If you’ve been following our blog series 20 Tips to Polish your Pinterest Account you’ve polished your Pinterest Profile and your Pinterest Boards are in great shape.
Now it’s time to turn our attention to pins themselves.
These final six tips will help you improve your pinning practice to ensure the quality of the pins, the quality of their links and the quality of the pin descriptions.
6 tips to help you Pin like a Pro
1. Quality matters! Both the quality of the images and the quality of the content. Pin tall attractive images that lead to great posts.
- Think of pinning as bookmarking — is this content something you want to return to again?
- Think of pinning as sharing — is this content something worth telling a friend about?
- Think of pinning as scrapbooking — is the image attractive?
If the image is pretty but the post isn’t of value you can like the pin but take a pass on repinning it.
2. Check Links! ALWAYS, always, always check links. Make sure the link goes to the post itself and not to a blog archive page or a sales page that doesn’t offer value.
3. Edit Pin Descriptions! When you pin an image edit the Pin description. When repinning, make the description your own. I know I’m guilty of just taking the description the previous pinner used, especially when I’m pinning from mobile. But I at least read the description and make sure that it is how I would describe the Pin myself. Add keywords to Pin descriptions so users can find them in Pinterest Search. Optimal Pin descriptions should actually be between 100 and 300 characters (not words!) long.
4. To Hashtag or not to Hashtag? Hashtags aren’t really a Pinterest thing. Pinterest says, “Keep in mind that Pins with generic, keyword-stuffed descriptions are off-putting to people and may be demoted in search. The same is true for hashtags—having too many of them in your descriptions may negatively impact your ranking.” Source Pinterest Blog.
So we recommend that you only use a hashtag on Pinterest when it is a brand-specific tag that you are using across all of your social media platforms. You can add your brand hashtag to your Pin descriptions but don’t use it anywhere else on your profile. Don’t use a hashtag that no one else will ever use or search.
Hat tip to Vincent Ng of MCNG Marketing who weighed in on the debate and has offered the definitive answer.
If you do decide you want to use a hashtag in your pin description it should be branded, no generic hashtags such as #travel or #love.
5. Apply to Get Rich Pins! Rich Pins add more textual content to your Pins, helping them stand out in the grid and rank better. Article Rich Pins drive more traffic to blog posts than regular Pins. You can head over to our tutorial for how to apply for Article Rich Pins for your blog to learn more.
6. Pin regularly and interact with other pinners in your niche! Pin consistently so that your content is seen regularly by your followers. And don’t just pin your own content. Follow boards and other pinners, join or start your own group boards, like, repin and comment. Conversations don’t happen a lot on Pinterest so when they do it’s kinda special. So go ahead and comment.
The more you interact with others, the more interaction your profile and Pins will receive in return. And the number of repins your Pin directly gets affects how well it will rank in Pinterest search results.
How have you done? Don’t just pin these posts, actually follow through with the 20 tips we’ve given you to polish your Pinterest account.
Don’t forget to FOLLOW US ON PINTEREST.
Thanks Ruth … I was attempting to make it so that each book had a url that took viewers directly the authors amazon page, but I gave up. I fixed it so that viewers can go directly to amazon.com where they will have to do a search for the book/author they are interested in. I really do appreciate your comments and your help. Maybe the problem is on my end of things and has to do with my pc itself. Not sure.
Not sure what your issue is Esther. I just pinned one of your books to a secret board. I then edited the link to the url for the book on amazon.ca and it works.
The books I have put on my BOOKS WONDERFUL BOOKS website aren’t mine, therefore it would make no sense to send anyone to my own websitel.Pins on all of my other boards, have links that take you to their place of business, so why is this different? I’m confused.Already you’ve gained several more Pinterest members whose books I put on that site. That had never even heard of Pinterest before and now some are even making their own boards. Thisibook board I created for them is a very good idea for all concerned.
I’m going a bit nuts. I cannot make the links work on my new board, BOOKS WONDERFUL BOOKS! I go the Amazon page that carries the book I’m helping promote, and I copy the url in the address field. I then go back to my board, paste the url in the Edit field that is reserved for “Website”. Then I click on Save Change. It should work perfectly, but it doesn’t. It only takes me to a generic Amazon page (Amazon.com) where the book I’m promoting (a free “service”, by the way) should pop right up. When I try the author’s personal url, this is the message that comes up on my screen: Your domain has no activity on Pinterest at this time. Help Pinners easily share your content by integrating the Pin It button today!
HELP! What in the world am I doing wrong? Thank you.
Pinterest doesn’t allow direct affiliate links. You can link to your own website and then to Amazon and it will be safe, your links will not get taken down.