? Well here you go:
Neat, right? In the last 30 days, it has pulled in 267,881 impressions, 789 saves, and 100 clicks. Because my pins are “Rich Pins,” people can buy my stickers directly on Pinterest via Apple Pay or credit card. And I’ll tell you right now, almost every sale I’ve had of that sticker came from Pinterest.
Why? Let’s figure it out. I think a certain part of it is the topic: many Pinners lean towards the inspirational, and this is an inspiring quote. It’s easy to read, and although I don’t love the picture, it is original (I took it). It’s also been repinned by multiple writers, and it even pops up in my personal feed as a result.
So let’s now translate that to whatever it is you’re doing. You need a few basic things for a solid Pinterest pin:
1. A great photo
2. Legible text
3. A topic that resonates with pinners
As a designer, I’m sure you can knock out those first two. The third, however, may take a bit more thought. With that in mind, let’s put this all into motion.
Content
Like most things on the web, you have to start with your content. What is it that you want to promote? Is it a blog post? A product? A page on your website? Whatever it is, you need to narrow that down first because it’s your starting point. For the purposes of this piece, let’s use a blog post as an example, and since I’m the one writing this article, we’ll use something I’ve done here on Creative Market. How about … this one. In my estimation, this topic works pretty well because it’s aspirational, just like many pinners’ interests. Plus, we can definitely get some cool photos in here to spice it up. Now we just have to make it shine.
Create Your Own or Use a Template
For me, putting a pin on Pinterest is a business decision. I can’t spend all day creating a graphic for every pin, so I have to template it out as best as possible. And so for my business page, I have my own little designs that I work with to try to keep things consistent.
Let’s put this into action with that blog post. I need a system that lets me promote my topic quickly and is easy to work with. That’s why I went with the J U N I P E R Social Media Pack right here on Creative Market. It has a variety of different size and scope options that I can work with, and I like the aesthetics of the whole kit as well. Now let’s get to building.
Putting it all Together
There are a lot of great options for me to choose from in this kit, but I’m going to begin with one that I think fits the topic. It’s called Blog Posts_4, and although I can edit it in either InDesign or Photoshop (the kit includes INDD, PSD, and PDF files), I’m going to work with Photoshop since it’s where I’m the most comfortable. Here’s what I’ve picked:
Makes sense, right? When you’re trying to attain your goals, you always think of mountains. OK, maybe that’s just me. Either way, I’m going to run with it.
Each part of the image is placed on its own layer, and all of the text is in a folder. I pop open that folder next and start swapping out the copy:
Now I could’ve stopped there, and I considered it. But I decided that the picture didn’t quite hit me the way I wanted, so I decided to take a different angle. Fortunately, that’s easy.
Each of the images are Smart Objects, so swapping them out is a breeze. I just double clicked on the symbol in the bottom right-hand corner of the layer, and then pasted and saved my new image. Here’s what I’ve got.
Now before you get all ticked off, let me explain the idea here a bit.
First, that was a shot I took when I was looking for a new family pet. I went to a local no-kill shelter looking for a beagle, and found this five-year-old beagle mix that seemed super cute. I took this picture, sent it to my wife, and an hour later she was down at the shelter with the kids. An hour after that, we took her home. Her name is Tessie, and she’s amazing.
So there we go, happy story. And I thought about the picture going with the post because we’ve all had moments where we’re trapped in some kind of situation and we want to get out, but we’re not sure how. Tracking your goals could pull you out of it, right?
You might also notice that I adjusted the text here, and I did. I made it all black, changed the bars to black as well (they’re also Smart Objects, but this time they’re for Illustrator), and even added a tick of a radiant glow. But the text didn’t pop enough, and honestly, that picture just isn’t great for the text, so I went another route.
I went digging through my pictures again, and I found a nicely composed shot that I took of my wife and then two-year-old daughter when we went to Portland, Oregon in 2015. They’re in a pumpkin patch, the sky is blue, they’re in the distance a bit but it’s still cute, and it’s a nice enough shot that I figured it could work. Maybe I’d go back to the mountain, but this was another option.
And there you have it.
Going Bigger
Now here’s the thing: that got me a great basis for my piece, but there are lots of other ways that it could go. For example, if I wanted to make a super long piece – like one that you’d see for an infographic – I could stack some of the images. To shorthand it, let’s just stack a few of the samples.
Now why would you do that for your own stuff? Well what if you were selling your own templates right here on Creative Market? You could put together this pin to promote all of the different looks you can get from one kit. These kinds of pins dominate feeds, because they just keep scrolling on and on while other pins float by. It’s not a bad option if that’s what you’re going for.
Now get to it!
And there you have it, just a few options of what you can do to make yourself a stellar Pinterest post. Does it help the wheels to turn on your own projects? I know it has for mine. And with that in mind, I’m off to do some pinning.
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Hi! My name is Kevin Whipps, and I'm a writer and editor based in Phoenix, Arizona. When I'm not working taking pictures of old cars and trucks, I'm either writing articles for Creative Market or hawking stickers at Whipps Sticker Co.
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