Pinterest: build a library your customers can find later

You publish a PinA visual bookmark on Pinterest. It can contain an image or video, a title, a description, alt text and a link., check it the next morning and see almost nothing. Pinterest gets written off immediately.

Pinterest moves slower than other platforms; it's never heard of going viral, let alone acted as a vehicle for it. Three to four months is the time it takes to assess your chops here, which makes it a terrible source of weekly emotional support, but a good home for content that people need later.

First, ask whether your customer uses Pinterest to plan, compare or collect ideas. If they do, a Pin can keep introducing a relevant page long after you have forgotten making it.

Decide whether Pinterest deserves an early test

Pinterest is an obvious candidate for a visual product, although “visual” covers more than lovely interiors and wedding cakes. If anything about your product is specialist or timely, and you can write teachable information about it, you can produce pinnable content that's in the form of a checklist, diagram, or step-by-step guide.

Your customer needs to use Pinterest for a subject connected to your business, and you need enough visual or educational material to sustain a proper test.

Treat Pinterest as visual search

Pinterest calls Pins “visual bookmarks.” People search, browse related ideas and saveAn action that adds a Pin to a board so the person can find it again later. what they may want later. Discovery depends on whether Pinterest understands the subject and people respond to it.

Pinterest's explanation of distribution says searches, saves and engagement help it decide which Pins are relevant to show. There is no single trick hidden in the description box.

Unlike a short-form video test, Pinterest builds a searchable library and waits for the right person to need it. The feedback is slower and the shelf life is longer.

Prepare an account people and Pinterest can understand

A free business accountA free Pinterest account type that provides tools including Pinterest Analytics and native scheduling. gives you Pinterest AnalyticsPinterest's reporting area for business accounts. It shows measures such as impressions, saves, Pin clicks and outbound clicks. and native scheduling. Use a profile name and description that say what the business covers. “Ideas for calm, renter-friendly homes” gives far more context than “Making life beautiful.”

If you own your website, claim it. Pinterest says this connects your profile to Pins saved from the site and shows how often its content is shared. Marketplace pages usually can't be claimed because you don't control the domain.

Start with three to five boardsA named collection of Pins around one subject. In this chapter, boards are organised around customer interests or problems rather than internal company categories. based on the customer's interests or problems. A small-home product company might use “Small laundry room ideas,” “Drying clothes in an apartment” and “Storage for narrow spaces.” “Products,” “Blog” and “Things we like” explain the filing system inside the company, which isn't what the customer searched for.

Each board needs enough Pins to make sense as a collection. Add more when the material exists.

Find the words customers use

Begin with language from customer conversations, support questions and search data you already have. Pinterest can then help you refine it through:

• suggestions that appear while you type a search;
• related searches and the language used by relevant Pins; and
• Pinterest Trends, which shows up to two years of search, save and shopping patterns in supported regions.

Trends shows when interest in a seasonal event starts to build, so you can publish before the peak. Christmas storage ideas uploaded on December 22 may be beautifully designed, but they have also missed most of Christmas.

Choose a phrase that accurately describes the Pin and the page behind it. A high-volume phrase is worthless when the visitor opens the link and discovers a different subject.

Give every Pin one of three jobs

Three content jobs are enough for the first test.

The Pin should make sense to somebody who has never heard of you. A product name alone rarely does that; the customer's question or desired result supplies the context.

Build a Pin that explains itself

Pinterest recommends a vertical 2:3 canvas. A clear image, readable text and one obvious subject are enough for the first test. You're making a visual bookmark rather than designing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

The other parts of the Pin do different work:

Alt textA written description of what an image shows. It helps somebody using a screen reader understand the image and should not be filled with search phrases. is an accessibility field, so describe the image instead of stuffing it with search phrases. Use the customer's language naturally in the title and description. Add related topic tags when they fit.

The destination needs the same care as the creative. A Pin titled “Five drying racks that fit behind a door” should lead to that guide or collection. Sending the visitor to a homepage forces them to restart the search you appeared to have answered.

Reuse the source without repeating the Pin

You don't need eighteen articles for an eighteen-Pin test. Six source ideas can each support three distinct treatments.

A guide to choosing a desk for a small bedroom might become:

• a checklist of measurements to take before buying;
• a comparison of folding, wall-mounted and narrow desks; and
• a room image showing the clearance needed to open a drawer.

All three can lead to the same guide because each gives the customer a different reason to open it.

Pinterest recommends publishing original content weekly. A Tailwind study of more than one million Pins from over 17,000 accounts found that a new image pointing to an existing URL retained far more distribution than repeated use of the same image and URL. Tailwind's customer base may skew the sample, so treat this as support for new creative rather than a formula.

You may have heard that you should fill your boards with other people's Pins. Pinterest now tells businesses to publish fresh Pins of their own, and Tailwind found that saves of other people's Pins drive a small share of traffic. Saving a few relevant Pins keeps a board pleasant to browse; it won't build your distribution.

Batch six weeks of Pins

Choose six source ideas with pages worth visiting, then create three treatments of each. Publish three Pins a week for six weeks.

