How to Create Pinterest Images that Go Viral for Free

You could write the most amazing blog post in the history of blogging. However, if you don’t have spectacular Pinterest images, no one will pin it, much less click on your pin.

The truth is, Pinterest images are an important part of any good content marketing strategy. As a major source of web traffic for bloggers, you must include high-quality images in every post you write in order to market your blog on Pinterest successfully.

The great part is that you don’t have to spend a dime on creating gorgeous pins that go viral! You can create fast and effective images quickly and free with the right knowledge and resources.

In this post, I’m going to discuss how you can create images that will make your blog posts go viral on Pinterest and let you know which resources you can use for free to do it.

*This post contains affiliate links. That means that if you make a purchase after clicking on a link I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. For more information, click here.

Pinterest Images

There are two topics I will discuss in this post as both are important to creating highly engaging Pinterest Images. The first is the requirements and design of high performing Pinterest images and the other are the tools you need to create them.

First, I want to look at what makes a Pinterest image go viral. What separates a viral pin from every other pin on Pinterest? Is it the design? The color? The content? Not all Pinterest images are equal.

I know this first hand. If the pin quality is not up to par, I personally won’t repin it because its quality can affect my Pinterest account’s performance. When I see a pin that is difficult to read, not appealing, or has typos, I feel it reflects on the blog it links to.

Pinning low-quality content can hurt a blogger’s Pinterest performance. Some people seem to just slap words on a picture and call it done. This is the worst possible thing you could do. You need to make an effort with your Pinterest images because they can greatly impact your blog’s traffic and performance.

[yuzo_related]

Characteristics of Viral Pins

In order for your pins to go viral, they have to perform well on Pinterest. The following are several characteristics of high performing pins that you can utilize in your pins to make them go viral.

Use Vertical Images

Images that are vertical are repinned and clicked on more than square or rectangular images. A 2:3 ratio image works well for most pins.

Part of the reason for this is that the Pinterest feed is designed for vertical pins that are 600 x 900 px. Vertical pins take up more room in the feed and their larger size demands more attention from the audience as they scroll through the feed.

Pins longer than the 2:3 ratio, such as 2:4 or 2:5 are said to perform even better due to the additional space they take up in the feed. Pinterest doesn’t seem to cap the length of a pin in the feed until it is roughly longer than the 2:4 ratio.

I use images that are 735 x 1102 px for my main Pinterest images but embed images that are 735 x 1600 px in my posts. These images tend to perform better and are more popular than smaller images with a nearly identical design.

My advice is to keep you feature pin approximately 2:3 and embed longer images in your post. Pin both to the same boards and track their performance via Pinterest Analytics and Tailwind to determine which works best for your audience.

Use Photos, Not Graphics

People tend to have a more meaningful response to pins with photos instead of graphics, illustrations, or a plain background. Whether you use graphics for your background or to illustrate your text, it is best that you use a photo instead.

Choose high-quality images that have a resolution that won’t diminish the image quality when the pin is full size. Later in this post, I will go into more detail about finding royalty free images that you can use in your blog posts for free.

Don’t Use Images with Faces

It sounds like a silly and pointless rule, doesn’t it? Pinterest images with faces are less likely to repinned or clicked. I’m not really certain why this is, but it’s a widely accepted fact for digital marketers. This goes for blog and product pins as well.

Images with faces are statistically proven to be 23% less likely to repinned than those without faces. That’s a significant difference, especially from a marketing and sales standpoint. By using an image with a face, you are cheating yourself of 23% revenue.

Make Sure The Image Isn’t Too Light or Too Dark

Pinterest images that are too light or too dark don’t receive as many repins as visually balanced graphics. This means that if you think a pin may be too dark too light, you’re probably right. I prefer to use a photo in the background of my pin and use a light colored and partially transparent overlay.

This won’t necessarily work on all images, especially those that are very light, but it works great for most medium tone or darker background images to achieve visual balance.

My lighter, but colorful pins are almost always the ones to get the most repins and clicks. Flat lay images are great for this type of balance and make a great background for your text too.

Use Warm Tones and Multiple Colors

I wrote a post that I expected to get a ton of repins and clicks due to its content. It didn’t. Do you want to know why? I used a white photo background with a navy blue overlay on the image. It was cold and unappealing to my audience. Live and learn.

