A decade ago, if you wanted to create visual inspiration for your future goals, you had to grab your scissors and other art supplies and get to work. And while this is certainly still an option for the old school creatives out there, things have changed a bit due to the internet.
Now, instead of a physical vision board, you can do everything virtually – while also growing your business online – by creating pins on Pinterest.
Pinterest has taken the world of online creativity and visual marketing to the next level. Since its launch over 10 years ago, the social platform has witnessed nothing but growth.
People from all over the world flock to Pinterest to find, create, and share inspirational ideas in the form of images and videos. From home décor to tech and everything in between, there is something for everyone on this website.
With over 350 million users regularly interacting with the platform, Pinterest is as big as it can get. A platform with such a huge user base serves as the perfect medium to market one’s brand and grow their business by reaching a wide array of audiences.
As powerful as Pinterest is, when combined with the versatile graphic design platform Canva, you can take your marketing efforts even further. Canva equips you with convenient, easy-to-use graphic design tools that you can apply to create beautiful images and post them on your Pinterest boards.
To find out what Pinterest and Canva really are and how you can create Pinterest pins using Canva to boost your marketing and business, keep on reading.
What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a visual search engine tool and social platform that allows you to find ideas and inspiration on things you like and topics you find interesting.
The images on Pinterest are called Pins. Users can search for Pins and create boards to organize those pins according to each category.
For example, you can create a “vegan recipes” board and attach Pinterest Pins that contain vegan recipes from blogs and websites.
Pinterest also allows you to follow other people, brands, and boards that have similar interests as you. It provides a way for you to communicate with like-minded people who share in your likes and dislikes.
Pinterest has millions of active users and that makes it the most popular platform on the web for people to go to when they want to find inspiration. It is one of the most effective ways brands can reach their audiences and users can connect with brands they like.
In fact, Pinterest is so popular that research shows 50 percent of millennials use it every month to find stuff they like and consequently, make purchases.
What is a Pinterest Pin?
Pinterest Pins are simply the images on Pinterest that a user bookmarks and sticks to their virtual board.
On Pinterest, you can search, save, share, and do a lot more with Pins. For brands who have a business account, Pinterest Pins can be linked back to their website to share their products and services with the users on this platform.
What is Canva?
Canva is a free graphic design platform that lets a user create resumes, invitations, Pinterest Pins, and much more.
Canva is one of the most popular design platforms out there as it provides an extremely easy-to-use user interface and a wide array of options. Its drag and drop interface makes designing and customizing thousands of visual imagery very simple and easy.
Canva even lets you upload your own photos and edit them any way you want with its convenient features. For people who find editing platforms such as Adobe Photoshop too complicated, Canva is the perfect tool.
It is free to use and does not require immense design and editing knowledge to use.
Its ease of use and the ability to make your pictures pop make it an obvious choice for creating Pinterest Pins.
Why is Pinterest Marketing Important for Your Business?
As mentioned before, Pinterest has a huge user base. Moreover, it is highly visual. A combination of both these qualities make it the perfect tool to advertise and market your business.
Marketing on Pinterest drives sales for brands and businesses and promotes traffic for bloggers. 90 percent of weekly users on Pinterest use the platform to make their purchasing decisions.
What this essentially means is that they use Pinterest to tell them what to buy. To give them ideas on what purchase to make. This provides businesses with the perfect opportunity to market themselves and to give users what they are looking for.
What’s more, is that Pinterest was found to be as much as four times more effective at bringing in sales for companies than other social mediums. This makes Pinterest marketing greatly important for your business.
A big part of promoting your business on Pinterest is by creating beautiful Pins. The more eye-catching your Pinterest Pins are, the more people are going to want to invest their time and money in your business.
An efficient way to make sure your product Pins are grabbing people’s attention is by using Canva’s graphics templates made exclusively for Pinterest.
Pinterest Pins by Canva
Pinterest boasts billions of pins on its platform. Which means if you want to stand out and not get lost in a sea of visual content, you need to make your pins eye-catching. One of the best ways to create Pinterest Pins is by using Canva.
Canva allows you to craft stunning Pinterest Pins with expertly designed templates made exclusively for Pinterest. Creating Pinterest Pins using Canva is as easy as going to Canva’s website and choosing a template from their extensive library.
Once you have chosen a Pinterest template, you can then go ahead and customize it with Canva’s many editing tools.
If you are satisfied with the image, you can then easily download the image and you’re good to go.
