This is a guest post by Chaitra of itspinkpot.com Chaitra and I both live in the Seattle area and we’ve actually gone out to lunch together. It’s always fun to meet other bloggers in real life. Chaitra has a wealth of photography and design tips on her blog and today she is sharing how you can create pin worthy graphics for your blog posts.
With visually focussed content platforms like Pinterest, Bloglovin and Instagram gaining rapid popularity, it’s important to create attractive and catchy graphics for your content. Specifically for me, Pinterest has been a huge game changer in the last couple of months, both in terms of driving traffic to my website as well as sales to my Etsy design shop.
The most effective way to get noticed on Pinterest is by creating catchy graphics.
Here are the 4 essential steps to creating pin-worthy graphics for your content:
1. Choosing an Image:
Selecting the right base Image for your content is super important. For this you can choose from a couple of options:
Photography:
If you can shoot your own photos, I’d totally recommend it. Just get the photography equipment ready, layout the scene for your photo and snap away. This is great because your photos would be unique and will set you apart. Also as you are the one who is taking them, they would be perfectly suited for your content too. If you are starting out, you can find a wealth of photography knowledge online. Be slow, be patient and soon you’ll be taking amazing photos for your blog.
Stock Photos:
If taking your own photos isn’t an option – Stock photography is the way to go. There are so many amazing websites that provide free stock photos for bloggers and creative entrepreneurs, utilize them. Here are a list of my favorite stock photography sites:
Design your own Graphic:
If you have the time and a taste for design, creating your own graphic for your blog content is a fantastic idea. You can use designer software like Adobe Illustrator or Canva to design attractive graphics. You could use patterns and colors as a background to add interest to your graphic. You can illustrate with icons, shapes and differentiate with borders – get creative! Here are a few examples of catchy graphics:
Curalate analyzed over 500,000 images on Pinterest to find out the characteristics of the most shared images on Pinterest, here are the results for you to see.
Interesting right? So make sure to keep these points in mind while selecting the Image for your content!
2. Editing:
Now that you have an image in hand, you need to tailor it to suit your content. You could use Photoshop or any photo editor for this. Here is a list of my favorite photo shop editing tools. Make sure to crop out unnecessary parts of the photo that aren’t relevant to your content. Also if your photo needs it, perform basic editing – adjust brightness, contrast, levels etc. Spruce up your photo so it stands out among the sea of photos.
3. Embed Text:
The easiest way to grab a Pinterest browser’s attention is by embedding text in your Image. One glance and if the headline on your photo is attractive, the user is hooked. While browsing 1000’s of pins, very few people are going to stop to read the description below, so you have to grab their attention through your image. Use a clean and clear font for the text on your Image, highlight it by keeping it simple.
A note on Infographics: An Infographic is a graphic visual representation of information,data or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly (Src: Wikipedia). Infographics are hugely popular on Pinterest because of their useful and intuitive nature. You can create Infographics using Adobe Illustrator or websites like infogr.am and Piktochart.
4. Size:
The final step is to prepare your content graphic for sharing. If you have noticed, longer images seem to very popular on Pinterest. An aspect ratio of 2:3 works best for Pinterest Images, so make sure to resize them to make them taller and stand out on the feed. Check out Kristie’s complete guide on the best sizes for Pinterest
Once your graphic is ready, get pinning!
About the Author – Chaitra
This is so awesome! Thank you so much for the tips!