The Pinterest Secret Every Blogger Should Know

One of my favorite parts about spending time with other creative entrepreneurs is how much we are constantly learning from one another. Last month, while photographing for Alexandra from Heart Love Always in Captiva Island, Florida – we started talking about the potential of Pinterest and she shared one of her favorite secrets with me! Yesterday, Alexandra blogged about How to Make Your Blog Posts More Pinnable and it’s a must read for all Creative Entrepreneurs!

Today, I’m recapping how to create hidden images within your blog posts in order to optimize your content for Pinterest, as well as how it can be beneficial to photographers! Lets get started!

While exploring her favorite food blogs, my sweet friend Alexandra quickly realized that many of her favorite bloggers were somehow embedding “hidden” images in each of their posts that only appeared when you clicked a universal pin-it button on their blog or browser. It’s well known that long vertical images do much better on Pinterest, as they take up more visual space in your stream and result in more re-pins, likes, and comments by standing out from the crowd!

Curious and hoping to discover the secret, Alexandra searched for weeks asking everyone she could about these hidden vertical images until she finally found the trick! A simple bit of code on either side of an image allows you to create and hide long vertical images that appear when a reader clicks the pin-it button to bookmark your post! Absolutely genius, right?

Food bloggers have been embedding long collage-style images with multiple photographs and recipes without actually publishing them in the blog post content for years. Why? While these images are absolutely gorgeous on Pinterest, they look sort of ridiculous when shoved into the content of a blog post and often don’t fit with the flow of post. By embedding these images secretly into the code and making them virtually invisible – Bloggers get the best of both worlds >> A beautiful post that looks exactly as they imagined and the Pinterest potential of an image or graphic going viral!

Why I love Pinterest Optimization for Photographers:

As a photographer, it’s always a challenge when a client sends you their Pinterest board of 1000 images from different weddings, photographers, styles, and lighting conditions. It is creatively exhausting to try to recreate dozens of poses and styled details that someone else already dreamt up and executed while maintaining artistic authenticity. However, I genuinely want my couples to share the types of images that inspire them and see which weddings have been their favorites! By encouraging my brides and grooms to virtually “bookmark” their favorite weddings, details, and poses directly from my blog – I can get a better feel for what they love and can get inspired for their big day without being pressured to recreate another photographer’s work.

By making it as easy as possible for current and potential clients to “pin” your photographs to their inspiration boards,you are opening your work up to a much wider audience which increases the ways in which newcomers can find and fall in love with your images. I’ve also had national publications find my images on Pinterest and ask permission to republish them in round-ups like this Welcome Sign Round-up for Brides Magazine.

Creative Ways to Use Pinnable Vertical Images:

–  Long Collages for Weddings to act like a Virtual Bookmark for Current + Potential Clients.
–  Create strategic graphics for Educational Content, Giveaways, and Announcements that don’t distract from your post.
–  Highlight Vendors you LOVE on Editorial Shoots with vendor-specific collages of florals, invitation suites, gowns and more.
–  Show Step-by-Step Instructions for DIY Projects, Recipes (for Food Photographers), and Tips for your Wedding + Portrait Clients.
–  Include a Photography Credit with your company name + website address without the need to watermark individual images.

These graphics can be used in so many creative ways and are incredibly simple to create using Blogstomp and/or Photoshop! Food photographers can include recipes alongside their imagery with each post for increased interaction on Pinterest and start a branded recipes board of all of their work. Portrait photographers can do long collage-style pins of outfits they love to inspire future clients and create boards with different looks based on the season (spring, summer, winter, fall).

Visit Natalie Franke Photography’s profile on Pinterest.

Follow Heart Love Always’s board Blogging & Business Tips for Creative Entrepreneurs on Pinterest.