Since Pinterest is constantly improving and updating its interface and functionality, it’s important to know how to post on Pinterest. I’m covering here how to post on the Pinterest desktop version, on the mobile app, and using the Tailwind scheduler.
I’ll also compare manual pinning to Tailwind and will show how you can use both manual and scheduled pinning to drive tons of free traffic to your website from Pinterest.
HOW TO POST ON PINTEREST: BEST PINTEREST STRATEGIES
To post something, you need to first upload a video on Pinterest or upload your image, or a mix of several videos and images and in most cases, you can attach a destination link (page URL) to where you want to drive traffic to. That’s because Pinterest is a visual search engine with social media elements. Yes, their previous updates now let you post a video aside from posting a photo to Pinterest.
It’s crucial for your success on Pinterest to upload quality images optimized for this platform.
How to Post Pictures on Pinterest
I’ll show you various ways of posting pictures on Pinterest in this article, but before we move to that part, I’d like to give you the very basic information regarding the quality and size of images that perform on Pinterest the best.
- First, you need to know the rules of the platform. The majority of Pinterest users are on mobile devices, which dictates the ideal image ratio for a pin. Pin images must be vertical!
- Second, the recommended image minimum resolution is 1000*1500 pixels. This is a 2:3 image ratio. Pinterest wants to make sure that your image has a great resolution on ANY device, that’s why it’s not recommended to make images smaller than 1000*1500 pixels
- Third, you don’t have to keep all your images strictly within a 2:3 image ratio. Your pins can be longer, up to 1:2 ratio (that would make 1000 by 2000 pixels). Anything longer than 1:2 ratio will be cut off.
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LEARN HOW TO POST A PIN ON PINTEREST
People use two ways of posting on Pinterest:
- You can do the entire process manually (and I’ll show you several ways of doing it manually).
- You can use automation tools (aka Pinterest schedulers to save a lot of time and to be able to pin outside of your timezone).
Let’s look first at the manual pinning methods.
How to Upload Pictured to Pinterest (Step By Step Guide)
If you are using a Pinterest business account, to upload an image directly to Pinterest on your desktop computer, you need to click on the “plus” icon in the right top corner and select “create a pin”.
In Pinterest’s newest update, they now give you the option to Create an idea pin if you have that feature already.
On the next step, you will see the Pin builder and will be able to either upload the photo from your computer or alternatively, you can add a link to your webpage and Pinterest will suggest images you already have on your image as pins. You can also create video pins from their previous updates!
Other blanks you need to fill before saving the pin:
- Pin title (should include targeted keywords for the best Pinterest SEO performance and traffic).
- Pin description (by the way, if you are wondering, do hashtags work on Pinterest, here’s the answer).
- Post or webpage URL.
You can then select saving the pin straight away, or schedule pinning it later. This is the native Pinterest scheduling tool, however, I would recommend you first test if this works properly on a couple of pins. I personally found that in many cases Pinterest was replacing the link to the webpage with a link to a pin URL.
So a user clicking on this pin doesn’t head to your site, instead, the same pin loads again. You are losing traffic, and users aren’t getting what they want (they might even report or flag your pin for this). This looks like a glitch and hopefully by the time you are reading this post, it will be fixed.
But I would still check it on a few pins before scheduling a bunch of them and if you see an issue, maybe for scheduling pins you’d better use an officially authorized Pinterest scheduler Tailwind (more about it later in the post).
If you are on a desktop, you can find the same “plus” icon to add a pin either in the Pins section in your account or inside a specific board to which you want to save your image.
You can now also upload multiple images in the order you want and post a carousel pin on Pinterest!
If want to post a pin from your Pinterest app Android device, you can click the plus icon in the top right corner of the screen and start uploading images to Pinterest:
The Pinterest mobile app is pretty straightforward on both iPhone or Android devices.
After you have uploaded the pin image that you want to pin from your computer or mobile device, you will then post it on a Pinterest board you want that you own.
To choose a board, you just need to click on the dropdown arrow and pick from there. Of course, you must keep in mind that you have to choose the Pinterest board that is most relevant to your pin.
You cannot select a Pinterest board talking about Recipes if it is a pin about Fashion, right?
If you want to improve your Pinterest marketing and Pinterest profile further, I would suggest optimizing your pin by adding keywords to your Pinterest pins, Pinterest board, Pinterest title, and Pinterest description.
