Updated: 14 November 2018

Want to know how to get better results on Pinterest when you're a beginner? Ask someone who has made all the mistakes! Like most people, when I started on Pinterest I was pretty much pinning stuff I wanted to save for myself.

And then somewhere a long the line, I decided I'd better start pinning for business too. As you can imagine, my Pinterest profile was a hodgepodge of things that really only interested the very niche market of one person: “me”. 

It was only when I looked at my Google Analytics and realised a large chunk of my social media views were coming from Pinterest, that I sat up and took notice. If I was getting great traffic from Pinterest, and I wasn't even serious about the platform, imagine how good it would be if I gave it some attention?

That's when I started to get more strategic about what I was doing. Even then I still made some rookie mistakes. I'd love to share some of these aha moments with you, along with some actionable solutions, so you can get better results from Pinterest right now.

How to Get Better Results on Pinterest When You're a Beginner

1. Always Create Pinnable Images on your Blog Posts

I resisted this for a long time because it seemed like too much work, and I really didn't think it was going to make much of a difference anyway. Plus I didn't want to mess up my beautiful photos by putting words all over them. I also felt that some photos were just made to be horizontal and that's how they should stay. Well I was wrong.

You don't need official statistics on Pinterest to tell you that vertical photos do better. Vertical pins are more eye catching because they take up more real estate on Pinterest. I could easily see for myself that my small horizontal pins had only one or two re-pins, even if they went to blog posts with amazing content. 

Never underestimate the power of a great image for social sharing. This is a case where people do judge a book by it's cover. So having great images to Pin, is first step to getting people from Pinterest to your awesome website. 

Solution:

Avoid pinning photos that are short, dark or grainy. Think about your photo being around 735px x 1102px (pixels) or longer. To make it easy for you, you can use Canva – a great non-techy website to create easy graphics. Canva even some free photos there ready for you to use. Just choose the “Pinterest Graphic” template and away you go. No need to worry about pixels and such, as Canva does that for you. From there it's easy to drag and drop your photo into the ready-made template and change the text to suit your blog post.

But what if you have some photos that you want to keep horizontal, or you just don't want words splashed across your image? You can keep those in your blog post, but do give people the option to pin something descriptive, by adding an extra photo which is “Pinterest worthy”. That is, an image that is bright, crisp and clear and gives people a definite understanding of what they're getting by clicking on it.

This sort of photo will entice people to not just save the photo on their Pinterest page, but to actually click through to your website.

Here's an example for you. This photo while lovely, is a little on the dark and short side, which makes it easy to get lost on Pinterest.

In the image below, I've used the same photo, but used Canva to brighten it up and add a very simple title.

This example shows how you can still make your photos look great for Pinterest, without splashing words across them. And best thing about this is, the whole process took just minutes to create. If you create a few of these sorts of pins, you can then use the same template over and over again, to save time and create a consistent look.

2. Make your Pinterest Boards Intentional

One thing I was guilty of, was starting up random boards, and adding one or two pins to them. And there the board would sit forgotten. It's a rookie mistake because a board with only a few pins looks like an abandoned idea.

With any boards you have on your Pinterest page, you want to make sure you have at least 10 pins in them. If a visitor looks at your Pinterest Profile and sees random boards with a few pins here and there, they're likely to wander off rather than following the few boards that might interest them. People love following Pinners who look like they are passionate about their topic.

Solution:

Start with a few boards that are specific to your industry, and you know are topics that your customers are interested in.

Hint: look at your blog categories! Then fill those boards up with at least ten pins in each. That way when someone visits your Pinterest profile, it shows you are actively posting information that your customers are seeking.

If you have an idea for a board and want to build it up, and don't want to fill it up immediately, you can always make the board ‘Secret'. That means the board is only visible to you. Once you've filled up your board a bit, you can unhide it. You have the option to make a board “Secret” when you create a new board, or you can hide a public board by clicking “Edit” on the board, then selecting the ‘Secret' option to hide it. All your Secret boards will be at the bottom of your Pinterest Page and only you can see them. When you're pinning, you can tell which of your boards are Secret because they'll have a little ‘lock' icon next to them when you're looking through your boards to pin.

3. Pin for your Customers not for yourself

Just like I started with Pinterest by pinning anything I saw that looked cool, so many people find exciting stuff to pin that is related to their own personal business, but not necessarily something related to what their customers want to see.

Yes there's a difference. There's Pinterest for you: stuff that's interesting to you. And Pinterest for your customers: stuff that's valuable for your customers. Sometimes a pin will serve both, but not always.

Here's an example: If you're in the tech industry, and part of your marketing strategy is having a booth at tradeshows, you might be tempted to pin great ideas on tradeshow displays for future reference. But unless your customers also exhibit at tradeshows, they're really not going to care about sales displays. Pinning for your own personal business distracts customers from seeing what they came for.

