Revive Your Pinterest Account (and increase traffic!)

Unlike social media platforms, Pinterest is a visual search enginge. More in line with Google Search than platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Because it is a visual search engine, your profile should be aesthetically pleasing to users when they click on it. This doesn't just mean having a stellar profile picture or cover photo, but boards and descriptions and titles that are cohesive and clean across your entire profile. There's nothing more frustrating than clicking on a board titled "Dinner Recipes" to find it's full of Pins that having nothing to do with dinner!

What Makes a "Good Profile"

As Pinterest users are searching for their next project or "Pin-spiration," there is a lot of information that they are processing. Pin after Pin after Pin. When a user finds a Pin that fits their needs, they will do one of the following things: save it for later, click it and go to the associated link, or view the creator's profile. Sometimes, they will do more than one of those.

As soon as a user clicks on a profile, they expect to have a general idea of what they're going to find based on your profile picture, cover photo, description, and board titles. If there is no description, or your cover photo doesn't showcase your brand, it is often confusing or frustrating to the user as they will likely not find what they need and therefore not return to your profile.

You want your profile picture to either be a picture of you or your brand logo. This will allow users to have a face to the brand or see that it they are on a business Pinterest account and going to find cohesive and relelvant content (whereas personal accounts usually have a hodge podge of ideas that one hopes to one day use). Make sure that if you use a photo of you, it looks professional: no selfies or poor lighting.

For your profile description, make sure that what you write includes a few sentences that explain what a user will find on your page. Consider it your "elevator speech." You have 30 seconds to connect with a person and if it doesn't explain what your brand is, you might lose them as an interested party. Ensure that your description flows, with full sentences and keywords that relate to your brand niche. Think "book summary" not "hashtag list."

Using your brand colors and font, you will then want to create a cover photo that shows your brand logo, gives a 1-3 sentence description of your brand, and a picture that showcases a product or your brand. If your cover photo is too busy, users will skip right over it. If it's just a picture, it doesn't help a user understand your brand. To ensure that the information a user is reading is relevant and not repetetive, don't just copy and paste your description onto your cover photo. Think of all the words that relate to your brand and use them throughout your description and cover photo. I'll talk more about keywords later. You also want to make sure your cover photo is the right size so that it can be seen on both the mobile app as well as a desktop without cutting off important information. The correct size for a Pinterest cover photo is a 16:9 ratio, or 800x450px.

Enhanced Board Descriptions

When a user is looking through your Pins, they can eaither search by browsing "created" Pins, which is all of the Pins you've created and viewed in the order they have been posted, or by looking through your "saved" Pins, which is all the boards your Pins have been posted to. By browsing through the "created" Pins, users just see everything without specific topic filters. When a user browses through your "saved" Pins, they are able to see topics filtered by your Board Titles.

You want each board title to be relevant to your brand and utilize keywords. The easiest way to explain this is by using food as our topic. If you are a recipe content creator, then you want your baords to organize each of your recipes into relevant categories. You would want your board titles to be along the lines of this: Chicken Recipes, Beef Recipes, Vegetarian/Vegan Recipes, Slow Cooker Recipes, Rice Recipes, etc. You can easily change the keyword "recipes" to read "dinners" if you only create recipes for dinner and not other meals. However, some people could use them for lunch, you never know. This is where utilizing keywords in your board descriptions comes into play.

Now that you've created a board and added a title, you want to write a quick summary of what people will find when they click on that board. If your board is "Chicken Recipes" then your board description might read as follows: On this board, you will find recipes that include chicken as your main protein. From chicken bowls and chicken casseroles to chicken salad and more. Step up your lunch, dinner, and any meal by finding new takes on old favorites or the perfect meal-prep lineup for the week. Chicken is the star of this board.

You want your board description to highlight keywords of any of the Pins a user will find on the board: chicken, dinner, lunch, meal, chicken bowl, chicken casserole, chicken salad. Those are just a few of the keywords you can include in your board description. You don't want your description to be too long so that a user stops reading, but if it's too short, it won't help a user know what they'll find on that board but also is less likely to show up in searches because there aren't enough keywords!

Takeaways

1. Use a profile photo that showcases your brand, either a picture of you or of your brand logo

2. Keep your profile description easy to read using a "summary" format, not a list. Utilize keywords naturally that fit your niche and business

3. Optimize your cover photo by using a 16:9 ratio, or 800x450px and include your logo, an "elevator speech" description of what users will find within your profile, and a picture or graphic that represents your brand

4. Include keyword filled board titles and descriptions to make it easier for users to find what they are looking for on your profile

Hopefully these tips are simple enough to implement into your own Pinterest Profile. So, what are your thoughts? Which of these are you going to do to enhance and improve your Pinterest Profile? Let me know in the comments and reach out if you have any questions or need help getting started.