How Brands Can Optimize Pins for the Pinterest Smart Feed

Pinterest is becoming a highly powerful marketing tool that many brands can use to expand brand reach and exposure. Unlike other social media sites, Pinterest is truly something special – a tool that not only improves the connections businesses make with brands, but has the ability to turn those fans into customers.

While many brands new to Pinterest will start off their Pinterest accounts by creating boards and adding followers, there are tactics that brands can use to increase the opportunities for greater and more effective customer reach, especially with the rollout of Pinterest’s “smart feed”.

In this article, we will cover what the Pinterest smart feed is and how you can use Pinterest’s latest feature to your advantage.

What is the Pinterest Smart Feed?

The Pinterest Smart Feed is made up of a new complex algorithm that ranks pins according those these three elements: the quality of the pin, the quality of the source the pin is linked to (blog of website), and the rating assigned by Pinterest.

Pin Quality: Pinterest’s smart feed will place the highest-quality pins at the top and keep them there as long as pins receive quality interaction from users. Just like Facebook, the more interaction a post or pin gets, the more active it stays in users’ news feeds.

Source Quality: The quality of source is determined by whether or not the source the pin is linked to (a blog or website) is a reputable website with good content. To get high rankings, only post your best content and make sure that content is coming from good sources (not spammy sites) before pinning or repining.

Pinterest Rating: Pinterest throws all pins in a blender like rating system called the content generator. The generator will pin what’s best for the smart feed based on the current pin and the performance of other pins from that same source. So, no longer are feeds showing pins posted in real-time. For example, someone who decided they wanted to find a recipe for gingerbread cookies will not longer feel that they are spamming their followers’ feeds with 10 different recipes at once.

Prepare Your Pins for the Smart Feed

In order to use the smart feed to your advantage, there are a couple of tactics to take note. Pinterest mentioned in their blog that the “best pins” are high quality images that are clear, relevant, have no borders, and have helpful descriptions.

1. Make Pins Beautiful & Appealing – think of your Pinterest board as your visual portfolio. Users go on Pinterest to get inspired and they repin things they really like or want. Focus on:

Tall, vertical images (minimum width is 600px, max is 735px)
High resolution, professional grade photos
Little to no text – images need to capture users attention on mobile, text will just hinder that!
Feel free to add your logo, just make it subtle. Bonus tip: if you can create a recognizable template that’s personal to your brand, the images will be more recognizable

2. Add Helpful Descriptions – do not write descriptions for the smart feed, write them for users with user-friendly language. Avoid:

• Salesman text
• Keyword stuffing – it’s okay to include keywords, but make text still sound natural
• Writing too much – information should be helpful but minimal (it’s an image-based site after all).

If you like to share different types of content, Pinterest rich pins are a great solution. There are five different types: recipe pins, product pins, article pins, movie pins, and location pins. Businesses can tag their store location and include a price under the image.

3. Repin Only the Best – find the best content out there and share it! Remember to:

• Check the source of the pin – website or blog should be active with good quality content
• Check your Pinterest analytics to see which pins appeal to your target audience. This will give you more insight for improving your content strategy. Pay attention to your overall impressions, your most popular boards, and search rankings and engagement for each of your pins.
• Follow reputable sources for the best content to share. You’ll save time knowing that the sources you follow have only high quality content to share.