How to create clickworthy Pinterest pins in Canva

Canva tutorial for beginners

Pinterest is rapidly growing in popularity; people love to spend time on the platform for inspiration, to shop, and for business owners, it is a great platform to earn money. However, now the platform is growing so fast, this also means there are more businesses on it to sell their products as well. The competition is fierce, and therefore, it is getting harder and harder every day for your pins to be noticed by Pinterest users.

Apart from that, Pinterest has significantly raised the bar for its business users in 2020. In the past, it was perfectly fine to pin the same pin 10 times to different boards. Unfortunately for us content creators, those times are in the past now. Today, Pinterest expects its content creators to be more creative and original.

For example, Pinterest wants you to create more, but more importantly, to create more “fresh” content. Simply put this means you should create a lot more pins and repin a lot less.

But, who on Earth has time for that?

Shouldn’t Pinterest be just a promotional tool and not your business as such? Right!? The solution: Learn how to make many pins in a short amount of time, so that you can still grow on the platform, receive more clicks, and have time left to focus on your business too!

Disclaimer: This blog post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission to fund my coffee-drinking habit if you use these links to make a purchase. You will not be charged extra. So it’s a win for everyone! Please note that I won’t link any products I don’t believe in or don’t resonate with my blog site. Thank you!

How do you still grow on Pinterest without having to spend all day on the platform?

In this post, you find an easy-to-follow Canva tutorial in which I show you how to quickly create pins in Canva that are attractive and click-worthy too. And to help you create your pins with even more ease, you’ll find a link at the bottom of this post to 10 free Canva Pinterest pin templates that I’ve created especially for you to get you started right away!

By the way, for this post, it’s important you’re already active on Pinterest and have a basic understanding of how the platform works.

Are you still new to Pinterest marketing? Then I recommend you to read my other posts about Pinterest marketing first. Before you start creating stunning pins, you should know how Pinterest works and how to implement Pinterest SEO. Without this knowledge, you can make as many beautiful pins as you want, but they won’t convert! And it will be a waste of your precious time!

Read these posts first if you’re new to Pinterest marketing:

• Set up a Pinterest Business account the right way
• How to organize and optimize your Pinterest boards

Pinterest’s algorithm

Before we get started with creating pins, I want to give you a brief explanation of Pinterest’s algorithm. So what is it actually and why is it so important to take it into account when you’re creating Pinterest pins?

The algorithm determines which pin will be shown to other users when it will be shown, how often, and where it will be displayed on Pinterest. So once you publish a pin to the platform, your pin will be indexed and published based on the algorithm’s calculation.

The more points you score, the more often your pin will be shown and that is obviously the goal when you’re a Pinterest pinner. But, it’s hard to rank high in the search results with so many new pins published on the platform literally every second of the day! 🙁

Fortunately, there are tactics you can use in order to make the algorithm work for you! This way you’ll make sure your pins will be shown often to your target audience on Pinterest. Here are a few things that Pinterest said they consider to be of great importance for the platform:

• Focus on creating fresh pins and repin less. New pins get more priority on Pinterest rather than repins, and they are better distributed.
• Be present and active on the platform by pinning (mostly) manually (instead of using a third-party scheduler, such as Tailwind), following other users, and commenting on their pins.
• Don’t repin the same pin too often. I personally stick to 2-3 repins per pin max.
• Remember, Pinterest is a social platform as well, so don’t forget to pin other people’s pins to your boards too every now and then.
• Be creative and create original, eye-catching pins.
• Only pin to relevant boards with keywords that match the keywords of your pins (SEO).

Also read: how to browse Pinterest without an account

What are fresh pins?

Fresh pins are pins that:

• Have a different (background) image
• And/or have a different font for the text overlay, possibly with other elements on it.

By the way, you are allowed to create multiple pins for 1 URL. So you don’t have to write new blogs daily, which you can then share only once. That is not what is meant by fresh pins. You may pin the same URL multiple times per blog post, but I advise you not to pin each URL more than once a day. Got enough content? Even better! Then stick to once a week for each URL. Less is more!

Create an account on Canva

Before you get started with this Canva tutorial, you need to open an account on Canva first. Canva is a super easy design tool that I use to create ALL my Pinterest Pins, all my Instagram posts, and all the designs on my website.

I use Canva for all sorts of things, really, and as far as I’m concerned Canva is the invention of this century.

So is this some kind of super bad sales pitch you’re throwing at me here, Angie? 😉

Absolutely not!

I used to be using Photoshop for all my designs. Fantastic software, but when you are active on social media you need to be visible. And to be visible you need to show your content very often, so you need to be able to create great posts quickly. And designing with Photoshop is great and all… but it isn’t fast! Photoshop is a profession in itself and as a blogger or entrepreneur, you simply don’t have the time to have another profession on top of that.

And, yes… exactly… that’s where Canva comes in because it almost creates the designs for you! And it’s a whole lot cheaper, too.

For now, you can get started with a free Canva account. This free version comes with a huge range of possibilities and this allows you to find out if Canva works for you. There is a paid version of Canva, but chances are that the free version will be sufficient for you.

If you feel the free version isn’t enough for you, and you’d like to use the premium features, you can subscribe to Canva Pro for $ 12.99 monthly!

Trust me, it’s well worth the price!

Creating a Pinterest Pin

Perfect, you know have some basic Pinterest knowledge, and you have an account on Canva, it’s time to start creating some stunning pins!

Step 1: Create a new design in Canva

Click on Create a design in Canva in the upper right corner, type “Pinterest” in the search bar and click on Pinterest-pin. This is the standard template for a Pinterest pin, so you can be sure you’re designing your pin on the correct size for Pinterest: 1000px by 1500px. This is the format Pinterest wants its users to pin on, and this format gets priority over other pins on the platform.

