Pinterest for Food Bloggers

Curious about Pinterest for Food Bloggers? This is everything you need to know! Learn how to get more pageviews & engaged followers from Pinterest! We’re going to outline how to pin, what to pin, what tools to use and what you should be focusing on.

If you’ve been wondering what the heck to do with your Pinterest as a food blogger, don’t worry – this post is going to outline EVERYTHING you need to know!

If you don’t follow us on Pinterest – click here to give us a follow so you can see how I’m putting into practice everything I’m going to explain below!

Pinterest is one of my favorite social media platforms. I’ve been using it for years as both a user and a marketer.

Sure, Pinterest has fun pretty pictures and it’s nice to scroll through.. but at the end of the day, Pinterest is a search engine – just like google. So many of us aren’t treating it like that.

Last month alone, Pinterest brought over 65,000 people to my site, and compared to many other bloggers.. my Pinterest traffic might seem tiny. Some people are getting hundreds of thousands of visitors every month from Pinterest!

If you want to see success on Pinterest, it’s important to treat it as a business tool.

Using Pinterest as a Business

If you haven’t already, go ahead and convert your account to a business account. This article from Pinterest explains how to convert your account.

Having your Pinterest account set to business will allow you to have access to their analytics, which can be super helpful! Analytics can help you see what your audience is responding to which can help shape your future content.

Set up Rich Pins – If you are a food blogger, it is recommended that you install rich pins. This tutorial can help!

Building out your Pinterest Account

Once you’re set to ‘business’ it’s time to make sure your account is in tip top shape. 

You must have SUPER specific boards. I have about 30 boards on my Pinterest that are all very specific. (see them here) A generic ‘Recipes’ board isn’t going to cut it.

Something like ‘Healthy Dessert Recipes’ is much more specific and explains exactly what people can plan to find on the board. Having a keyword rich board description will also help! If you haven’t looked at your Pinterest boards in a while, schedule some time to sit down and go through them. Adjust your titles and descriptions so they are specific. 

If you don’t know what to put on your boards, use Pinterest’s guided search tool. Keeping with our Healthy Dessert Recipes Example, I typed ‘Healthy Dessert Recipes’ in the search bar on Pinterest. Here’s what came up.

If those keywords fit the types of recipes you’re sharing – it would be wise to include them in your board description.

Creating Pins for Pinterest:

Image Sizing: This post on the Pinterest blog is super helpful regarding image sizing. Pinterest recommends using a 2:3 aspect ratio, or 1000 x 1500 pixels. Pins with an aspect ratio that’s greater than 2:3 might get cut off in people’s feeds. You can easily create a pin in Canva and use ‘custom dimensions’ for the proper image size.

I always recommend to create multiple pins per post. Pinterest came out with a recommendation for ‘fresh content’ a few months ago which has everyone freaking out…. but I’ve been following this practice for months!

I create as many pins as possible for each post. If I have an orange chicken recipe that is : healthy, paleo, whole30, gluten free, dairy free, crockpot, instant pot, etc… I’m making a separate pin for each adjective.

You never know which one is going to take off and it’s so easy to just change the text in canva! (Canva is a free design tool that is great for making pins!)

This is a great tutorial from Tastemaker on how to create beautiful Pinterest Images.

How to create great Pinterest Descriptions:

Once you have your pin created, it’s time to write a description. You’ll want your Pinterest description to be loaded with key words related to your post so that it has the best opportunity for being found. Here’s what I do:

Use the guided search in Pinterest – If you’re like ‘guided what???!’ I’ll explain. When you start to type your recipe title/keyword at the top of the Pinterest search, see what fills in. (See below)

If applicable, use those words when writing your Pinterest description, AND when making your pins! Want to cash in on even more keywords? Look at the guided search bubbles that pop up when you click the search button…

See all those other keywords? Include them in your description if they are relevant! This is what people are searching for!

You don’t want to over-stuff your descriptions with keywords or use keywords that aren’t relevant. Here’s the description I used based on the above keywords.

Skip the takeout & make this Healthy Orange Chicken Recipe for dinner! Paleo, gluten free + delicious – it’s one of the best healthy chicken recipes! You can make it on the stove or in the instant pot. The sauce is the best part – you’d never know it’s clean eating! Made with just a few simple ingredients, it’s tasty and easy to make! 

