Pinterest Best Practices vs. Results

[catinarezi]

Acording to Pinterest (https://business.pinterest.com/en-us/creative-best-practices/), to make pins that perform we should:

- Use a 2:3 ratio (they recommend 1000x1500px), saying that "other ratios may cause your Pin to truncate, or may negatively impact performance";

- Keep the product centralized (highlighted);

- Include your logo in a subtle way, avoiding the right bottom corner;

- Add a concise text overlay (they say copy, but I get it as title) to tell people what your pin is about and keep it readable on mobile devices;

- Have a good copywrite (Title + Description) to be discovered in search and

- A quick loading link.

For those who are experienced with Pinterest, I always heard that manual pins perfome better than the ones created with Zazzle's pin button, maybe because they follow these guidelines? Do you feel it's true? I myself have an old pin, made with the pin button, that has more than 20k views. I also used it for one of my paid campaigns and Pinterest insisted it's proportions should be fixed (all Zazzle pictures are square) because it wouldn't perform, but it has always been the best performing pin of the campaign.

Among my non paid efforts, a pin of someone else's store valentine's day card, also done with Zazzle Pin Button has 16.5k views with absolutely no effort of mine while other manual pins are under 4k views.

Another point I was questioning myself is about what looks good to me and what I would save. I prefer images without text. Won't clients prefer too? The text gives me an impression of an advertisement, a desperate attempt to sell. I believe the pleasure of pinterest is to find products among beautiful photos and references. It was a social network for images. Unless you have a blog and your product is text, I believe an image without text would perform better. Anyone has tried both ways (with text overlay vs. without text overlay) to say which one works best. Is Pinterest mistaken on this tip?

I'm intending to manually recreate some pins and improve/reorganize my Pinterest, but I'm a bit uncertain about which path to follow.

 Catherine Marie Narézi
Art in Card - Creative Design

[TheDesignerVib1]

Well first of all, if you have a business account you'll notice that the pins created from Zazzle, those views, don't count toward you, instead they count toward Zazzle, to be more clear when I check the analytics it only shows views and engagements for the pins that I created manually, the ones I pinned from Zazzle they will only show as a saved pin because Zazzle is the creator of the pin. But the good thing is Zazzle does promote our pins by doing ad campaigns, but I think they only do on trending products from what I seen so far.

So making manual pins is better for growing your Pinterest and leads to more traffic, you just have to pin more constantly (like 5 regular pins, 1 idea pin a day)

[CreativeLeahG]

I've got many views on Pins shared directly from Zazzle?

[catinarezi]

You can ask Pinterest to show analytics for Saved Pins:

[chuamishael]

Oh I didn't know that. but when I use pinterest pins, it's my referral link on it. right?

[Windy]

Open one of your pins and look at the web address in order to find out whether your RF code is applied. 

[Windy]

I do not make manual pins very often because I find that even when I make my own pins, Pinterest seems to see them as Zazzle pins. For example I just made one and when I pinned it to Pinterest, the account shown on the pin is the Zazzle account. Not mine. Is there a trick to making the pin show as being associated with my account? I have tried it so many ways  and am very frustrated with Pinterest because I can't make this work. (I pin using iPad, through the apple pinterest app.)

[catinarezi]

My manual pins don't show up as Zazzle's pinterest account pins. I create them directly on Pinterest (Microsoft Edge browser) uploading photo and copying Zazzle's link or with Adobe Express scheduling tool. The only thing that appear as Zazzle's is the domain, because I don't have a domain to claim on Pinterest yet (and maybe it will keep showing up because the product link is from Zazzle). I'm buying a domain and then I'll see how it works.
That's my best selling product in the last months, it's also editors' pick, and it is still shown as Art in Card's (my store) pin:

What worries me after reading the answers in this post is: Am I going to receive referrals from my pins that appear as Zazzle's? Theoretically we pin with our affiliate links because we want to receive not only royalties, but also referrals (I never received a single one, even trying paid marketing, which I stopped because I didn't feel any difference on sales)...

