Pinterest Tips for Food Bloggers

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Pinterest should be the first marketing platform that food bloggers tackle. Here are our best Pinterest tips for food bloggers..

Like Google and YouTube, Pinterest is a search engine and not a social media platform. Unlike Google and YouTube, Pinterest can start driving traffic to your website in as little as 30 days while Google and YouTube take closer to nine months to a year before they drive traffic to your website.

One distinct advantage is that Pinterest doesn’t try to keep visitors on the Pinterest platform. On Pinterest, a reader clicks on your Pin and is taken to the blog post on your website. On Instagram, a reader has to leave the Instagram feed, click over to your bio, find your link and click it in order to get to your website, then search for a blog post.

We’re going to assume that you already know the basics of Pinterest. You have a free business account, you have several relevant boards, you know how to create a pin, and how to pin it.

Do’s and Don’ts of Pinning

Do pin fresh pins, that is pins with unique images.

Do keep your audience in mind. Just because Pinterest is happy with a new image while keeping the same design, title and description, your audience will want more. Change fonts, colors, and other elements of your design as well as the image to keep your pins truly fresh.

Do remember Pinterest is interested in providing new, relevant, inspiring information to its users. Do that and the algorithm will reward you. 

Do create idea pins. Pinterest is promoting them and the algorithm will reward you with good exposure. 

Do add animated elements and video to your pins. Again, Pinterest is promoting them and the algorithm will reward you with good exposure. 

Pin seasonal pins three months before the season starts. Pin Thanksgiving in late August, early September. 

Don’t dump pins on Pinterest thinking that numbers will make up for quality.  It won’t. Chances are that your tactic will be seen as spamming behavior. 

Do limit posting only one pin from a URL per day. More than one pin from a URL might be seen as spamming behavior. It’s a very conservative rule but one that’s good to follow, especially with a new account.

Do  link your pins to individual blog posts and not to your website home page or to web pages. 

Pins linked to whole websites or pages rather than individual blog posts can be considered spam. 

Don’t create pins that are outside of the 2:3 ratio (600 x 900 pixels or 1000 x 1500 pixels). 

Do create your own templates. Create them in groups. Each group should have four to eight different styles, colors, and font combinations. That will give you enough variety to keep both Pinterest and your readers happy.

Do collect templates that you like. Canva has plenty and there are loads available to buy. 

Do post your pins to highly relevant boards. Pinning a fried chicken recipe to a board called “Recipes” is a mistake. True, a fried chicken recipe is a recipe but the generic “Recipes” doesn’t tell Pinterest anything about the pin and you want to give Pinterest as much information about every pin as possible. Try “Chicken Dinner Recipes” instead.

Do give your boards short, relevant names. “Fried Chicken Recipes” and “Chicken Dinners” are good board names. “Easy Vegan Breakfasts” or “Healthy Kid Snacks” are okay, too. 

“Delicious Easy Chicken Dinner Recipes” is not only too long, it’s subjective. Of course, you think they’re delicious but your readers might not. And who searches for recipes that are specifically “Not Delicious”? Delicious or good-tasting are givens.

Don’t delete pins. Some bloggers think deleting a low-performing pin will somehow increase your ranking with Pinterest, but that’s incorrect. If you delete a pin that someone else saved, when that user goes to open the pin they’ll get a “Does Not Exist” message or something similar. That’s frustrating for the user. They won’t think well of you and neither will Pinterest. 

Do optimize the names of your images. “DSC_09583” doesn’t tell Pinterest anything. “Fried_Chicken_in_a_Basket” is much, much better. 

Do study your most successful and unsuccessful pins. What do the successful pins have in common? Are they similar in design? Do they use the same sort of call to action? 

What could you do better on your unsuccessful pins? Could you clean up the text overlays? Use better images? Compare your low-performing pins to others using the same keywords. How were the others better? How can you improve future pins? 

Do remember that your pin will be shown along with hundreds of other pins offering the same information. Your buttermilk fried chicken recipe pin will be shown next to dozens, if not hundreds, of other buttermilk fried chicken recipe pins. How are you going to stand out? How are you going to get noticed? 

Do remember that Pinterest users are looking for inspiration and solutions. Inspirational pins are something users want to look at and collect to their boards. Users don’t need to click through to your website if they get what they want – another pretty image to inspire them – just by collecting the pin. The payoff is on the face of the pin. 

Problem-solving pins require users to click through to your website for the answer. That click equals traffic for your website. As a food blogger, you want to create problem-solving pins where the payoff is on your website. 

Do be consistent. It’s better to pin three pins a day consistently than to pin 20 pins one day followed by none for a week. 

Do aim for pinning five to 20 pins a day. Remember, these numbers are just guidelines. Do whatever’s comfortable for you. 

Do limit pinning 50 pins per day total, your own pins and other’s repins. No Pinterest dumping behavior.

Do space out your pins. If you pin a fresh pin to one board on one day, wait at least one day before you pin it to another board.

Do post any one pin to a minimum of five boards and maximum of ten boards.

Do use only one method of pinning. If you post some pins manually directly on Pinterest, some using Canva, and then others using Tailwind or Planoly, you will end up with a huge haphazard mess. You won’t know what’s being pinned when. Strategic, careful pinning is best. 

Don’t repin someone else’s pins without checking the source. A pin might seem legitimate but if the link is broken and you pin it to one of your boards, it will negatively affect your ranking.

Don’t repin a pin that’s not in the correct 2:3 ratio. Square or especially long pins (an infographic, for example) will be too short or too long to display properly on mobile devices, which is the most common way users visit Pinterest. 

Don’t worry about gaining followers. Remember, Pinterest isn’t a social media platform. It’s a search engine. Create quality pins that link to quality information and you’ll gain followers naturally.

If you use some hack, like “Follow for Follow”, just to up your numbers, you’ll likely gain the wrong sorts of followers. That is followers who will unfollow you quickly or who will never visit your website.

Do use keywords, in your text overlays, pin titles, and descriptions.  Change a few of the keywords in those areas depending on the board you’ll be pinning to.

Do use long, specific keyword terms in pin titles and descriptions. “Vegan Thanksgiving desserts” is much better than “vegan” or “desserts.” 

Do include your website or brand name in your pin description. 

Do include a Call to Action on your pin text overlay. Tell your audience what you want them to do, to click through to your blog post or sign up for your newsletter, whatever’s appropriate.

Do include a second Call to Action in your pin description. Again, tell your audience exactly what you want them to do, to click through to your blog post or sign up for your newsletter, whatever’s appropriate.

Do study your metrics. You’re looking first for impressions (the number of times Pinterest showed your pins to visitors on the platform), then clicks (the number of times visitors clicked on your pins), and saves (the number of times visitors saved your pin to one of their boards). 

There’s also total audience (the number of people who saw or engaged with your pins), and total engaged audience (the number of people who engaged with your pins). 

Ten clicks per 1,000 impressions is a good average for some accounts. 

For other accounts, 40 to 50 clicks per 1,000 impressions is a good average. 

And, finally, do spend some time on Pinterest. If the only time you visit Pinterest is to check your anayltics, you aren’t making the most of what the platform has to offer you. Check out your competition, see what others are doing, find new pin designs you like and adapt them for your own use (don’t copy the pins, use them for inspiration).

Visit our post, The Ultimate Pinterest Guide for Food Bloggers, for more information on using Pinterest to generate free traffic to your website.