HOW TO SAVE A PIN ON PINTEREST FROM YOUR WEBSITE
Using Pinterest Browser Extension
If you have all the images you want to save to Pinterest, on your webpage or blog post, you might want to use Pinterest’s browser extension (it’s free) on a desktop computer. This makes saving pins a lot easier as your pin SEO titles and SEO descriptions will be pulled from the webpage, as well as the page URL.
All you need to do is add the pin description itself. But even for this part, you could pre-define it on your site using a social sharing plugin or by adding your keywords to the alt tag of the image.
How to Save Pins from Your Website using Tailwind
Tailwind scheduler makes it even easier saving pins from your website, especially when you have several pictures linked to the same page.
That’s because you should space pins apart from each other to avoid Pinterest’s spam filters to be triggered. If you save multiple pictures using Pinterest’s own browser button, it will save them all simultaneously and to the same board.
Tailwind extension allows you to set intervals (for example, saving pins with 1 day or 1 weeks intervals) and select boards for each pin separately.
Why You Should Post On Pinterest in 2023
If you are wondering why I am teaching you how to post something on Pinterest, it’s because if you are a content creator, blogger or business owner, then you should definitely add Pinterest marketing strategy to your plan.
Pinterest is not just another social media site. If you want free and quick traffic going to your website or online store, then you should start making content on Pinterest. By posting pins and multiple images, you will be able to link your domain website and when users click on the pin, they will be redirected to your website.
Simple as that!
What You Can Post On Pinterest
Of course, you can’t just upload any content to Pinterest – your pin content must be within the Pinterest Community Guidelines. Users on Pinterest prefer images and videos that are aesthetically pleasing to the eyes and are informative.
The content of your pin that you should upload to Pinterest must be able to answer questions since Pinterest is a visual search engine (like Google).
For content that you cannot post or should not be part of your Pinterest strategy are:
- Adult content
- Exploitation
- Hateful activities
- Misinformation
- Harassment and criticism
- Self-injury or harmful behavior
- Graphic Violence and Threats
- And the likes
If you want a more in-depth read of their Community Guidelines, you can visit this page.
Where To Create A Pin
If you are now wondering how and where to create a Pinterest pin without any knowledge in graphic design, then do not worry because there are tons of websites out there that can do the work for you!
An easy way to get Pinterest followers is to create pins that are pleasing to the eyes and are click-worthy. With that, your Pinterest graphics must be bright, vertical, and has high-quality images or videos.
I personally use and recommend Canva if you are looking for ready-made, free pin designs, and templates. All you need to do is choose a template, add your images or video clips, and add text, and you are good to go! Aside from their desktop website, they also have an app for mobile users.
If you want more photo editing or graphic design platforms so you can post photos and videos on Pinterest, then you can visit my post here.
MANUAL PINNING VS PINTEREST SCHEDULERS
The more I work on Pinterest for my blogs, the better I realize this whole dispute around manual pinning vs schedulers is simply nonsense.
Here is the disappointing truth for you: both manual pinning and scheduling on Pinterest will be essential parts of your blogging routine, whether you want it or not. Of course, if you plan to get a lot of traffic from Pinterest.
WHAT IS MANUAL PINNING (FOR CONTENT CREATORS)?
If you are not a regular user on Pinterest, but a website owner trying to drive traffic from this platfrom, you will do a lot of stuff on Pinterest manually.
You will manually SEO optimize your profile, boards and search for the best keywords. By the way, if you are looking for a Pinterest keyword tool, I wrote about it here. You will manually repin some of your most popular pin URLs to show them more times in group boards.
To find your most popular pins, you can look into your Pinterest Analytics or into your Google Analytics.
In Pinterest Analytics you’ll find the top pins by impressions for the last 30 days.
Go to Analytics >> Website or just directly to this page.
Click on each pin title to open the exact pin URL and repin this popular pin a few times a week to relevant group boards to keep showing this pin to more people.
In Google Analytics, you’ll find similar stats with pin URLs. Go to Acquisition >> Social >> Network Referrals >> Choose a particular post >> Check the exact pin URLs. You’ll have to copy and paste them from here to your browser to open in a new window (Google Analytics won’t open them automatically).
You will also manually do research for other popular pins in your topic to save them to your own boards.
It’s always better to save your first pin from a new post manually to the most relevant board. And it’s better to do it from your website, this way you can double-check that everything shows up in your pin as you want it to be. It’s important to check it because when your readers save pins from your website, you can’t fix their pins if they end up having some errors.
