How to Pin on Pinterest: Post Your First Pin Successfully

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How To Share Your First Pin to Pinterest in a Few Simple Steps

If you are a blogger, the most important platform that you can share your posts to is Pinterest. It is the QUEEN of all visual search engines. (Yes, it’s a search engine.)

Because of this, knowing how to pin on Pinterest from blog posts is a really essential part of your business.

I will share how you can do this in a few, simple steps!

If you read my post last week on setting up your Pinterest business account, you should be ready to get your first pin uploaded. If you missed this step, go back and check it out first and then come back to this post.

Using Pinterest can easily get you a ton of traffic and readers to your blog. Before we get there, we need to get ready to post our pins by following these steps.

1. Create Eye-Catching Pinterest Graphics

The first thing you will need to do is to create a killer graphic for your blog post that will stand out on Pinterest. There are literally hundreds of thousands of posts, so you’ll want yours to stand out.

I would also suggest that you start collecting some stock photos to use for your pins. Do not use Google photos, even with attribution, as it could be considered copyright theft.

Some of my favorite completely free sites to use are Unsplash and Pixabay. Both of these can actually be added as plugins to your WordPress to make getting them easy.

You can find a ton of freebies from some amazing pros like PixiStock, Styled Stock Society and Ivory Mix as well if you sign up for their newsletter. There are also options to upgrade to premium stock content if you like their work.

I use both Canva and Stencil for creating graphics for my Pinterest pins as they are easy to use and both offer free versions as well as upgraded versions.

If you haven’t worked with either of these programs, here is a quick video tutorial on how I use to use Canva to create a Pinterest worthy post super fast.

2. Upload the Pin Graphics to Your Post

Now that you’ve created a killer pin graphic, you’ll need to insert it into your post. Adding graphics is really easy with the new block editor. Just add an image block, click on upload and choose your image from your file.

If you have the image downloaded to your bottom toolbar in Chrome you can also drag and drop it right into the box. Easy-peasy.

I try to add three different pin graphics to each post for variety in pinning but for now, let’s just get your first one out. I generally try to only have one pin within my content unless it’s a really long post.

I hide all of the rest of them using a plug-in called Tasty Pins so that my post isn’t all cluttered up. You can also hide pins using simple coding. You can read all about hiding those extra graphics in your posts in a previous post here.

3. Add a Pin Description for Each of Your Pinterest Graphics

When you click on your newly uploaded pin graphics, there will be a spot to add Alt Text (Alternative Text) in the right-hand sidebar of WordPress.

This is important for two reasons: First- the text is what will be read to anyone visually impaired that is using software to read content to them. Second- This is where Google will find information about your picture as it relates to your content, so be sure to use good quality keywords and a long-tail key phrases in your alt description. 

Make sure to use that description on EVERY picture. Just in case someone decides to share a picture that you didn’t think was going to make the Pinterest cut. 

For example, if you were writing a post on coffee, you wouldn’t want to just say “coffee” in the description. You might want to set the description as “The most amazing coffee that you’ll want to include in your next coffee bar”. 

UPDATE: Pinterest used to use the alt description as the default for your Pinterest description. Unfortunately, a couple of months ago Pinterest stopped doing that. Which meant that lots of pins were left without descriptions and not ranking on Pinterest. Ughhh.

There are a few ways to make sure you have a description on your pin. The first is to load your graphic directly from the Pinterest platform and add a description there. But that doesn’t help the pins that are in your blog posts.

The second is to add coding to each of your pins, which isn’t very difficult but can be time-consuming. Check out this post on how to add a pin description using code.

The third way, and the most simple way, is to use a plug-in like Tasty Pins, which allows you to set your pin description in your WordPress media and in the post editor. It also allows you to force pinning of a specific pin or disable pinning on any image.

You can also use code to force Pinterest to use your old alt descriptions. It may be a good solution for the short term, but honestly, alt descriptions should not be used as a Pinterest description. It’s much better to use code or a plugin.

If you want to try out the code until you update your pins, check out this article on using alt text for pin descriptions from Shareaholic.

4. Make sure Rich Pins are Enabled

If you haven’t already, you’ll want to make sure that you have a Pinterest business account and your rich pins are enabled.

