How to Post on Pinterest
Four fields, and three of them are the ones people leave blank.
Here's how to post on Pinterest: tap the plus button, choose Pin, upload an image or video, then fill in the title, description and destination link and pick a board. The image is what people see; the three text fields are what get the pin found, because Pinterest matches searches against them.
Vertical images work best — a 2:3 ratio, typically 1000 by 1500 pixels. Horizontal images are cropped in the feed and perform worse for that reason alone.
And the destination link is the point of the whole exercise, since Pinterest is one of the few platforms that wants to send people away.
A new account has one more number working against it: the follower count on the profile that anyone curious about a pin will check. Pinterest followers add to that public count; whether a pin gets found still comes from the fields above.
The text fields deserve most of the attention, because Pinterest is a search system and they are the only thing it can read.
The title is the strongest signal. Write it as the phrase somebody would type, not as a caption. Easy weeknight chicken traybake outperforms Dinner! by a distance that is hard to overstate, and the second one is what most people write.
The description carries the rest of the context and should read as a sentence rather than a list of keywords. Pinterest has been explicit that keyword stuffing is detected, and a description that reads badly also fails the human half of the job — persuading somebody to click.
The board name is indexed too, which is why boards called Stuff and Ideas waste a signal. Name boards as categories somebody would search.
And alt text, which is editable on a pin, is read as well. It is the one field almost nobody fills in.
The common thread: everything Pinterest knows about your image came from you typing it. Unlike a feed platform, where the audience and the engagement tell the system what a post is, Pinterest has to classify the pin before anybody has seen it, and it has nothing to work from except those fields.
A beautiful image with an empty title is invisible. A plain image with a precise title gets found.
Creating the pin
On mobile, tap the plus and choose Pin. On the web, the Create menu at the top left offers the same.
Upload the image or video, or paste a URL and let Pinterest pull images from the page.
Fill in the title, description and destination link. Choose a board, or create one from the same screen.
Publish, or schedule it for a later date — Pinterest has a native scheduler that allows publishing a few weeks ahead, which is useful because seasonal content needs to be out early.
Creating a pin versus saving one
These are different actions, and confusing them is why some people think they have been posting for months when they have not.
Saving puts a copy of somebody else's pin on one of your boards. The pin still belongs to its creator, the link still goes to their site, and the saves it collects count toward their pin. It is curation, and it is useful for building boards, but it is not publishing.
Creating is the plus button described above. You upload the image, you write the fields, and the link goes where you choose. Only a pin you created shows up under the Created tab on your profile, and only those pins send traffic to your own pages.
On the web, a third route sits between them: the Save button that appears on images when you use Pinterest's browser extension. It creates a new pin from an image on a page you are visiting, with that page as the destination link. It is the fastest way to pin from your own site, and the title and description it pre-fills are worth rewriting every time.
Personal or business account
You can post from either. A business account is free, and switching an existing personal account over in Settings keeps every pin and board.
What the business account adds is the measurement: analytics on impressions, saves and outbound clicks, and access to ads if you ever want them. Claiming your website, covered below, works alongside it.
If you are posting to send people to a shop, a blog or a portfolio, those numbers are the only way to tell which pins are working, so the switch is worth making before you publish rather than after.
What the image should look like
Vertical, 2:3, around 1000 by 1500 pixels. This is the shape the feed is built for and anything else is cropped or shrunk.
Text on the image helps on Pinterest in a way it does not elsewhere, because people are scanning for a specific thing. A short overlay naming what the pin is improves click-through noticeably.
Readable at thumbnail size, which is the only size that matters. Design at the size it will be seen.
Video pins are supported and autoplay in the feed. They suit process and demonstration content and are poorer for anything somebody wants to study.
Boards, and why their names matter
Every pin lives on a board, and the board name is indexed along with the pin.
Name boards as search categories: Small Bathroom Storage rather than Home Bits. The second one tells Pinterest nothing.
Board descriptions are also read and are worth a sentence; how to add keywords to Pinterest covers what to put in each field, from board names to alt text.
Sections within a board help organisation and matter less for discovery. A board with a clear subject and twenty good pins outperforms one with two hundred unrelated ones.
The destination link
Every pin should go somewhere, and Pinterest does not penalize it — sending traffic out is what the platform is for, and it's the basis of every way to make money on Pinterest.
The link has to resolve. Broken destination links on old pins are the single most common waste on an established account, because the pin is still being surfaced and the traffic is landing on nothing. Repairing one beats replacing it, as how to delete pins on Pinterest explains, and how Pinterest sends website traffic shows why those old links keep mattering.
Claiming your website, in Settings, attaches your profile to pins from that domain and unlocks analytics on them. It takes five minutes and most accounts never do it.
Avoid redirect chains and shorteners. They work and they lose a measurable share of clicks.
What happens after you publish
Nothing quickly, and that is normal.
Pinterest indexes the pin and begins showing it to small numbers of people whose interests match. If they save it, it is shown more. That cycle runs over weeks and months rather than hours.
So judging a pin after three days is judging it before anything has happened. The useful review window is a month, and the useful metric is saves rather than impressions.
It also means consistency beats intensity. Publishing a few pins a week for a year builds an index entry that keeps compounding; publishing fifty in one day and stopping produces fifty pins that each start from the same cold position.
While that index builds, the profile is what a curious visitor checks after a pin catches them, and its follower count is the first thing on it. Followers on a Pinterest account raise that public number; they do not change how a pin is ranked in search. Every Pinterest service is on the Pinterest page.
Questions people ask about posting on Pinterest
What size should a pin be?
Vertical at 2:3, around 1000 by 1500 pixels. Horizontal images are cropped in the feed and perform worse because of it.
Does the description matter?
Yes. Pinterest matches search queries against the title, description and board name. Those fields are the only thing it can read about your image.
Should I put keywords in the description?
Write a readable sentence that contains them. Keyword stuffing is detected, and an unreadable description also fails to persuade anybody to click.
Can I schedule pins?
Yes, natively, a few weeks ahead. It is worth using because seasonal content has to be published well before the season.
How long before a pin gets traffic?
Weeks to months. Pinterest indexes and tests gradually, so judging a pin after a few days tells you nothing.
Does claiming my website help?
Yes. It attaches your profile to pins from your domain and unlocks analytics on them. It takes a few minutes and most accounts skip it.
Keep reading
- followers on a Pinterest account — A new account is tested on smaller audiences than an established one, and followers on a Pinterest account addresses the credibility half of that.
- why pins keep working for years — The reason patience pays here is structural, and why pins keep working for years explains it.
- maintaining what you already published — Old pins are assets rather than clutter, and maintaining what you already published covers when to edit and when to remove.