How to Use Pinterest Idea Pins to Grow Your Business

Hey, friend! I am really excited to teach you all about the power behind Idea Pins to grow your business today. Pinterest started to roll out a new feature called “Story Pins”, now called “Idea Pins”, to the platform for creators back in September 2020.

How to Use Pinterest Idea Pins to Grow Your Business

At first, I initially held off on posting these pins to my account because I felt overwhelmed by the thought of posting to yet another place. How much social media is too much, right? Well, after quickly testing out a few photo and video pins here and there, I’ve discovered a true boost in follows and engagement on my account.

What are Idea Pins?

Idea Pins are a great concept for Pinterest to incorporate short-form videos for all users. Any niche can use Idea Pins to his or her advantage. Food bloggers, fashion bloggers, Etsy shop owners – anyone can and should utilize this new Pinterest feature starting as soon as possible.

Are you afraid to post an Idea Pin to your Pinterest account? Want to make sure you share the best Idea Pin to engage with your followers?

As someone who felt scared to hit publish on an Idea Pin, I am going to share my own personal experience using Pinterest Story Pins to grow my account in terms of monthly views, followers, pin clicks, and more!

How to Make Your Own Idea Pins on Pinterest

Upload your series of photos or video clips to the “Idea Pin” on the Pinterest app. Personally, I use my phone to create new Idea Pins from scratch. These Pinterest pins are similar to TikTok and Instagram Stories, so there’s not much of a learning curve to it.

Create an Idea Pin

To create a new Idea Pin, click on the [+] button in the center of the Pinterest app. Create your new Idea Pin by recording brand new content or uploading content from your camera roll. To start out I suggest uploading content straight from your camera roll to play around with.

You can select photos or videos to add to your new Idea Pin. You have the option to Combine images and videos into a single page or create a separate new page for each. It’s all up to you how you want to share your Idea Pin.

Add Music, Text, Voice Overs to Your Idea Pin

Once you’ve selected a few images or video clips to add to your Idea Pin you can make it stand out with text, music, voice overs, filters, stickers, and more. The text features many script and bold fonts to choose from.

Design Your Pin with Text and Music

As with TikTok and Instagram Reels, you can alter how long your text stays onscreen for. Change the text duration by tapping on your text and clicking “Edit duration”.

The music element adds a whole new dimension to your Idea Pin. I like to search through the top picks for an upbeat and catchy song to add to my Idea Pin. You can forgo these steps entirely, but I think adding text and music makes your pin more interesting.

Don’t Skip Out on the Finishing Touches

Once your Idea Pin has text, music, and a sticker linking to your account (see above), you are ready to sprinkle in some finishing touches. A few important things to include in every single Idea Pin on Pinterest are a relevant title, tags, a board, and even a list where you can include a hyperlink to your site.

How to Link Your Pinterest Account in an Idea Pin

To add your Pinterest handle as a sticker to appear throughout your Idea Pin, click on the “Stickers” option with a box and a star icon. Look in the lower right-hand corner for this option.

Next, click on the @ symbol and type in your Pinterest handle. Your Pinterest handle should pop up and you can change the color of it to appear on your pin. People can click on it and follow you easily that way!

You can see my analytics on Pinterest and how much they’ve increased since I started uploading Idea Pins to my account.

What Related Topics to Tag for Your Idea Pin

I want to share what topics you should tag to bring in even more engagement to your awesome new Idea Pin. For example, let’s take the Idea Pin I created above. I made the title “What To Wear On a Beach Vacation”. The related topics to this specific pin include: summer outfit, summer dress, beach outfit, weekend outfit, casual dinner outfit, etc.

You are able to tag up to 10 related topics so I suggest taking full advantage of this. Tag as many relevant topics as possible to gain more exposure as people search on Pinterest and stumble upon your Idea Pin.

What To Include in Your Notes Section

For all of my pins I want to encourage people to either shop the outfit featured in the pin or visit my LTK account to see more fashion ideas. To make this happen, I figured out a way to include a hyperlink to anything I want someone to click on by adding it to the “Notes” section of my Idea Pin.

In the “Notes” section, I usually include this phrase: Tap COPY LIST and PASTE the LINK into your web browser to shop this look!

When someone comes across any Idea Pin, they can see “Details” at the top. Once clicked, the phrase pops up and underneath you can find my hyperlink to LTK or my blog.

How to Use Pinterest Idea Pins to Grow Your Business

1. Always add a “Notes” section to your new Idea Pin. Inside the notes section I recommend including a hyperlink to a relevant URL to re-direct people to shop your outfit or purchase your products.
2. Pin your Idea Pin to a relevant board. For example, a beach vacation outfit goes to a “Summer Style” board.
3. Post 3-5 new Idea Pins to your Pinterest account every week, at least!
4. Upload a mix of images and video clips to engage your audience to click on these pins.

Why You Need to Start Making Idea Pins ASAP

When Pinterest decided to roll out this new concept on their platform, they wanted people to start using it. Just like when Instagram rolled out Instagram Reels, the people who started creating videos saw a boost in views.

With any new social media concept, you should jump on the trend as soon as possible. Posting as many Pinterest Pins to your profile will draw in more attention and more eyes on your account than ever before.

It’s better to start creating and uploading Idea Pins to your profile than to completely ignore this new feature. I’ve posted over 10-12 pins as of right now and with my account I’ve seen an influx of new followers, pin clicks, and saves. Every single day I wake up to my phone notifications alerting me to new followers and pin interactions.

How to Upload Your TikTok Videos as Idea Pins

An awesome result I am personally seeing from converting one of my TikTok videos into an Idea Pin? Tons of new followers and pin clicks!

In the graphic above I walk you through exactly how to save and upload a TikTok video to Pinterest. Follow the steps below:

1. Save Your TikTok Video as a LIVE PHOTO
2. Save Your LIVE PHOTO as a VIDEO and crop out the TikTok watermark. Edit the video and drag your crop to hide the TikTok watermark.
3. Upload your new saved video into the editing app called InShot
4. Download your original TikTok video (with the watermark and your username) and add this song as “Extracted Audio” into InShot
5. Save this video you made in InShot and upload it to Pinterest as a new Idea Pin