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Creating Powerful Pins

How in the world do you create an awesome pin that's gonna drive traffic? Like, let's get real. Okay, every piece of content that you share on Pinterest, should be helpful. It is a place where people are getting ideas. Don't share things that aren't going to help them do that. What I mean by that is, and I'm actually gonna just click through all of these so they're all on the screen. Dang it. Here you go, okay. You wanna give them an opportunity to know exactly what they're getting with the pin. You want them to experience this lifestyle thought, like this product is going to fit into my life, and you wanna show them how it does that, instead of just showing necessarily a product on a black background. You wanna be able to show them, oh yeah, I could take that product to the beach, or that sunscreen would look great in this tote bag, I don't know. Give them an aspirational view of your product. You wanna make sure that you have 600 by 900 pixel, is a good resolution, you wanna make sur...

e it's vertical, so Pinterest, you know is, they're looking on a mobile device and on a phone, it fits so nicely in that phone when it's vertical. Lifestyle images, color works really well on Pinterest. If you're looking in a sea of images, and you see that bright hot pink pin, your eye is gonna go to that. But at the same time I say that, you know, you have to also stay true to your brand. I mean, my brand is not hot pink, so I'm not gonna produce hot pink pins. So there is a balance. Don't just do click bait stuff. Evergreen content is really the best way to go because you know that's something, like, and that's why food is really the biggest category of Pinterest, because we're eating all the time, and you can have spaghetti at all times of year, so spaghetti recipes are gonna do really well. At the same time, we know if you're producing a product or service that's seasonal, that's just what it is, but ultimately, how-to evergreen content is the best kind of content, and most engaged content on Pinterest. And absolutely, hands down, make sure there is a good link. The worst experience, I bet everyone in this room has had it, is to click on something on Pinterest, and be directed to a site that has nothing to do with the pin. Am I right? Check your links, make sure you don't have any broken links on your site either, but make sure that that pin is going to a place that's going to actually help them achieve what they saw. So these are a couple things as I worked with Pinterest to create this presentation, they shared with me some insights that I thought were really amazing to note, that fashion and style related pins that show products in real-life scenarios have 30% higher click-through rates than a product on a plain background. So that just further emphasizes, you wanna showcase the product in a lifestyle setting. So for example, this rolling pin, instead of just a picture of a rolling pin on a white backdrop, show the rolling pin in a home or a rolling pin in use, rolling out the dough. So beauty pins show products in real-life settings have a 50% higher click-through rate, and especially beauty pins with instructions have a 70% higher save rate. So people are looking for that lipstick, but they wanna know how to apply it, or they're looking for that eye shadow tutorial, along with the product that they would want. And adding text to images definitely increases engagement, but I say that with some hesitation there because we've all seen those annoying pins with just text slapped on it, and it just looks like they just want a ton of clicks, and then it's a roundup of 100 recipes, and it just didn't help me at all. So don't do the click bait text on things just to get engagement. Do it tastefully, make sure that it's a helpful message, like, these are no-bake brownies, not just yummy brownies but they're no-bake brownies, so it's gonna save me a lot of time. Like that's a really great way to sell someone on something. And home and DIY pins with instructional content have an average of 80% higher save rates, so at the end of the day, this just reinforces people are trying to implement these ideas and they wanna know how to do it. So here's and example of, I did something with Fossil, is featuring their watch. And I wanted to show this to you guys because it's the same photo shoot, I was creating content, and I wanted to know what pin was gonna work better. I wasn't sure, but I took the opportunity to pin both of them, and can anyone guess which one did better? I won't be offended, but I'd love to, say the, 'cause the screen on my left and right is over. (audience laughing) Up close? The one up close? Yeah, the one up close did so much better. Why do you think that? Up close it's clear what the product is. It's clear what the product is? It's not competing with the shoes. It's not competing with the shoes? Yes, exactly. You can experience the product but at the same time you get an idea of how to apply the product with your outfit. And with the shoes, yeah, you don't know if you're, are you marketing the shoes, or are you marketing the pants, are you marketing the watch? Is it bad that I pinned that other one? No. Could it drive traffic to my site? Yeah, so I pinned it anyway. But ultimately the watch did much better. So you wanna make sure that you're