It is best to use warm tones for your text and graphics on your Pinterest images. Red, orange, and brown are repinned twice as often as blue and green images.  In addition, red or pink headlines garner similar results on Pinterest.

If you are in doubt, experiment with it. This is something that I am trying with my blog right now. If you notice, my newest images are much warmer than older images. So far, my Pinterest views have jumped significantly since making this simple change.

Using multiple colors is another way to improve your pin performance. If you notice, the feature image for this post is mostly white with yellow, magenta, pink, and teal. This should improve its engagement when I market it.

Create Whitespace

I’ve seen conflicting information on this topic. Curalate recommends using 30% or less whitespace on your Pinterest images. This statistic may be targeted more toward retailers and product images than blog post images, so bear that in mind.

Bloggers and other sources say that whitespace is necessary for your post to go viral. Sarah Morgan or XOSarah.com, an Emmy Award-winning strategist says that whitespace is important for your Pinterest image performance.

I try to achieve a balance of both with my Pinterest images. If the background is busy, I make the foreground less so. If I’m just not happy with the final product, I usually go back and change it. I almost always have more repins with the improved images.

When it comes to whitespace, trust your gut and strive for something that meets your needs, but is in harmony with the rest of your blog.

Brand Your Image

Speaking of harmony, your images should be a reflection of your blog. That is why it is so important to effectively brand your blog early!

Branding sounds complicated, but it’s really not. The colors and fonts you use, as well as the design and layout of your pins are a huge part of what brand them. It’s not a logo (although that does help significantly) or any fancy design or graphics. It’s the simple things that your readers will remember.

Branding allows your fans to quickly identify a pin as yours in the Pinterest feed. For instance, when I first started freelance writing, I read a lot of Jorden Roper’s posts from Writing Revolt, now Creative Revolt. I could spot her posts in the feed in a second!

The pins above from Writing Revolt are clearly branded. They are unique and easily recognized as Writing Revolt’s brand. Yes, they have a logo, but that really isn’t what you notice in the feed. The black and white stripes, vibrant colors, and layout are all the same. This continuity is the greatest part of branding!

Use Clear Fonts and Colors

I won’t name names, but there is a blogger that posts in some of the same groups in which I share my posts. I won’t pin any of this blogger’s pins because the blog itself hurts my eyes.

I know that sounds a little crazy, but the entire blog features a black background with red writing. That says a few things to me: It says that this person doesn’t want you to stay on their blog long because your eyes will be strained after only a few sentences and that the blog isn’t professional.

The same is true of your pins. If you look unprofessional, no one will take you seriously. A recent pin I came across on Pinterest used a white background with a lemon yellow font. The only two colors were stark white and a very light yellow.

I’ve also seen several posts where I had to strain to read the pretty, but difficult to read typeface. When choosing your colors and fonts, clarity has to be a priority. If I can’t read what a pin says easily, I move on to the other images around it that are easier to read.

Your pins are for your audience, not yourself. It doesn’t matter if you like how something looks, you need to think about it from your audience’s point-of-view. Spend some time really looking at pins and ask yourself why you looked more closely at one over the other.

You may be surprised that font and color contrast are two of the main reasons one pin caught your eye (in a good way) and another didn’t.

Create a Call to Action

Why do you create pins for a blog post? Because you want people to find your post and read it, right? If you had any other answer, this may not be the post (or blog) for you.

If you want people to click on your pin, tell them. It really is that easy. This is a call to action aka a CTA. It is a way to encourage viewers to do what you want them to do and it gets results.

A clear CTA goes a long way to ensuring the person reading your pin acts when they read the pin. It gives them direction and is effective on both your pins and in your copy. If you want a person to read your post, write “Read how to … now!” or “Check it out now!”

Adding language that places urgency ups the ante on the CTA. “Limited Time Offer” or “Don’t Miss This Opportunity” are examples of urgency statements you can include in a pin. These will vary based on your post and niche, so do write what works for you.

Also, only include one CTA per image. Multiple CTAs are confusing and will pull your reader in two directions. Make it simple and include a clear, single CTA at the bottom of your pin for better results.

Use a Teaser Title

Your blog post title doesn’t necessarily have to be the words on your pin. Yes, you definitely want your main pin to be a title pin, but you can use on-topic teasers to earn clicks too.

Starting your pin with a question or stating that you have a solution to a particular pain point will capture your reader’s attention. I am trying to incorporate more of these in my own pins to improve my pin engagement. So far, I have seen success.