Size 1000px by 2000px works also well for me and the accounts I’m working on, by the way! Just make sure your pins are not smaller or bigger than these dimensions. Pins that are too big, won’t be shown fully and smaller pins won’t get indexed well.

You’re now in the design interface where you’re going to create your Pinterest design.

On the left, you see a column with Pinterest templates. These templates are very handy, but I do recommend you to change them a bit in terms of shape and layout. These templates are used very often on Pinterest and your pin may be seen as less original because of this. Pinterest likes originality! Just use these templates as a foundation for your pin, if you plan on using them, but don’t forget to throw in some of your own creativity as well.

For this tutorial, I won’t be using a template, so I can show you step-by-step how to create a completely new pin from scratch.

Step 2: Set a background image

You can start by setting an image of your product or a stock photo from Canva as the background of your pin. I’m using an image from Canva’s library for this example. You can find these images by going to the Photos section in the menu on the left. Search for an image that fits the topic of your pin in the search bar.

Suppose you have published a blog about “how to start a blog”, you can enter the search query “desktop” here.

Choose the image you want to use for your pin and drag it to your pin:

Want to use a more original background image for your pin? (Pinterest rewards original content!) Then consider using stock photos. Stock photos are photos taken by professionals, which you may then use in your designs and pins.

Do you want to learn more about stock photos and why it can be smart to use them for your pins? Then please also read through my extensive post on stock photos as well.

Pro Tip: Use only part of a stock photo as the background of a pin by zooming in on the image. This way you can use the same stock photo multiple times!

Step 3: Add a text-overlay

When your pin comes up in the search results of a Pinterest user, you have a few seconds to grab their attention and make it clear what your pin is about.

Just a picture as a pin isn’t going to cut it, because that way users think it is just a nice picture to save. You have something to say or sell! Make it clear with a text overlay in which you mention the title of your blog post, and/or the product/service you’re selling.

Step 1. Click on Text and add the text you want to place on your pin.

Step 2. Click on Add a heading

Step 3. Choose your font and font size

As you can see, the text is not readable like this. If the text is not easy to read, this will be at the cost of the success of your pin. Therefore, make sure the text can be easily read, and keep it as short, concise, and catchy as possible. And if your brand identity allows it to create a bit of a playful design, it’s also a good idea to use different fonts, colors, and font sizes too.

Do think carefully about what you want to convey with your pin and don’t go with all kinds of cheerful colors and fonts if it doesn’t fit your product or post.

Tip: Check out your competition to see how they design their Pinterest pins! And no… I don’t mean you should copy their pins, on the contrary. But you can use it as a source of inspiration. They have been doing this for a long time and they know what type of design best suits your target audience.

By the way, you can save your brand colors and fonts in a brand kit on Canva:

• Ga to Home
• Click on Brand Kit
• Create a palette for your brand colors and fonts!

Awesome, right?!

You can also add your logo here!

Tip: Creating a brand kit on Canva helps to create a cohesive collection of pins!

Step 4: Add elements

As you can see in the example below, I played with the colors of the text, the size of the text, and the fonts to make the pin more playful. 🙂

I also added a square element behind the text, to make the text better readable.

You can do this by going to Elements and clicking on the square in the Shapes section. You can also add a little transparency and a different color to the element if you like.

And as an extra effect, I added an element of a girl with a laptop as well. Adding relevant elements can also help your pins go viral!

Like this:

Step 5: Brand that pin!

The last step of your pin design, and yet one of the most important, is the branding of your pin. Make sure your logo or website is on your Pin! This way your pins are instantly recognizable and you also prevent others from stealing your pins. Unfortunately, this happens quite often, so brand it, girl!

You can add the URL of your website really easily by creating a new text field, typing in your URL, and dragging it to the right place. Voila!

In order to be able to add your logo to the design, you’ll need to upload your logo to Canva first. Go to Uploads, click on Upload Media and choose your logo. Then you can resize it and place it where you want.

And then… the final result!

Earlier in this post, I talked about creating multiple fresh pins for one blog post, remember? To give you an idea of how to create multiple pins for one post, I’ll show you an example of 3 pins that I’ve made that all lead to this particular blog post I’m writing today:

You see? 3 different – fresh – pins, with just a few slight changes in between!

I made a few slight changes after creating each pin. I have slightly altered the text, the font, the image, and the colors on the pin. This way you can create multiple fresh pins in no time! 🙂

Step 6: Pinning on Pinterest

Your pins are Pinterest-ready! Time to share your pin with other pinners!

• Open Pinterest and click on Create at the top menu.
• Upload your new pin
• Add your title (add keywords)
• Open Pinterest and click on Create
• Upload your new pin
• Add your title (add keywords again)
• Add a description (add keywords and turn those keywords into a readable text)
• Add an Alt Text. This text is for those who are visually impaired. When they click on your pin, this text is read aloud to improve the user experience for them. Therefore, write here what can be found on your pin
• Enter the URL to the corresponding blog post
• Choose a relevant board to pin this pin to
• Publish!

Bonus tip!

When you enter the word Sticker in the search bar of the Elements tab, you will be shown moving elements. When you add these to your pin, you automatically create a video pin.

And Pinterest LOVES video pins!

Another way to do this is by applying an effect to your pin using the Animate option.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully, this Canva Pinterest Pin tutorial has been helpful to you! From now on you know how to create gorgeously, and click-worthy pins that will convert! :))

I would love to see your results, so please send me the link to the pins you’ve created after reading this tutorial!

And don’t forget to share this post with your followers on Pinterest!

Angie