3 Fundamentals to Creating an Effective Pinterest Board

by | Apr 3, 2017 | Strategy

If you’re in the process of branding your business with a graphic designer, most likely one of your tasks is to create a private Pinterest board for the project.

Far from being a frivolous, tangential step, the Pinterest board you create is actually super helpful to the branding process for your business.

That’s because your Pinterest board is a visual depiction of the ideas and concepts in your head. It communicates the colors, feelings, shapes, emotions, setting, metaphors, and other concepts that are notoriously difficult to communicate with words alone.

The cliché, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” feels apropos to this discussion.

Your Pinterest board full of artistic black and white imagery or playful colorful scenes can tell your designer more than your mission statement can.

If you’ve ever made a half-hearted attempt to create a Pinterest board or you are dreading that task on your to-do list or you’ve ever received branding mock-ups that didn’t align with your vision, this post is for you.

 

Set Up an Environment for Creativity and Joy

This might be obvious, but you may need to hear it: let this process be fun.

Your job with creating a Pinterest board for your designer is to find imagery that corresponds with your vision for your business. How amazing is that?

There are definitely worse things in the world. Like balancing your checkbook. Or cleaning underneath your couch.

Set up the environment that supports this intention for creativity and joy.

Put on your favorite record or Spotify playlist, light a candle or two, have your favorite beverage nearby. Do whatever you need to do to orient your mind and body that it’s time for your imagination to take the lead.

 

3 Fundamentals to Creating an Effective Pinterest Board

It’s common for designers to receive Pinterest boards from their clients that are unfocused. “Why should that matter?” you may be thinking. “The designer is the expert I’m paying to figure this out for me.”

Yes, and it’s your vision I’m bringing to life. The most effective and powerful branding comes from a strong client vision paired with design expertise.

Think of your Pinterest board as your business vision.

To support you in creating the most effective board possible for your designer, here are three fundamental tips for the process.

 

Quality over quantity

Every Pin should communicate the overall, tone, style, look, and feel of your brand. Don’t just Pin an image because you loooooove it, Pin it because you feel a super strong connection to it with your brand. Although this should be a light-hearted exercise full of joy, it should still be very intentional. Fewer images can truly be more useful than too many that detract from your focused goals.

 

Use the description

Communicate to your designer exactly why you are including this particular image on your board. Is it the color, font, vibe, object, something else? Tell me why you chose each image and how it reflects your vibe. To really get aligned with your designer, adding a personal description to each Pin is essential. Just a few words about why you’re Pinning the image helps!

 

Curate before sending

Once you’ve added all the images you desire, set aside a block of time to go through the entire board. Your goal is to delete any Pins that don’t fit with your overall vision or that stand out from the rest in a bad way or that you no longer love.

Truthfully, receiving and reviewing Pinterest boards from my clients is one of my favorite parts of the branding process—and I hope after this post it will be one of yours, too!

Bringing a brand to life is just that—a process—and creating a strong vision through the imagery on your Pinterest board is significant step in creating branding that meets your big ideas for your business.

If you’ve been secretly Pinning for a brand update on a private board or need the bold branding that matches your big vision for your business, I’m for hire.

Or we could be Pinterest friends.