This is easy to batch. Pinterest's native scheduler can hold up to ten Pins and schedule them up to 30 days ahead, so the test needs two short scheduling sessions rather than daily check-ins. A paid scheduler may become worthwhile when you manage more content or several accounts.

Group boards aren't part of the first plan. A relevant collaborative board may be worth testing later, once the founder understands which subjects and creative work on their own account.

Give the test three to four months

The six-week publishing schedule creates the test. The evaluation continues after the final Pin goes out.

Pinterest's own guidance says a Pin may gain engagement over hours, days, months or years. Tailwind's study found that average distribution for new Pins continued to expand across the first 90 days. Three to four months is therefore my minimum window for a decision, not a promise that an account wakes up on day 91 wearing a party hat.

Measure the action the Pin was meant to create

Pinterest Analytics separates the main stages of response:

An engagement ratePinterest interactions expressed as a percentage of another number. Pinterest combines saves, Pin clicks and outbound clicks in this measure, although those actions can have different value to the business. combines saves, Pin clicksA click that opens the Pin for a closer look. It is different from an outbound click to the linked website. and outbound clicksA click that takes somebody from Pinterest to the Pin's destination page., although those actions have different value. An inspiration Pin may collect saves while a buying guide is meant to generate outbound clicks, so one universal percentage tells you very little.

Results will also be uneven. Tailwind's one-million-Pin study found that the top 1% of Pins in its sample generated more than half of impressionsA record that a Pin appeared on a screen. It shows distribution, not whether the viewer visited the website or became a customer. and clicks. Its first report found that more than 60% of saves came from Pins over a year old. Those figures describe Tailwind's dataset rather than a pass mark, but they explain why a small portfolio and a longer review make more sense than judging the average Pin after a week.

Compare Pins with the same objective, then look at what happened on your site. Ten thousand impressions and three accidental visits are distribution. Five clicks that produce a qualified inquiry may be the better commercial result.

Complete the rights and disclosure checks

Before scheduling a Pin, confirm that you own or can use the image, video and design elements. Customer photos, testimonials and private work need permission. Any product or performance claim needs evidence you could show if challenged.

Pinterest provides a paid-partnership label for creator and brand relationships. In the United States, the FTC's current endorsement guidance also requires a material connection, including payment, free products or affiliate income, to be disclosed clearly. The rules in the country you are targeting may add other requirements.

AI can group search terms, turn an approved article into Pin angles and draft titles or descriptions. You still need to check the facts, links, image rights and accessibility, and it can't invent a customer result because the empty corner of a template looked lonely.

A six-week Pinterest test

Foldwell is a fictional folding drying rack for renters with small kitchens. The founder already has six relevant pages, including a product page, a measurement guide and an article comparing indoor drying options.

They create four boards around customer searches: Small laundry room ideas, Drying clothes in an apartment, Storage for narrow spaces and Renter-friendly home ideas. The first three Pins come from the measurement guide:

The founder batches the remaining fifteen Pins, schedules the first month and returns for a second scheduling session. At 30 days they check whether Pinterest has understood the subjects. The 90- and 120-day reviews decide whether the Pins created product-page visits, email signups, questions or sales.

A B2B founder can use the same method when the customer searches for a process or template. A cash-flow forecasting article could become a checklist, a worked example and a comparison of three methods. Pinterest may still rank below LinkedIn or direct outreach, but the subject has a credible route into visual searchA way of finding and exploring information through images and related ideas. Pinterest combines visual discovery with text searches, boards and links..

Prepare your Pinterest starter pack

Use the Pinterest starter record with your customer definition, positioning, approved source material and relevant website pages.

I'm preparing my first organic Pinterest test. Use my attached Pinterest
starter record, customer definition, positioning, source material and relevant
website pages.

Don't publish, schedule, change an account, contact anybody or invent evidence.

1. Help me decide whether Pinterest deserves an early test based on how my
   customer plans, compares, searches or saves ideas.
2. Define one job for the channel and the website action I want after a click.
3. Build a customer search map from the supplied language. Separate customer
   wording, Pinterest research and assumptions. Don't invent search volume.
4. Recommend three to five clearly named boards with short descriptions.
5. Choose six source ideas that have relevant destinations. Exclude any source
   with no page worth visiting.
6. Create three distinct Pin treatments for each source idea: outcome,
   instruction and choice. Don't repeat the same image with slightly different
   metadata.
7. Draft the first three Pins with image direction, text overlay, title,
   description, descriptive alt text, board and destination link.
8. Prepare a six-week schedule of three Pins a week using my available time.
9. Add rights, permission, claims, disclosure, accessibility and link checks.
10. Create blank 30-, 60-, 90- and 120-day review tables covering impressions,
    saves, Pin clicks, outbound clicks and relevant website actions.

Return standard Markdown in my first person. Use only supplied facts and mark
assumptions or unknowns. Stop with the prepared pack for my review.

Once the pack contains a fit decision, six source ideas, eighteen treatments and three finished Pins, the chapter is complete. Publishing remains your decision, and the channel gets its verdict after three to four months.