How to Create Pinterest Graphics That Get Pinned

We all love Pinterest, but getting your pin noticed is sometimes about as hard as looking for a white cat in a snowstorm. ????

A while ago I was looking around on Pinterest and started to notice the types of pins that stood out to me the most. I decided to create an experiment of my own and created a secondary pinnable image to compare how well it would perform to my typical pinnable cover image.

Not only did this alternate pinnable image perform way better than I expected, but to this day it’s one of my top pinned images!

I’m going to share exactly what I did, how I did it, and why it worked better so that you can try it yourself.

My Pinterest Experiment

After scouring Pinterest I noticed that I was gravitating more towards pins in the search results that showed more information in them aside from just the article title.

In the screenshot below you can see how my post stands out from the rest by revealing the actual content of the article.

I decided to create two pinnable image styles for my post Where to Find the Best Free Stock Photos for Your Blog. The first image (left) is my standard pinnable image with the post title, an image and my site URL. The second image (right) was a new style I was testing where I would get right to the point and show the actual content of my blog post.

What Happened Next…

Immediately there was a notable difference between the two pinnable image styles. The secondary image was by far outpinning (is that word?) my primary image style, by a LOT.

Overall the post I experimented with has been pinned over 4,000 times on Pinterest! In the screenshot below you can see that the secondary pinnable image had over 8,500 impressions and over 80 saves in a span of just 30 days. It’s one of my best performing pins on Pinterest and I am very sure it’s because of the alternate pinnable image style I created.

Oddly enough the primary image (bottom) had more clicks, but remember that screenshot above is a snapshot of just the last 30 days.

How You Can Replicate What I Did

Are you up for an experiment? You can add a secondary pinnable image to your posts like I did and see which one performs better on Pinterest. Here’s how you can replicate what I did:

• Decide on a post you want to experiment with. Posts that are in a list, comparison or ranking format work best.
• Create an alternate pinnable image where you include some of the content from your post. You don’t have to include the full post content like I did, instead you can just show a preview.
• Upload the pin either directly to Pinterest or using Tailwind, but be sure to use the same description and keywords are you did with the primary pinnable image from your post, so that it’s an equal comparison.

Here are some more examples of secondary pinnable post image styles I’ve designed

Conclusion

Pinterest is such a valuable resource to my blog and my business, it’s become my #1 source of traffic to my blog. Trying this experiment along with using a program like Tailwind has significantly boosted my views on Pinterest. Since I tried this experiment in October 2017, my views have increased by over 100% and it’s growing every day.

Whatever kind of business you have, Pinterest is a great tool for getting visitors to your site.

p.s. Follow me over on Pinterest for tips about branding, design, blogging and business.

What do you think of this article? Do you have any questions for me? Ask me in the comments box below!