making your pin informative, with a text overlay, and then there's a strong call to action. I could've made this pin perform a lot better by saying something about like, this watch is only $50, or giving an idea of value, or talking about fall fashion trends and how this watch is part of that. I didn't do any of that, and I just relied on my pin description and my blog snippet to tell the story. But a good description in your pin is really key. You wanna make sure that you are adding those keywords, that you're saying fall fashion, Fossil, navy watch, describe what's in your pin as a good starting point. So I described the navy watch that I'm wearing, a rest bodysuit, and I'm wearing navy pants. But then what I could've done better, was to say this would be a great outfit to wear to work, and then give them the idea that this is a work chic outfit, oh, and that's probably what they're searching for on Pinterest, work outfit ideas. So give them the idea of how they can implement it. You wanna make sure that you're trying to use about 20 hashtags. On Pinterest you can use hashtags now, which wasn't always the case. Don't make them dumb hashtags, like you know, I don't know, YOLO or whatever. Like make it, (laughing) I don't know that just came to me. You wanna make sure that they're helpful, like fall fashion, or navy pants, again, describing things that people would search. Take people to a landing page where they can learn about your idea, so especially if you're selling a product, it's very frustrating to be taken to a home page or a general thing about watches. You wanna take them directly to the page where they can purchase that specific watch. If the watch is no longer in stock, I would go back and I would update that pin and make sure that it's being taken to another watch page that looks similar. And I know that's a lot to do, but again, you don't want a lot of people bouncing off your site, so be mindful of that. And include if you're doing food or things like that, make sure to include ingredients, how do you cook this, what's in it, is it gluten-free, is it dairy-free? Those are all things that people commonly search on Pinterest when they're thinking about health stuff in particular. So this pin was highly engaged, but if you can tell here, like I don't mind sharing this with you, it wasn't clicked on a lot, and I think that was a really big miss on my part that I didn't make this a helpful piece of content. I didn't put any kind of text on it and tell them how it could help their lives, I just gave them an idea, and people did a lot of closeups of it, and there were a lot of saves because they liked the idea but they didn't click on it a lot, and that's because I didn't have a clear call to action. So I wanna tell you guys about rich pins. Does anyone know what rich pins are? Have you heard of this term? Okay, so rich pins are basically Pinterest's way of verifying that you're a legitimate business, that you are who you say you are, and the content that you are sharing is being led back to a site that's legitimate. So there was a time when people were just being really spammy with Pinterest, and they were just sharing things, and then they were sending traffic back to a site that had nothing to do with that, and it's just spammy behavior. And this is Pinterest's way of saying, hey, we're going to make sure that we give the best experience to our community, and we want to basically reward businesses who are taking time to say I want to be validated by Pinterest, and I want to make sure when people are pinning my content, that there's this metadata, this information that is continuing to give me attribution, and at the same time proves that I am who I say I am. So it's ability to add extra information to your pin. And there's different kinds of rich pins. There's article rich pins, there's product rich pins, there's recipe rich pins, there's all different kinds, and app rich pins. And I am a blog, so I use article rich pins, but what you do is you can go to business.pinterest.com/richpins, actually, or you can go here is another place where you can go, but the easier one to remember actually is business.pinterest.com, and you can search rich pins there. And you have to apply for this, so it's something that you're gonna have to take time to do as a business, and you go and you choose which type of rich pin you are. So if you sell a product, you'd probably use product. And they are gonna take a review of it, and they're gonna say, okay, yeah they really do sell products. Here is the code that you can add to your site. And they'll give you that special code for your website, and then you get a rich pin. And rich pins add extra information. So you can see here that the extra information for my rich pin, is that it has the blog post title. So it has Neutral Nursery Design, and then it has the first paragraph of the blog post there at the beginning, and then you have a call to action that says read it. So that's an article rich pin. If you have a product, it will associate a price with it, which is so great, because when you lower the price, it usually updates the pin, and notifies someone if they have the notifications turned on, that you've dropped the price. So it's like marketing for you. So any questions on rich pins? You were mentioning if like, broken links. So what I've done with the company that I'm