Get More Traffic from Pinterest With this One Crucial Tip

Do you want more traffic from Pinterest? Don’t forget to include text overlay on your images to encourage traffic! Text overlays have a higher click-through rate to your site.

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Get more Traffic from Pinterest: Text Overlays

Pinterest is all about images- it is THE visual search engine and a place for users to come with an idea and discover a whole new world of concepts. Pinterest searches and results are based on keywords. Keywording your Pinterest images is the most important step to take to populate in the search feed (and I’ve got a separate post to guide you with keywords here). But, once the results are shown, how do users decide which images get pinned or clicked?

Back in August 2017, I had the opportunity to visit Pinterest headquarters (you can read more about that visit here). While I was there, I was able to discuss best Pinterest practices with a Promoted Pins partner.  She suggested using ‘text overlay’ to encourage engagement or ‘click throughs.’ What are text overlays? Text overlays are when text appears on an image.  They are most beneficial when they include a CTA (call-to action).  Encourage pinners to engage by clicking.  Here’s what Pinterest has to say:

Text overlays designed for clicks lead people to action. Include information that will help a close-to-deciding Pinner see that your brand or product is a fit. Highlight elements of the Pin that aren’t obvious from the image, like a special feature of a product.

An Example of a Text Overlay- it immediately communicates what type of content this pin will lead to.

An Evolving Platform

Like all other platforms, Pinterest evolves and changes it’s ‘look’. As a Pinterest marketing strategist, this means I am constantly on my toes and evaluating my strategies and tweaking as I go along. In the last year, Pinterest has added new features- like hashtags, a new look to the smart feed, and most recently, showing images and titles only of pins.  This is a bit confusing, since Pinterest relies so heavily on keyword descriptions to ‘sort’ pins, but now, more than ever (especially if this formatting lasts), pins images need to communicate with words.  Here is how the current feed looks:

If you had an image without a text overlay, it would be lost in the shuffle of these pins. This image shows a collection of online marketers and as you can see, they know they need text overlays to get ‘click’ throughs. Tell your audience what to do.  Give them an enticing offer, hint that they might be missing out (FOMO), or provide an answer to a pain point in their business or life. Be sincere and make sure the content on the website fits the description. While they are on your site, offer access to more through opt-ins for newsletter sign-ups, link to related content to reduce bounce rates, and ALWAYS provide value.

What about you—Do you use text overlays? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Are you new to Pinterest and want more tips to get started? See my introductory post Getting Started on Pinterest and don’t forget to sign up for my email newsletter here. You’ll receive my FREE Pinterest Start-up Guide for your creative small business where I give easy actionable steps to getting started on Pinterest!

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