A couple notes before you try this though. Don’t mislead your reader. They will be ticked off and annoyed if you promise a solution to a pain point and the pin takes them something completely off-topic.

Also, don’t oversell the solution in the title. That’s as misleading as incorrect information. Both will only hurt your reputation and damage your business. Be creative, but don’t alienate your reader.

Creating Pinterest Images

Now that you know what you shouldn’t and shouldn’t do when creating pins, I’m going to show you the tools to help you create amazing, professional images FOR FREE!

That’s right! None of the resources listed here require a payment to use. Some do have “pro” or “plus” features, but the free version is more than sufficient when it comes to creating awesome pins for your posts.

Stock Photography

Remember earlier when I was discussing using photos for your Pinterest images instead of graphics? I mentioned that I would explain how you could get photos to create your images royalty-free and free to use. Stock photography is what I was talking about.

If you’re like many bloggers, you don’t know where to go or if you have the rights to use the image without the permission of the image’s owner. Some of you may even be using any image from Google.

Don’t do this as they are copyright protected. You can read more about your legal requirements and responsibilities in my post, “How to Legally Protect Your Blog from Lawsuits and Content Theft.”

You can always take your own photos, but stock photography is a great alternative if you don’t have the time, money, or talent that photography takes. I use two websites for the majority of my images, Pixabay and Unsplash. Both require no credit to be given and are completely free to use on your blog and Pinterest images.

Pixabay

Pixabay was the first stock photo website that I fell in love with. It has tons of images available in a variety of resolutions to meet your needs.

You can create an account, but this isn’t required. However, there is a pop-up that comes up with each download if you don’t create an account. This can be as simple as signing into Facebook.

All you have to do is browse or search for an image and download it if you like it. Then you would upload or import the image into a photo editor or website to style it and add text.

Pixabay also offers illustrations, video, and vector graphics for download. Vector graphics work well for any job that requires you to scale your image. Whether you need to make it larger or smaller, it will maintain a crisp resolution.

Unsplash

Late last year, I discovered Unsplash by accident and it has become my primary source for stock photos. Unsplash only has photography. They don’t have graphics or illustrations, which I rarely, if ever, use, so it works perfectly for me.

Like Pixabay, Unsplash images are uploaded by volunteers and are royalty-free. You simply create an account and download to use the images. Unsplash will pop-up a link that you can use to give the photographer credit, which isn’t required.

Unsplash doesn’t have illustrations, videos, or vector images. Everything is strictly photography and comes in one resolution. This can make scaling images on your pins challenging if the resolution isn’t high enough for the size of your image.

Nevertheless, I love the photography on this site and it works best for my blog. It also allows the user to build collections of their favorite images to download as needed for their projects.

Photo Editing and Text

Now that we have covered stock photography, let’s discuss creating images for Pinterest. I only use Canva for my images. Yes, I promote Canva a lot. That’s because I love their product! It’s free and easy to use for nearly anyone willing to spend time on the program.

Something worth noting is that I’m not an affiliate, although I would gladly sign up to join a program in a heartbeat if they had one. I only say this because I want you to know I get nothing out of promoting their products. I just love it that much!

Canva is a great tool for creating Pinterest images. If you are new, you can use a “Layout” or template to get started and change parts of the template to meet your needs. The “Upload” button makes it easy to add stock photography or you can use one of Canva’s many free images under the “Elements” menu.

Once you finish your design, you simply need to download it and upload it to your blog. You have the option to download pictures in JPEG or PNG format.

JPEGs are smaller files and will take up less room on the server and load more quickly. PNG files are higher resolution and can have transparent sections, but the files are much larger. In most cases, I recommend that you use JPEG files on your blog unless you have an image quality issue by doing so.

There are loads of options for Canva. I highly recommend that you check out some of their tutorials here to get acquainted. Once you are accustomed to it, creating your Pinterest images using Canva is fast and easy.

Viral Pinterest Images

Now that you know what to include on your pins and the tools to do it, you are on your way to creating viral pins that will drastically increase your blog traffic.

Once you find the formula that works best for you, keep using it, but don’t be afraid to experiment. Experimenting with your images is what will help you grow and stay ahead of trends.

If you liked this post, be sure to share it on Pinterest by clicking the Pinterest button below!