[Windy]

When I search your Pinterest for this, I find a different showing. Art in Card, as you have in the red circle does not appear on my view (iPad with Pinterest App). Your RF code does attach. When I click through I do see an RF code, (Which I assume to be yours---it ends in 1030). 

[ColsCreations]

What worries me after reading the answers in this post is: Am I going to receive referrals from my pins that appear as Zazzle's?

Yes. It doesn't matter who Pinterest "credits" the pin to. Whether it's credited as your pin or a saved pin from Zazzle only makes a difference in your Pinterest stats. The only thing that matters for getting referrals is that the person following the link in your pin picks up your RF ID/cookie and that it "sticks" if they actually purchase something.

[waterart]

I'm still trying to figure out Pinterest, but I think the reason your pin is seen as a Zazzle pin is because the link goes to zazzle. Or am I misunderstanding what your are saying?

[Windy]

Yep. You are right. Somehow after all the bullruns Zazzle is forcing us down, I had gotten too caught up in the shenanigans, and had forgotten all about the fact that I had started a blog for this very reason, so that I could pin from my own site rather than from Zazzle. 

[PacifierCity]

If one creates a pin and give it a landing url that is zazzle.com, most likely, in time, Zazzle will get credit for creating it because the url lands on Zazzles website.  The only case where this appears not to be true is with collections.  A normal pin will eventually have your text removed and replaced with the generic product description on the product page, not the designers description.  This is a change that P instituted over a year ago now.  Driving traffic to your own website or blog is the only way to ensure that you get credit for the pin and that your description sticks.  This means that the url assigned to the pin is not a Zazzle url, but your own.  I know, I know, some of you do not see this as being true... but give it enough time and you will find that, in the end, it will be.

P claims to be all about the pin image.  They state that they are always seeking new images of products, the next big idea, etc.  If you are using P and paying for advertising, why would you do anything but what they recommend?

If you aren't paying for advertising, then you have no money to lose, just your time.  Play around all you want.  If you have a decent following, then pin shape and size may not matter as much...  Generally your followers will have your pins added to their feeds.  If you don't have a following, the quality of your pins will be what determines how often P places those pins in other peoples feeds.  So the more unique your pin image, the better chance P will show it more often... unless it is too unique, has too much text, or is too hard to tell what is happening in the image, etc.

Simple, elegant and consistent  pinning is what will generally reap earnings.  Like on Z, you are one of thousands, tens of thousands or millions of people that are pinning images.  Many of those pinning are hoping to earn, some are just everyday users searching for ideas (they usually save/repin). 

It seems to me that once a product is created it takes months to get established in internet land... maybe with the first (unpromoted) sale coming after 3 months.  So the same is going to be true for your pins, unless your lucky.  You need to be prepared to pin, 10 -15 pins a day for months before you will begin to reap rewards for your efforts.

On top of that, P prefers that you don't only pin product pins.  So you need some boards that are not product boards.  And you need to follow other P accounts.  They want you to be part of the community, not just trying to sell to its community.

And if you compare it to Z... Z says we are testing digital downloads... and then it happens... or they say we are moving to cover images... and then it happens... the same is true for P.  If they say they prefer certain things... chances are... they do!

I earn off pins that were created years ago.  They are evergreen.  So the more often I pin, the better the odds are that I will earn off the few minutes I spent creating them... at some point in the future...  and yes, sometimes it takes years.  But once the pin is out there, it is out there.  P doesn't go in and delete your pins.

Hope something in all that is helpful...

Cheers

PC

..........................

[Windy]

OH! I had completely forgotten this. This was the entire reason I started my blog.....so that I could pin from my blog and not from Zazzle. (I quit doing the blog because Zazzle deliberately removed the HTML generator for other peoples' products). 

So.....maybe I should start that up again....

Getting tired........