So, pin your first pin from a post manually and immediately
- check how your SEO title shows in the rich pin;
- check if your SEO description is not missing in the pin;
- pick the most relevant hashtags on Pinterest and check their popularity;
- check the URL of your pin by clicking through to your post (this one is probably the most important a 404-error page instead of a page can hurt your Pinterest account badly, plus if your pin gets repined by other people, all those repins will be with a broken URL and you’ll never be able to edit their pins).
If you schedule your pin first time using Tailwind you will not notice any of these because your pin will go straight to the schedule. You will not be able to see the pin itself unless you choose in Tailwind the “pin now” option.
And guess what? Even if you choose the “pin now” to see how it looks, and if there is an error in that first pin, you are still in trouble. You’ve already scheduled it with the same error to 10 more boards with 2-3 days intervals, you’ll have to manually go through your schedule and remove every broken pin.
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So, you might be asking now, if you do so much stuff manually, why even pay for a Pinterest scheduler?
Did you get to a point in your blogging journey where you’d better be paying $10 a month to save 20 minutes a day on one of your endless routine tasks?
20 minutes a day is 600 minutes a month, which equals a full working day of 10 hours. Is it worth $10 for you? Would you work an hour for $1?
Tailwind can do this work for you when you are on vacation, when you are asleep, when you are busy working on your new content or products when you work with your clients, visit conferences when you simply need to focus on a new project and can’t afford any distractions several times a day.
Tailwind is an official Pinterest’s partner, so you are safe to use it.
If your audience lives in the US and you live in Europe or Australia for example, a scheduler is not just a time saver, it’s a game-changer because it will pin while you sleep. As that’s when your audience is active on Pinterest!
Tailwind takes a bit of time to learn how to use it properly. I’ve seen a lot of unfortunate examples of how people get their accounts suspended for pinning too many pins at the same time. They missed a few little yet very important steps in setting their schedule.
This is why I recorded my Tailwind course – I honestly can’t imagine a better format of showing you how I click here or there, choose this or that setting. And I made this course very affordable because I genuinely want to help as many people as possible.
I feel sorry for all the bloggers who paid for Tailwind, messed up with it and spent a lot more time trying to fixing it, got accounts suspended and are opting for manual pinning just because they are afraid to use this tool ever again. It’s not impossible to figure it out, and you can do many things more efficiently in Tailwind if you watch how I do it on my accounts.
But please, please don’t get an idea that I’m against manual pinning and this whole post was just to sell my Tailwind course 🙂
I dedicated an entire module in my Pinterest SEO Traffic Course to manual pinning. There is so much more you can do in addition to just saving pins manually!
But most importantly, when you are just learning Pinterest and trying to figure out how to game it, you HAVE to spend time on the platform. You have to try doing everything a regular user does on Pinterest to see how things work in general on this platform and what is going on in your niche in particular.
CONCLUSIONS
Without manually pinning and doing other stuff manually on Pinterest, you’ll never have a chance to truly understand how this platform works. And you’ll be doing a lot of things wrong if you don’t double-check your new pins manually before you send them to your scheduler.
Without Pinterest scheduling tools, you’ll survive but you’ll reach a point when your time is better spent on other tasks and the volume of your pinning will require too much work.
I’m Anastasia and I’m a full-time blogger, online entrepreneur, and Pinterest marketing strategist. I help digital entrepreneurs and bloggers drive targeted traffic from Pinterest either through my online courses or through Pinterest consultancy.
Comments 5
Hi Anastasia,
How many pins a day would you recommend to pin for a new blog with few followers?
Some people get better results with manual pinning so I’m trying that tactic to see how it goes.
Thanks for the informative post.
Bianca
Author
Hi, Bianca!
I always recommend as many pins as you can. For a new blog, I would grow it gradually. When you ask about pins, do you mean your own pins only? If you have a new blog and not that much content to promote with your own pins yet, you should definitely help your boards gain momentum with relevant and popular pins from other websites. There is no specific number, I’d start with 10 per day and grow it to 30 a day in the first month and would keep growing to about 50 🙂 But that again might not fit every niche. If your niche is DIY, recipes, decor – usually each of your posts will have several images you can use as pins. This increases the number of your fresh pins you can publish each day.
Hi Anastasia,
Thanks for your reply.
So, a combination of my own pins and 3rd party pins is the way to go. Do you mean up to 50 of my owns pins or a combination of my pins and other people pins?
Author
Hi, Bianca! I only pin about 20% of 3d party pins, the rest are from my site. When I create a new board or several boards, I might go as high as 80% of pins from other blogs, because I need first to fill the new boards with popular pins which bring the right keywords with them to the board. But that’s only on some days when I create new boards.
Great tips Anastasia,
Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer!
Bianca