Are you struggling with establishing a Pinterest pin design? Between the updates with Idea pins and the push for fresh pins, creating the perfect pin design isn’t as easy as it once was. Fortunately, designing pins can be quick, easy, and fun with the right Pinterest design tips!
This is a guest post by Domitille of Mademoiselle Social. See the end of the article for more information about her, her company, and how you can create the perfect Pinterest pin design!
Let’s see how you can create a click-worthy Pinterest pin design and get more people to click on them by breaking down the anatomy of the perfect Pinterest pin.
HOW DO YOU CREATE A PIN FOR PINTEREST?
Before we dive in, let’s take a look at the different methods you can use to create a Pinterest pin.
As of May 2022, there are three ways you can create a pin for Pinterest.
- Pinterest’s native pin design maker
- Design software like Canva
- Tailwind Create
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HOW DO YOU MAKE A PIN DESIGN ON PINTEREST?
To design a Pinterest pin with the native pin maker, you’ll click on ‘Create’ from the top menu bar then ‘Create Pin’. Once you’re in the native pin maker, you can add an image and then start adding text.
It’s fair to say that the graphic design options for the native pin maker are limited and not super easy to use.
Once you’ve designed your Pinterest pin and added your title and description, choose a board, click ‘Save’, and voilà you published your Pinterest pin design!
HOW DO YOU MAKE A PINTEREST PIN ON CANVA?
The second option to create a click-worthy Pinterest pin design is to use a design program like Canva. You can also use PicMonkey, Snappa, or any other graphic design software that you like, it works the same.
Canva provides templates for Pinterest pins that you can use and customize for your brand or you can start from scratch.
- Create a new design
- Upload an image
- Add your text
- Download to your computer
In order to upload it on Pinterest, you can either use the native pin maker that we talked about above or upload it to a scheduler like Tailwind.
With the native pin maker, you would upload the created images in the pin maker, add the title, description, and URL. Choose your board and click on ‘Save.’
It’s also where you upload your pins in “bulk” by clicking the ‘+’ in the top left corner. This is a HUGE time-saver for content creators that design multiple pins at a time.
Related Post: A Guide to Creating and Uploading Multiple Pins for Traffic
With Tailwind*, you can upload the Pinterest pin design to Tailwind, add the title and description, choose your board and schedule it in your queue!
*If you’re new to the term Tailwind, it’s an automatic scheduler used by a lot of Pinterest users to schedule their pins ahead of time and have them automatically published on Pinterest.
HOW DO YOU MAKE A PINTEREST PIN USING TAILWIND?
The last option I want to talk about with you when it comes to making pins for Pinterest is to use Tailwind’s native pin maker: Tailwind Create! It’s like your very own Pinterest pin generator software.
With Tailwind Create, you can design plenty of pins straight in Tailwind.
Click on create, choose your designs, add your branding, and your text and choose a picture. Tailwind does the rest by creating multiple Pin designs for you.
You can choose your favorites and add them to your queue to be published or adjust them to your liking.
Canva and Tailwind are great options if you need some Pinterest pin design ideas since you can use templates and find inspiration right in the software.
Now that we saw three ways you could be making your pins for Pinterest, let’s review the different types of pins you can encounter on the platform before we go into how to design your Pinterest pins for clicks and traffic.
THE TWO TYPES OF PINTEREST PINS YOU CAN USE
Currently, you can create two different formats of Pinterest pins.
- Standard pins: Been around since Pinterest first started
- Idea pins: Rolled out last year (2021)
The difference between these two types of pins is that the standard Pinterest pin links outside of Pinterest (traffic to your website) and the Idea pins do NOT.
Both of these types of pins can be either static images or videos. And to add more confusion to the matter, you can also create Carousel pins which are still considered standard pins.
For Idea pins, they can be designed with multiple images but we call them “pages” and therefore, they’re not considered a Carousel pin.
SIDE NOTE: If you need help making sense of all these formats and learning how to use them in your Pinterest strategy, you can get my Pin Cheatsheet!
Luckily for us though, all the different Pinterest pins that I listed require somewhat of the same design tips to make sure we’re creating click-worthy and scroll-stopping Pinterest pin designs!
Let’s take a look at what makes a good pin on Pinterest!
WHAT MAKES A GOOD PIN ON PINTEREST?
If you’re wondering how to make an attractive Pinterest pin, this is where you want to pay attention! A Pinterest pin design that converts usually follows three main elements!