Canva hires professional designers to create their templates so you can be at peace that you are in good hands when it comes to their templates. The design platform includes images on a wide array of topics, including:
- Travel
- Birthdays
- Resumés
- Holidays
- Food
- Décor
- Science and technology
- Cartoons
- Art
- Fitness
- Health and wellness
And so much more!
Since all their templates are editable, you can choose a design from any category you like and edit it to your liking with their user-friendly image editor.
Canva’s photo editor lets you do things like resizing, adding text, changing color tones, and much more.
How to Create Pinterest Pins Using Canva
With Pinterest, the main goal is to create enticing visual content that ranks well on the platform and gets people interested and clicking. So, one of the most important pieces of information you can learn in that pursuit is how to create Pinterest Pins using Canva.
A lot of people struggle with creating beautiful-looking pins. Either they don’t want to put in the time and effort or just don’t know how the process works.
This is where Canva comes in as it solves both those issues and finds a way around them.
With Canva, users don’t need a ton of editing experiences so that saves them effort. Moreover, Canva’s provides a drag and drop interface that makes photo editing a breeze.
Here is how you can use Canva to create attractive Pinterest Pins that rank well:
- Choose the topic you want to work with and create pins around.
- Choose 3 to 5 images on the same topic. Instead of choosing images on different topics, first choose one with the same topic.
- Gather your images together and upload them to Canva.
- Research the keywords you want these images to show up for in the search results. Make sure you are using useful keywords that make for good Pinterest SEO.
- Create a folder for each topic and put the relevant pins in each folder. As you edit and create more designs, you can store your pins in their relevant categories and find them easily for use on Pinterest.
Before uploading your Pins to Pinterest, you need to make sure that the dimensions are correct and optimal for the content you are posting.
Pinterest normally recommends an optimal pin size of 2:3.
To set dimensions on Canva, this is what you can do:
- Choose a Pinterest image from the templates library.
- Choose the “create design” option.
- Set your dimensions and save!
Canva also allows you to save a pin design as a template in one of your folders. This is a great and convenient feature through which you can quickly locate and find all the designs you have for each topic and all the pins you have created.
Here’s how:
- While you have the Pinterest template open, click the 3 dots in the top right corner of Canva’s interface.
- Clicking on the dots will produce a drop-down menu where you would see the option “template” listed.
- Choose the “template” option and save it to a topic folder you’d like.
Creating a Pinterest Pin using Canva is as simple as that!
Creating Pinterest Pins Using Canva – Useful Tips and Tricks
Pinterest and Canva go hand in hand to create powerful images and videos. But there is even more you can do to get the best out of your hard work and efforts.
While creating beautiful graphics is the main goal of Canva and Pinterest, those graphics will be of no use if no one is viewing them.
Therefore, you should follow Pinterest best practices to make sure your images and videos succeed and rank well on the Pinterest search engine.
Here are a few of them:
Create Content That Lasts
Your Pinterest Pins are here to stay. What you create today is going to stay on the platform for possibly forever. A Pinterest Pin can have traffic for not just days or weeks but oftentimes, years after it was first posted.
Therefore, create evergreen content – something you know will last even after years of its original posting.
Get Your Dimensions Right
Getting your dimensions correct is very important on Pinterest. So much so that it can make or break the way you rank on the platform.
Long and tall images perform the best on Pinterest. It is what Pinterest suggests itself.
Canva’s Pinterest templates already come at a size that is optimal for Pinterest use. However, you can always change the sizing and dimensions according to the style of post you are going for.
Write the Perfect Pin Description
A pin description is the perfect blank space that you can fill up with useful SEO words and boost your pin’s ranking.
Be sure to use your SEO keywords strategically and as naturally as possible. Keyword stuffing is something that Pinterest SEO is not going to like and are probably going to end up being ignored by the site’s search engine.
Add a Call to Action
A call to action – also known as a CTA – is a portion of text urging the readers to take the next step and use your services.
Adding a call to action in your Pins is a great way for people to not just view your pins but also, take action and do what those pins are supposed to make them do.
A few useful calls to action examples are given below:
- Pin it for later
- Sign up here
- Click here for your free [mention name of product or service]
- Register today
The Bottom Line
Pinterest and Canva are powerful tools. One helps with marketing and one helps you create the right tools to market effectively.
Both of them work together to give your brand a personality while allowing you to communicate your message with your target audience.
Canva is an extremely easy tool to use. Every time you use it, your vision board on Pinterest is reinforced and refined. It may take a little time for you to learn and see what works for your particular brand. But with time, your efforts will pay off.
Therefore, make the best of both these platforms and create Pinterest Pins using Canva to benefit you and your business by bringing in the customers.