pinning for, we actually take away the product, so that we aren't trying to trick them, and then we just mention that that is no longer available, and shop other types of item. Is that something you can do too? Yeah, I mean, try to make it as helpful as possible. Definitely there are a lot of people in that case where the product's sold out and it is what it is. Yeah, okay, thank you. Yeah. Okay, so a lot of examples you shared today have been for physical items, recipes, or beauty. So for a business owner who runs their business primarily like a consultant, or a coach. Yeah. And it's digital, and they sell info products or online courses, what type of pins can they create and be successful on Pinterest? Yeah, that's a great question, so you're a service-oriented business. Mm-hm. So what I would apply for would be article rich pins, 'cause you have a lot of helpful content that you're probably sharing, and do you have a blog? Mm-hm. Yeah, so you're probably sharing a lot of best practices, or steps, or things like that, so the pins that I would share would be like simple things, like five tips you need to know on creating a dynamic blog post, or five things you should know about Pinterest, or definitely that hook, of like, this is a really great important article that you need to read. Okay. So that's what I would do, is try to be a thought leader, and share that thought leader content on Pinterest. Okay, thank you. We've got some questions online, so for hashtags for example, one question was about how you decide what type of hashtag to use, so for example, #WeddingHair, this has quite a bit category, perhaps quite competitive. Would you recommend people going a little bit more niche with their hashtags, or going big? Yeah, I think that you have to, I mean there's always that long tail approach, you just have to think about if you were the user, and you're searching, are you going to write wedding hair? And if you are gonna write that, then yes, use #WeddingHair, but if you're going to write down like, Florida wedding hair, or I probably would search like beachy waves, or the type of hair that I'm going to have, not just wedding hair, but I'm gonna probably write up-do, or wedding up-do, or loose, wavy curls. That's probably more so what I would use. Just think about the search experience from the user perspective. And a question here says, "If the ideal amount of boards is around 35, "and we're pinning 10 to 12 pins a day, "is it okay to have billions of pins on each board, "how many is too much?" Billions is a bit extreme, but, Yeah! "How much is too much? "To manage and create properly, "should we archive or delete old pins "that have originated from others, "opposed to eliminating your own content for your business?" I'm gonna address the first part, which is Pinterest does not ding you for sharing a ton of content, the more the merrier. I mean if you wanna share beyond 10 to 12 pins, go for it! It's just making sure that what your sharing is good content, and that it's truly something that you're passionate about, and that it's gonna help other people. And as far as your boards having a lot of pins, no, did you see mine? (laughs) Mine have thousands of pins on them. Of course it's about organization too, so if you have a board with a ton of pins, and you're having a hard time finding the things that you're saving, you might wanna use those sections to maybe carve out, okay I really like white dresses, or black dresses, or fall, spring, and all that under one fashion board, just from an organizational standpoint, so it helps you. And what was that last part? "And so should you archive old pins "that have originated from others, "opposed to eliminating your own content "for your own business?" No, truthfully I've never deleted a pin, and I've never seen a need to delete a pin. If anything it's only gonna help drive traffic, and Pinterest is all about community, and sharing content from other people. The fact that you would only have your content on your boards would make me not wanna follow you, 'cause that would look more spammy. And you know, I wanna know what ideas you're loving of other people. You don't have the best ideas. Not everyone has only the best ideas. We all need to lean on each other for creativity and inspiration, and so that's why it's important to be saving things from the community and saving things from your site. I would say a good ratio that I've done is about 90% of what I share on Pinterest is other people's content, and only 10% my own. And that's not to say I'm trying to diminish my own, it's just to say there are so many ideas from everybody else in the world that I love, that are better, or the same, or just more inspiration for myself, 'cause I'm using it for me as a discovery tool for myself, not just as a self-promotional tool. Great, Alyssa on chat's like "Thank you for not promoting deleting a pin!" Smiley face. (Instructor laughing) I love the agreement going on in the chat. Ricky Murphy also asks, "Can you have more than one type of rich pin as a business, "or do you just have to choose one?" From what I understand, you have to choose one. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. We have Pinterest in the house. (laughing) And I did work closely with Pinterest to do this, and they looked over this content, and they gave me a thumbs up, so you guys, it's verified.