You’re a new blogger or just want to diversify your traffic by using Pinterest. But you’re wondering how to create Pinterest Images that gets the users attention?
I’ve been using Pinterest for a couple of years now and it’s what brings in the majority of web traffic to my blog.
Creating pins on Pinterest is quite simple and that’s what I’m going to show you today. After that I will share with you some key aspects of creating a viral pin.
Let’s first cover off some basics about Pinterest that you may not know. It’s also
This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link. I was also compensated to create this post, but all opinions are my own
What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a social media website where users can upload and manage images (Pins) through boards (pin boards).
It started back in 2009 and has been around for about 11 years now and there is about 335 million people who use it.
The platform is a growing source for new bloggers that want to get their content or blog out there but are having a difficult or long time ranking on google.
How to Get Traffic From Pinterest
When I first started blogging in 2018, I read a lot of articles on how to get traffic to my blog fast. That’s where I stumbled across Pinterest Traffic Avalanche (from create and go).
It’s a short course I took to develop my skills on how to drive traffic to my blog from Pinterest and you can check out my review here: Pinterest Traffic Avalanche Review
Basically, the way you get traffic from Pinterest is by creating Pins (these are the images you see in the Pinterest Feed).
In order to get traffic you need to Pin your content to boards that you create or group boards that you’re a part of.
The algorithm distributes your content through the feed based on your Pin title and it’s description and get’s shown in another users feed.
If the content is something that pops to the user, they click through to your website. That’s it in a nutshell.
How to Create Pinterest Images that Gets Attention?
Let’s get started with creating some Pins, firstly we’ll need some tools! If you don’t have photoshop don’t worry – you won’t need it.
To me photoshop is probably the worse tool you can use to make pins. That’s because you have to do a lot of editing of fonts, canvas size and exporting the images (borrrring).
A tool that I always use to create my engaging Pins is Canva. Canva is my go to, it’s my oil to my car, my butter to my bread…
But most importantly it allows me to create a lot of pins quite quickly!
How? It literally has a feature to create a “Pin” and what that does is create the exact dimensions required for a pin (the image size) and gives you template examples.
There are a lot of fonts to use and you can be creative as you want without being a creative person.
Of course, you can use some other tools to create Pinterest images that gets attention! I’m only sharing what works best and efficiently for me with my blog.
So in order to follow along I suggest getting a free Canva account, it would make this tutorial easier to follow.
Step 1 – Create a Free Canva Account
Go to www.canva.com and create a free account and no you don’t need a credit card. You can sign up with your Facebook, Gmail or just a plain email.
Step 2 – Create a “Pinterest Pin”
When you first sign up click you’ll see a box in the middle of the screen, simply search this box for “Pinterest” and a selection of suggested list of types of pins will come up. Just select “Pinterest Pin”.
Although all the sizes of the Pinterest image will be the same, if you select “Birthday Pinterest Pin”, all your templates will be based around birthdays.
If your blog post is about birthday’s then it’s fine I guess.
Step 3 – Choosing a Base Template to Work With
Canva will literally give you so many templates to work from, but that is ok don’t get to overwhelmed.
The way I pick a great template is by scrolling through what will work and what won’t. In order to know what will work you need to scroll through the list and see what “pop’s” to your eyes.
Popping is just my way of saying something that catches your eyes, it will most likely appeal to your audience as well.
The highlighted Pin in the image above is what I chose for my post. It appeals to me because of the big font used for “16” and the minor font used for the rest of the text.
At the bottom I have a clear white space for putting my website URL, which is nice and clean.
Once you found the Pinterest Image that will work for you, just click it and you’ll be taken to the full Canva editor mode.Step 4 – The Canva Editor Mode Explained
On the far left you have the menu for editing here you can find other templates, photos, elements such as shapes, graphics, charts or stickers.
The middle column, on the right of the editing main menu is where your elements will load. For example, in the image above I have templates selected, so it is displaying all the other available Pinterest templates.
Step 5 – How to Create Pinterest Images that Grab Attention
So as I mentioned you want to create a Pinterest image that grabs attention. Since I have my base template all I am going to be changing is
- Changing the background image (which is currently mountains)
- Update the text to something that grabs attention (the main text in front of the background image).
- Change out the website name to my website name (change it to yours as required).
- Publish and upload to Pinterest and embed it in my blog post (the post you are currently reading).
Let’s start by changing the background photo by going to “Photos” in the left menu and searching for an image that will capture attention.
Since this post is about people who have a problem of not knowing how to create a Pinterest image. I will find an image that shows a person doing research (because they’re trying to find something).
All I do is type “Research + Computer” into the search box and it will start showing me things.
Now to select the image all you need to do is find something that catches your eye and relates to the title of your post.
I’m trying to find a person, doing research on a computer and should have books or coffee somewhere around them.
Note – only a handful of images are free to use, you can either upload your own free ones or sign up to a Canva pro account to take advantage of more images.
Once you find what you want grab and drag it over your background image, the image will auto scale and fit correctly
How Do I Move the Image or Flip it in Canva?
So what happens if you find an image that you absolutely love, but the person is on the wrong side or you need them to be in a certain position (to align with your text).