Video Pins on Pinterest:

If you have videos – I highly encourage you to make some video pins OR just upload your videos to Pinterest. (This video has over 260K views!) You can see some examples of my video pins on my Pinterest.

Video pins are an easy, free way to repurpose content you probably already have on hand.

Click here for a free video pin template in canva. To use it, click ‘File’, ‘Make a Copy’ in the top left. Change the fonts, colors, video, and images to fit your brand.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed and need help with creating video pins, send me an email: liz@thecleaneatingcouple.com I’d be happy to chat with you and can help you create eye catching video pins.

Once you have your pins created, it’s time to share them!

Story Pins

A few weeks ago Pinterest announced its newest feature: Story Pins. You can read their article about it here.

Basically, story pins are a new format of pin, similar to Instagram/Facebook stories. A user can swipe through a series of ‘stories’ to see videos or still images explaining how to do a DIY craft, make a recipe, etc.

It’s hard to tell exactly how story pins will play out on Pinterest given that they’re so new – but here are some things worth noting.

Why we are making story pins:

1) When I log on to Pinterest (on desktop and mobile) my home feed is LOADED with story pins, so Pinterest is clearly prioritizing them (for now). If Pinterest is pushing something this hard, it’s always a good idea to try it out.

2) They’re fairly easy to create. If you’ve ever recorded an Instagram story tutorial of doing/making something – just download the stories and repurpose them.

3) The impressions and saves are higher than regular pins, or even some of the video pins I’ve shared in the past 48 hours.

4) In other countries you can add a link to a story pin, so my hope is that Pinterest is going to start allowing this soon, and I can retroactively add links to my story pins to capitalize on the traffic.

Do I think that Story Pins are the next big thing… No.. but who knows! For a few minutes a day, I’m going to work on repurposing the hundreds of Instagram stories I have and turn them into story Pins. We’ll see what happens!

Examples of Story Pins: Protein Cookies, Healthy Baked Ziti

How to make Story Pins:

First, log into Pinterest. Click create in the top left. If you have access, in the drop down you’ll see ‘Story Pins’.

Once you’ve clicked ‘create’ drag and drop your story videos or screenshots. These are stories I downloaded directly from Instagram.

This is what the final page looks like before you upload your story Pin. The title is automatically populated by the text on your first story. I’m not able to add a link or description yet, but hopefully in the future.

Here’s the link to this story pin if you want to check it out!

Using Tailwind for Pinterest

I’m a minimalist when it comes to tools for my business, but Tailwind is one I happily spend money on. If you don’t have Tailwind, it’s a must! Tailwind is a scheduler for Pinterest. You can load up your queue and fill it with pins to go out to your boards throughout the day.

It was one of the first things I invested in for my business and I’m so glad I did. It is super easy to use and more than pays for itself with the amount of traffic Pinterest brings to my site. You can get a free month with this link.

Creating a Pinterest Schedule

Once you’ve created your pins and have Tailwind, you’ll need to build out a schedule. Tailwind will guide you on how to do this, but here are some helpful tips.

How many pins per day? Pinterest recommends you share no more than 30 pins per day. 

What’s the best time of day to pin? I spread my pins out all day from about 9AM-10PM EST. Tailwind recommends times for pinning based on your audience/when they are spending the most time on Pinterest.

How often should you pin? I use the interval feature in Tailwind which allows you to space out your pin to different boars across future months. I usually set an interval of 7-10 days in between pins. So today a pin will go to my ‘Healthy Chicken Recipes’ Board. 7 days from today it will go to ‘Healthy Paleo Recipes’, and so on. It’s best practice to not pin the exact same pin to the same board for 1-2 months. 

You can share a different image, linking back to the same post to the same board more frequently. For example – both of these pins (Pin 1, Pin 2) were shared to my Whole30 recipes board. Even though they’re linking to the same blog post, they’re totally different images, so in Pinterest eyes – they are different pins!

Above everything, it’s important to think of your user. If they were scrolling through your pins, would they see the same thing over and over again? If so – you may want to space your pins out more.

Pinterest Courses & Resources:

I loved the Pinning Perfect Course for taking your Pinterest strategy to the next level. I’ve only purchased a few courses in my entire blogging career- and this is the best. I loved it so much I became an affiliate for it. 

Unfortunately the course is no longer available.

If you’re looking for free resources on Pinterest – check out Simple Pin Media’s Blog or their Podcast.