It’s no secret I’m Pinterest-obsessed. But not so much any more in a “must pin all the things!” kinda way. Now, my obsession is more around “how do I create more pinnable images?”
I’ve written extensively about this in the past, and here’s a summary of some of my top tips:
- Take really beautiful photographs. It’s worth it to invest in a proper camera. I bought a Cannon Rebel T3i last year, and it’s made a huge difference to the quality of the photos I’m posting on my blog. My next purchase is going to be a 50 mm lens. Read up or take courses on how to take photos: lighting, styling, and post-editing are all things that you can learn that will make your photos get better and better.
- Install the JQuery Pin-It widget.
- Pin on Saturday mornings for the biggest impact.
- Verify your site so that you can have access to analytics (so you can see what’s working and what’s not), or use a third-party app like Reachli.
But let’s say you don’t have a highly visual blog like my cooking blog (like this one, for example). How do you make pinnable blog posts from that?
I have a tip for you that will help you to make either your current images more pinnable, or to create images that will help to make your non-visual blog posts pinnable.
I’ve recently discovered a new online photo editing tool called PicMonkey. Now, I’ve used lots of different photo editing tools in the past, from straight-up Photoshop, to GIMP (a free, downloadable version of Photoshop) to the now defunct Picnik, to Picasa. But PicMonkey really takes the cake. It allows you to do some pretty cool stuff: overlay text and graphics, and just generally make your photo look super professional and swank. And, the better it looks, the better chance you’ll get more pins, right?
So. Here’s what you do.
- Upload a photo to PicMonkey. Preferably one of your own. I often use a ‘neutral’ scenery type of photo that I’ve taken on Instagram if it’s not a food-related post (which comes with its own mouth-watering photo). Alternatively, you can use one of PicMonkey’s Collage backgrounds, and then transfer it to the editor.
- Edit the photo for size, first. I like mine to be about 500 px wide. This works pretty well for repurposing the photo for Facebook, as well (403 x 403 px is how it will show up on your timeline). If you’re not entirely happy with the lighting, brightness, colour saturation etc, you can also fool around with that in the “Basic Edits” section.
- Next, add in text. You want to put the name of the recipe or the blog post somewhere on the photo in contrasting print. If you don’t have a nice blank spot on the photo, you can make your own by using PicMonkey’s banners or overlays. Make sure you put the URL of your blog in small text somewhere on the photo. You may also want to include a few keywords or hashtags.
- Save your masterpiece, and upload it to your blog post. When you publish your blog post, pin the photo to one of your boards.
One of my posts has now gotten over 100 repins using this method.
For some examples of peeps that are using Picmonkey to its greatest advantage, visit Pink Chai, or The Candy Meister’s Facebook page.
Here are a couple of PicMonkey tutorials that you might find useful:
http://pinnablebusiness.com/how-to-make-your-blog-posts-more-pin-worthy-in-4-easy-steps/
http://mycrazygoodlife.com/how-to-make-pinnable-images-with-picmonkey/
http://www.5minutesformom.com/picmonkey/