Solution:

Take a look at your Pinterest boards, are they related to your business for “you” or are they topics your customers are looking for? Use the Secret Pinterest boards option to hide all those other things that you want to pin for yourself.

4. Consistent Pinning

This is a biggie. Often I'd think “well I haven't blogged for a week or two so I have nothing to pin”. And if I happened to visitPinterest, I'd only re-pin other people's pins. Posting nothing for a month then pinning something here and there means your Pinterest profile will stay stagnant. As with anything else, consistent work brings consistent results. Not just because you want more of your pins out there, but also because Pinterest rewards you for actively pinning, by giving you more views on Pinterest. 

Solution:

You don't need to be in an out of Pinterest all day to be consistent and active, there are simple tools you can use to make this super quick and easy. Use your regular social media scheduler to make sure your blog posts get pinned when you create them.

If you want to step things up and really get your pins seen more, then you'll want to take a look at Tailwind. Tailwind let's you quickly schedule your content and other relevant content that your followers will be interested in. It also helps you to pin consistently and at prime times. Tailwind is super easy to use, and has been a complete game changer for me. It means I can sit down in front of the television on a Sunday night and schedule a bunch blog posts for Tailwind to pin for me over the week and beyond. Winning! 

5. Repinning Evergreen Content

So you've gone to all the trouble to write an amazing blog post that your customers will find useful now, and in the future. For example, if you are a Fitness Instructor and you have a blog post about how to warm up before exercising, that's something which isn't going to date, and will be searched for often.

You've pinned it and sit back waiting for thousands of people to click through to your website. *Crickets* Where is everyone? Just like Facebook, Pinterest uses an algorithm to determine what it shows to your followers and when. This means not all your followers will see everything you pin. 

Solution:

Re-pin onto Pinterest any older blog posts that still have useful information for your readers. You can re-pin something like this over and over again as it's information that doesn't change drastically. If you have pins that are seasonal, such as Christmas themed blog posts, repin them again the following year during the period leading up to Christmas.

Power tip: Create different images and different captions, to test out which pins perform best for you. Then repin the best performing pins again in the future on different boards.

6. Convert your Pinterest profile to a Business Account

There's many reasons to change your personal Pinterest profile to a business account. One of them is that you'll have access to your Pinterest Analytics which will quickly show you which of your pins and boards are doing the best. Seeing which of your pins are getting more clicks helps you to know what to do more of. By the same token, we can also learn a lot by knowing which pins don't do so well. 

Solution:

Here's how to convert your Pinterest profile to a business account in 4 easy steps

• Log in to your profile
• Go to Pinterest for Business
• Click Convert now
• Fill out your information and click Convert

7. Organizing Your Pinterest Boards

It's time to bring your best boards forward! What? I need to organize my Pinterest boards? Most people start new Pinterest boards and then leave the rest of the job to Pinterest. And then there's others who love everything neat and tidy and organize their boards by alphabetical order.

But, if you want to amp up your Pinterest results, then you want to make sure people see your best boards first. When you show people right away what you're about, you're attracting people who are really interested in what you have to offer. They will hang around, repin your pins, and click through to read your content.

When someone visits your Pinterest profile, what they see first determines whether they're going to stick around or click away. If you've converted your Pinterest account to a business profile, then the first thing people will see is the ‘Featured Boards' that Pinterest has set up for you. That is the big board at the very top of your page which scrolls through your Pinterest boards.

You have only a few seconds to grab people's attention and say “Hey! I have some awesome stuff to share with you”.

Solution:

Grab people's attention quickly and show them what you're all about by organizing your boards by what's most important first. Remember you're pinning for your customers, but of course you also want to promote your business. 

First thing you want to do is to edit your Featured Boards which will show off your 5 best Pinterest boards. To do that, hover your mouse over the Featured Boards and click on the little pencil icon as shown in the photo below.

You'll then see five dropdown boxes. This is where you can select your top 5 Pinterest boards that you want to display in the Showcase. This means the boards you choose will slowly scroll automatically in the Showcase. This gives your visitors an idea of what your Pinterest page is about. It's an interactive way to get people's attention quickly.

Now that's done, we can look at your boards as a whole. Again, you want to organize your boards by what your prospects and customers are going to find most interesting first. Even though you added your best boards to the Showcase, you can still keep those boards at the top. That way anyone who scrolled past the Showcase will still see your best boards first. 

So there you go, 7 tips to get better results from your Pinterest, even if you're a beginner. 

I hope you found this guide useful. Drop me a comment below if you plan on implementing any of these tips.

Please note some of these links may be affiliate. I therefore may receive a small payment from these third parties (at no extra cost to you), if you click on a link and make a purchase. I will only ever recommend goods and services which I actually use myself, and 100% believe are helpful.