How to Create ‘Long, Tall & Skinny’ Photos for Pinterest

In our last post, we talked about how creating an extra wide photograph for your facebook page can really highlight that photograph and status. In this post, I’m going to show you how to create a long, tall and skinny photograph for pinterest and why this is a good idea.

Photos on pinterest are all the same width which is predetermined by Pinterest and your photographs will fit into that scale. However, photographs can be as long as they like so a long, tall, skinny photo will gain more attention on the pinterest page – this is why infographics are long and narrow.

You may notice too that tutorials such as how to create a complicated french plait, will show a series of photographs collaged into a single long image and while I’m not going to suggest to try to make every photo you pin a long, tall and skinny photo, it is a good idea to do so occasionally.

‘Before and after’ photographs are perfect for this, as are tutorials as I mentioned above if you can take a series of photographs to show progress.

Here’s how to do it by using pic monkey first to create the collage:

Choose the collage layout you would like to use on the left. Decide how many photos you would like to use. In this example, I am showing one ‘before’ and one ‘after’ so I choose the number with the least number of boxes – 3.

When you first upload the photos, they will go into a box on the left so it is simply a case of moving them across with the cursor. You may find that the photo is off centre as you can see in the top example below but you can still move around the photo to centre the object.

As you can see below, the chair has now been centred. Next – I want to get rid of the third box which is surplus, plus I want the photo to be long and narrow so I click on the little ‘x’ in the top right hand corner and it disappears.

You can see below that the removal of the box on the left hasn’t changed the dimensions of the overall collage which as stayed at 1024 x 1024 hence the photo itself has become skewed in scale plus I want to create a long tall skinny photo!

What you need to do next is move the cursor in on the sides of the boxed collage until you are happy with the scale and your photo is long, tall and skinny!

Then, save it to your blog post and you’ll see on this post how I created two collages but really, for pinterest, the long image is the best.  Pin it and see it on the pinterest page.

There you have it – all the tips you need to create long, tall and skinny photos for pinterest – particularly useful for showing ‘before and after’ shots or tutorials.  We offer tutorials in how to use pinterest effectively for your business so do get in contact if you would like to book one.

Find It Friday: Pinterest

For this week’s Find It Friday post, we were asked a question about pinterest from Racquele:  Should I set up a specific board for each of my Pinterest categories (e.g. ‘My tutorials’ and ‘My Fabric Boxes’).  Am I being dishonest if I pin my products amongst other pictures in more general boards as people wouldn’t know some of the items are mine?

Pinterest Boards

Tips For Your Pinterest Boards

1. Try to ensure that each board name contains a popular keyword that people may search for. For example, ‘my fabric boxes’ is fine as other pinners may be looking for ‘fabric’, ‘boxes’, or ‘fabric boxes’ and your board and pins should then show up in searches.  ‘My tutorials’ is too vague – you need to explain what the tutorials are about e.g. ‘My  Sewing Tutorials’. ‘Sewing’ may also be a popular search term which would lead to your products being found and repinned.
2. Set up as many boards as are appropriate but ensure that you have a number of pins in each one. Don’t have boards that are empty.
3. See if some of the most popular board names would fit your boards. For example, according to the infographic we posted yesterday, two of the most popular board names are ‘For the Home’ and ‘Products I Love’.
4. Remember to re-arrange your boards for variety and don’t forget to move those out-of-season boards to the bottom of the page. See ‘How to Re-arrange your Pinterest Boards‘.
5. Pinterest has many benefits for your business from increasing brand awareness to significant SEO advantages.  With many people spending more time on Pinterest than any of the other social media platforms, it is certainly worth spending time on getting it right and maximising the benefits for your business.  Pinterest traffic to my online shop surpassed that of Facebook for the first time this month – time will tell if sales from Pinterest surpass those from Facebook.

Are you being dishonest by mixing your own products with others?

Not at all.  You can make it clear that the products are yours by describing them as such in the descriptor or by putting them in boards with an appropriate title, e.g. ‘My Craft Ideas’.  For example, on my pinterest account, I have a board that is named ‘Garrendenny Lane Products’ and it is evident they are products from my online shop.  I also have a board named ‘Wallpapers I Love’ and these are a mixture between wallpapers I stock and others I like. However, I think it is evident from my collection of boards that I have two businesses and my total of 59 boards reflect my products, my services as well as other areas of my life and my interests.

True pinners pin products they like as well as their own products but you are not being dishonest by mixing them up.  What is ‘bad pinterest practice‘ is pinning only your own products and it is very unlikely that you will get many repins or followers as a result unless you are already a hugely successful brand.

Pinning is about sharing and as long as you remember that, you won’t go wrong.

Would you like to attend a course on pinterest?

We will be putting in tenders to teach courses on pinterest and are hoping to gauge interest for same by posting a poll on our facebook page. We are also wondering if people would be interested in attending a webinar taught by Marie and I. We’d really appreciate if you could answer the questions on our poll or leave any comments in the box below.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend and that the sun shines 🙂

Lorna

Pinterest for Business?

Have you heard of Pinterest? If your business is in any way related to retail / food / photography / interiors / architecture / knitting /hairdressing – indeed, if it is related to anything that you can take photographs of and find other photographs of on the internet, then Pinterest could be extremely useful for your business and will help to drive traffic to your website.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is an online virtual scrapbook or pinboard and the beauty is you can have as many pinboards as you like and you can share them with other people.  See  our previous post for an explanation of how to set up Pinterest and how to ‘pin’ pictures on it.

How will it boost my business?

• Pinterest is a little like an online ‘word of mouth’. People can pin pictures they like from websites and blogs (there will be a post on copyright issues regarding this coming up tomorrow) and they can repin pictures they like on other people’s boards.
• According to Hubspot, Pinterest is turning more browsers into buyers than other social media tools.
• Pinterest is a wonderful tool for any creative business to showcase their voice through images.
• Pinterest allows you to send visual messages about your business – be it product or service.
• Companies such as Etsy have had huge success with pinterest driving thousands and thousands of people to their site. Etsy has over 45,000 followers on its pinterest account.
• People can search for terms such as ‘bridesmaid shoes’, ‘Christmas’, ‘Wedding dresses’, ‘curtains’, ‘wallpaper’, so you do need to take care when naming your boards and describing each picture.  It could be a good idea to use the keyword analysis tool to optimise your pictures.  However, you can see how the possibilities of getting your product passed around as ‘repinning’ can really help to get the word out there.
• Each pin works as a link to your site so will count as a backlink.  Each pin from your site should continually carry the source, ie your website, and if others embed the picture into their blog post, it will show the source as well as link to it if the picture is clicked upon.
• It is proving to be addictive! Women aged 25-44 are the most popular users but with the growth in infographics, more men seem to be partaking in it.  One week recorded 11 million hits – a phenomenal amount for what is a relatively new media platform.
• It is shareable.  It can link with your website, facebook and twitter. At the moment, it will show on people’s personal profiles on facebook (not business pages) so friends can see their pins and their activity.  You can also link it to your twitter profile which can be a business one so each time you pin a picture, a tweet will be sent out.
• Pinterest can indicate trends or the success of new products. Repins may suggest how popular a product might become.
• Infographics are becoming very popular too so you can create a visual image of any company or industry data and share it by pinning.

How do I join?

You can apply to Pinterest to join and this can take a little while. Invitations mean that you can start pinning straight away so if you would like an invite, do leave a comment below and we will email you one.