- The right format and size for your images
- Beautiful imagery and design
- Keyworded text
Let’s look at the anatomy of a perfect Pinterest pin design!
WHAT PINTEREST PIN SIZE SHOULD YOU USE?
Yes, the size of your pins does matter. Your Pinterest pin should always be a vertical design.
Pinterest recommends a ⅔ ratio when it comes to creating your Pinterest pins. It means that it could be 600px x 900px or 1000px x 1500px for example.
If we’re talking about creating Idea pins, then Pinterest recommends the following ratio: 1080px x 1920px (they’re very similar to the size of Instagram Stories)
Keep in mind that even if Pinterest recommends using the vertical format, you could also experiment with the square ratio of 600px x 600px to see if your audience answers better to that format.
I would keep it to a minimum, though, because a vertical Pinterest pin design is easier to read for users on the mobile app.
CHOOSE BEAUTIFUL IMAGERY FOR YOUR BACKGROUND AND TASTEFUL DESIGN
Pinterest is a visual search engine so the images you choose to illustrate your pin do matter as much as the overall design of the Pinterest pins!
The pictures you choose should always be of high quality and related to the content of the Pinterest pins.
Pinterest can “find objects” on your image and associate it with keywords. If you choose a picture of a dog when your Pinterest pin is about a chocolate cake recipe, Pinterest won’t have much trust in your pin and won’t distribute it very much.
When it comes to the choice of your font, we want to make sure that you’re using fonts that are easy to read. Keep in mind that 80% of Pinterest users are on mobile devices!
If they can’t read your text, they won’t click on your pins. It’s that simple!
Handwritten fonts are beautiful but they should be used in moderation. Readability over cuteness, that’s what you’re shooting for!
The design of your pins in itself should highlight the most important part of your title, the piece of information that will make your audience think “yes, that’s exactly what I want to know, let me click on THAT pin!”
You want to make sure that your text pops up on your image so it’s easy to read and users know instantly what your pin is about. You can play around with different sizes of text and different fonts, underlining some part of the text that is important or using a different color like we did above.
The sky is the limit when it comes to creating your Pinterest pin design as long as you keep it easy to read!
The last design element we want to add is your branding!
BRANDING YOUR PINTEREST PIN DESIGN
It can be a simple logo or your website address as well as your branding colors. We simply want to make sure that we’re letting the users know where this pin is coming from. It’ll help with brand recognition and authority on the platform.
When it comes to your brand color, some businesses are very particular about their colors and won’t create Pinterest pins using other colors. But, it’s important to try things out.
Aim to create some Pinterest templates with your brand colors and some others using different colors.
The light blue/green (image 7) as well as the light orange (image 8) aren’t part of our brand.
You never know what will work best with your audience and that would be too bad to miss on a click because someone is not attracted to the colors you chose for your brand. (Yes, this happens!)
OPTIMIZE YOUR PINTEREST PIN DESIGN FOR SEO
We’re finishing our anatomy of the perfect Pinterest pin design with a key part: your keywords!
As we said earlier, Pinterest can read your image so they can extract keywords that help them categorize your content.
We want to make sure that these keywords are also appearing on the text of our pins! That’s where you can play with the size or the color of your text and make sure you’re highlighting those keywords for the users and for Pinterest!
And last but not least, make sure you’re using “calls to action” on your Pinterest pin design as well.
A call to action (or CTA) will help people take that next step! Tell them to “visit your website”, “read more on the blog”, or “download the free resource.”
The other part of your SEO will happen not on the design of your pins but in the title and the description that you will need to fill in before you publish it.
This is another important place where keywords should appear. Don’t keyword stuff, try to write two to three coherent sentences using keywords and describing what users can expect to find when they click on the pins.
WRAP UP
To summarize the perfect anatomy of a Pinterest pin design, you’ll need:
- To create a vertical ⅔ ratio Pinterest pin
- Use high-quality and relevant images for your background
- Make sure your text is easy to read
- Use a hierarchy to highlight the important information
- Add your branding
- Close with a strong call to action
Follow these Pinterest pin design tips and you’re on your way to creating some Pinterest magic!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Domitille is the founder of Mademoiselle Social. She helps service providers, online course creators and digital product owners create a sustainable and automatized marketing strategy to increase traffic to their offers and website using Pinterest as a top-of-funnel.
Get access to the Pin Cheatsheet & 50+ calls to action to create high-converting Pins on Pinterest & get clicks with my FREE Pinterest Pin Cheatsheet!
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