This will capture the metadata from your post and add the title, website, and a snippet to your pin when you load it.

If you are not sure how to do this, see my post on Setting Up a Pinterest Business Account.

5. Add the Pin It and Shareaholic Plugins to Your Site

If you are going to be sharing pins from your website and you want others to do the same, you’ll need to make sure that you have a way for them to share. 

I use two things to help make this process easier. I use the Pin It hovering button plugin as well as the Shareaholic buttons, which includes Pinterest. They are both free and you can download them to your site through the Plugins option found in the lefthand sidebar in WordPress.

Personally, I don’t find that you can have too many share options. It drives me batty when I go to a post and can’t find anywhere to share right away so that I can read it later when I have more time.

Most times, if there isn’t an easy to find sharing feature, I will just leave the page and not bother. Make sure to set this up!

6. Share Your Pin

Once you’ve got everything in place and your post has been published, you can now share your pin straight from your website.

Just open the post, and click either the hover Pin It button on the picture you want to share or click on the Pinterest share button found within your post.

Depending on which share plugin you are using and your settings, they might be at the top or bottom of your post or sometimes both. I personally have it set to both as I want as many sharing options as possible for my readers. 

If you choose the Pinterest share button from your post, all of the graphics related to that post will show up. Click on the one you would like to share.

7. Update Your Pin Description Using Long-tailed Keywords

Before you choose a board to pin to, you can edit the description by clicking on the little pencil beside your pin description that you already created as a start if you need to.

Again, make sure to use any keywords or phrases that are directly related to your post.

Pinterest allows you to use up to 20 relevant hashtags on your pins in the description. As you’re typing them, Pinterest will offer you some suggestions. Choose hashtags that are popular but not too popular.

This will help you rank better for those hashtags. Try not to use too many as it takes away from the visual appeal and can look a little spammy.

8. Post Pins to Relevant Boards

Once you are happy with your description, you can now add your pin to your relevant boards that you have created.

NOTE: Don’t just put it in random or secret boards or it won’t get as much or possibly any exposure. Pinterest prefers if the keywords that you have used in your pin description match the keywords in the boards you are adding them too.

Pinterest likes to “match” those keywords you have used and when you share it to a board that matches, the algorithm has a better opportunity to share that pin in the future for related searches. 

How often should you pin to Pinterest?

In Pinterest’s new release, they shared that new and fresh content will be getting priority over re-pinning old content.

Creating new, fresh content is important to Pinterest because it is trying to consider the user experience and not the creator (well, okay then lol). Having new content pinned on a regular basis will help to inspire regular users of Pinterest to engage, save and ultimately click on your pins (which is what we all want!)

Trying to get all those pins out on a regular basis can be tough, especially if blogging is your side-hustle. You can totally save a ton of time by batch scheduling those pins using an app like Tailwind.

If you haven’t checked it out, you can get a free trial here! This includes100 scheduled Pins or 30 scheduled Instagram Posts! Woohooo!

So, What Does Fresh Content on Pinterest Mean Exactly?

There’s a lot of confusion as to what exactly constitutes a new pin so let’s break it down.

What a new and fresh pin is:

• Has a brand new image with text that hasn’t been used before on the same URL direction (this includes new pages, posts, and product listings that have never been shared)
• Updated images and text overlays for existing pages, posts and products that have been circulated before

What a new and fresh pin IS NOT:

• Making minor adjustments to the graphic
• Changing the font of the text overlay
• Changing the colours in the pin

What about the descriptions? There has been some question as to whether a “fresh pin” needs to have a new description. Pinterest has not specifically said that you have to have a new description to be considered a new pin, it’s always a great idea for the algorithm and your chances of being ranked higher if you use different descriptions and titles for each pin.

Got That Down? Here’s The Next Level!

Want to take the next step in Pinterest marketing? Learn from the best with the Pinterest Ninja eCourse! It completely changed my game and helped me to explode my traffic! 

Also, if you happen to be looking at the right time, the annual Ultimate Bundles Genius Blogger’s Toolkit is full of amazing Pinterest related books, courses, and tools at a fraction of the regular cost.

Did you use this tutorial to post your first pin to Pinterest? I’d love to hear how it went! Comment below… 

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