[L]ast week, we talked about using Pinterest for creative projects, which was all about pinning other people’s work and images. But don’t you also want to be the one whose work is being pinned and re-pinned and hopefully driving lots of traffic to your website? In case you’re thinking that you ‘just can’t be bothered with another social network’, consider this….

As of August 2012, Pinterest became the fourth largest traffic source in the world*

*Source: Wishpond

One of the easiest ways to get noticed, is to create beautifully-curated boards of your own work, whether that’s websites or photographs. All it takes is a copy of Photoshop and a bit of elbow grease.

Let’s start by having a look at what makes an image ‘pinworthy’ or more likely to be pinned.

1. It’s the right size.

Pinterest recommends a minimum width of 600 pixels, which is the width of the pin once clicked on. I tend to go for 1080px as it’s the full width of my blog as well as being wide enough to use on Facebook too, if I want to.

2. It’s eyecatching

According to Pinterest itself, and also in my own experience, long pins tend to dominate boards and get pinned more often. I’m sure there can be such a thing as a pin that’s ‘too long’ so aim to keep your pin no more than 5 times as long as it is wide.

3. It’s easy to understand

Top your board with an interesting headline or label. If your pin is going to be long, people need to know what they’re going to get. For example, when creating a pin to showcase a website, I add the logo to the top and usually add a subtitle that says ‘website design’ and I follow that with an image of the site design mocked up in a device. Check out this image to see what I mean.

 

(Whew! That was long, right? Did you pin it yet?)

4. It tells a story

Random collages don’t work. If people can’t understand what they are looking at, they won’t pin it. If it’s a website, present the pages in a logical order. If you’re wanting to show off your best images, choose a theme that will allow you to group images with a similar styles and colours. Check out this example board for a lifestyle photographer to help promote mini sessions this summer.

Photographers – this is a great way to exploit your back catalogue by grouping together images that would be popular search terms. eg. vineyard weddings, wild bouquets, barn weddings, winter weddings. You get the idea…

 

5. It’s aspirational

I probably don’t need to say this, but if you don’t have killer images, or the example website design you are planning to link through to, isn’t stellar, then give it a miss. Pin only your very best work. People don’t re-pin average.

Right, let’s get down to business. How do you use these attractive-looking Pinterest boards?

If you are confident with Photoshop, you can add your own images and mocked-up devices. But if you’re not, or you just want to get on with it, nip down to the bottom of this post, sign up for our newsletter and you can download both layered Photoshop files for free, and then follow right along with the video tutorial.

Fire up Photoshop and let’s go!

 

Good luck with making gorgeous Pinworthy images and be sure to share your results with us on our Facebook page.

You can download both of these cool Pinworthy boards right here.