To flip the image, simply click the background so that it is selected and then at the top left, within the canvas window you click “flip horizontal” or “flip vertical”.
For this example I’ll “flip horizontal” just to demonstrate it.
See how the person has now gone on the other side. It works well when the person is looking straight or it’s just shadow of a person.
In order to move the image simply double click it and it will enlarge! Once enlarged you can shift it by dragging it left or right.
Step 6 – Create Attention Grabbing Text
The last thing you need to do is change the text. Attention grabbing text usually invokes someone to click and read your article or post.
You need to be a little creative, but my hot sauce formula that I use every time is this:
“Identify the Pain, Follow Up with Solution”
This post has two pains, people don’t know how to create Pinterest images and another secondary pain is that they need to get attention.
Why do you need to get attention on Pinterest?
Pinterest has evolved since it’s early years, it takes a bit of creativity to get users to click your pins and come through to your website.
So having problem solving pins is always a win (the pin text must contain a phrase that solves the problem).
My Pin is going to read “How to Create Pinterest Images That Gets Attention”, by simply editing the original text on the base template.
I’m also going to spice this up by adding different fonts, so that it stands out a bit.
We’re almost there, just a couple more tweaks.
There you have it, I ended up playing with some different fonts and colors to see it will look good (more of an art than a science).
Feel free to change the colors and fonts as you see fit!
The only thing left is to hit publish and download and to do this click “Publish” at the top right and then “download” and make sure you have “PNG” as the file type.
If you’re happy with that hit download and wait for it to download and presto you just made a nice pin that people will click. (see above for pin that I create and inserted into this post).
Step 7 – Upload Your Pin to Pinterest
Now the final part, uploading your problem-solving pin to Pinterest and waiting for the clicks and the shares to happen.
Things to remember:
- Make sure you optimize your Pin title – yes, do you Pinterest SEO, just like google you need to give a bit of thought so that people find your pin organically and share it. The more shares, the most likely it ends up being viral.
- The Pin description also matters, give it a rich pin description with some related keywords. A good tip of mine is to put the base keyword into Pinterest and see if you can get other similar keywords that can be good to use in your description.
Conclusion
This tutorial should have you covered on creating Pinterest images and you can always refer to it if you need some further guidance.
As I mentioned, I took Pinterest Traffic Avalanche by create and go which really helped me set up a Pinterest strategy. Since starting this blog I’ve gotten about 21’000 visitors from Pinterest (which is about 66% of all my traffic)
I recommend using Canva to make your pins because the entire process is quite simple. For example
What I could have done is duplicate my own base template 2 more times and then change the text to create 2 other pins. Which makes things much simple.
Other things I could have improve on this pin were, using a darker image (white text will stand out more), maybe a less cluttered background.
However, I just did this to illustrate how to make images for Pinterest for you guys. Feel free to leave a comment in the box below for some suggestions or improvements to this post.
Important Resources
- Bluehost is what I use for hosting Bottom Line Cents. I've been using them for about 2 years and don't have any down time or run time issues. Start Your Own Blog Tutorial is a good post to learn how to start your own blog and make money.
- The majority of my WordPress Plugins is from Thrive Themes. Thrive Themes have a conversion focused tool set that is perfect for any blog wanting to improve lead generation. They offer Thrive Architect, for visually editing your WordPress site, Thrive Leads for building your mailing list and Thrive Quiz Builder for building dynamic quiz's on your website and there is plenty more. You can view the entire plugin set here: Thrive Themes
- My grammar when writing posts is sometimes shocking, because I write so fast and have no time to edit as I go. So before I hit publish, I check my grammar with Grammarly. The best part is grammarly is FREE!
- I use Get Response to collect all my email leads. It has helped me grow a dedicated so that I can get my latest articles out to my existing audience that have signed up to this. If you need decent and reliable (and cost effective) email marketing service that offers a 30 Day Free Trial then Get Response is your go to!
- For high quality responsive WordPress themes I recommend Studiopress. I've ran a couple of blogs using their themes and framework and they've been around for a long time and built a good reputation for building SEO Optimized Themes that are fast loading and responsive. I've reviewed some of thier themes here.
- If you're wanting to start ranking on google or getting featured in places like Forbes or similiar then the only SEO course I recommend is Stupid Simple SEO. I joined this course in 2019 and my google traffic has gotten traction and I've also been featured in places like Fundera Ledger.
- Tailwindapp is a tool I use to schedule Pinterest Pins and Instagram posts. They have a free trial which is free for an unlimited time, however you are limited to a certain amount of posts to schedule per day. If you need to schedule more than that you need to upgrade your account.
- Pretty Links helps me keep my links clean and helps making managing multiple affiliate links a breeze. Imagine having to replace every single link in all the post that contain an affiliate link for a product, two words - TIME CONSUMING.
- Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing is a course I recommend by Michelle from Making Sense of Cents. This course helped me make money from affiliate marketing.
- Pinterest Traffic Avalanche is another course I recommend. The course has helped me (and will help you) get free traffic from Pinterest Marketing. I shared my results here on how I gained over 300% traffic!
These are companies and courses/services I've personally vetted and recommend.
