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3 Things You Might Not Know About Idea Pins
Pinterest’s favorite new feature
Idea Pins (formerly story pins) seem to be constantly changing. Here is some info that will bring you up to speed on Pinterest’s fave new feature. This includes the benefits of idea pins and the glitchy parts of the feature that hopefully will get ironed out soon.
1. Idea Pins can help boost your Pinterest profile
Since they do not link, it’s important to know what idea pins can be used for. Here are some great uses for Idea Pins that can help benefit your Pinterest profile:
- They can help increase your profile’s impressions/overall monthly viewers. They’re getting so much visibility from Pinterest because they prioritize them like Instagram prioritizes reels. Idea Pins can be a much faster way to get impressions and grow your monthly viewers. Monthly viewers is a vanity metric BUT it is a vanity metric bloggers can sometimes use to their advantage. I’ve had clients use their million+ monthly viewer number to get more lucrative brand partnerships. Brands will pay them to post a sponsored Pinterest Idea pin or they’ll include a static pin in their deliverables for a bigger partnership. There are better metrics to focus on when it comes to long-term growth, but I love any way for bloggers to get some quick ROI on Pinterest.
- They can help increase your profile’s engagements and saves. Idea Pins are naturally a very saveable format because they present a full idea and information the user will want to act on or go through again. Pinterest automatically asks the user if they want to watch the idea pin again which helps with engagement, and you can prompt them to save this pin for later in your last slide text for encouraging further action on that pin.
- They can help increase Pinterest follower count. Oftentimes 1 idea pin will lead to increased followers because there is a direct link to the profile on the last slide. For example, in the above image, “@danitheexplorerrr” is a link. Your Pinterest bio also shows up which is a great way to give that user a glimpse into what they’ll get from following you.
2. There are big differences for Idea Pins on desktop vs. on your smart phone
I typically publish on desktop because our clients photos, videos, blog content and more all live on a Google drive, their website, my desktop, etc. It also allows me to type in hex codes for the font colors and other details that keep the pins more on-brand. The only time I use mobile for clients is when I’m linking to products – which is a feature only available to mobile devices.
But if you’re publishing for yourself, I would do what’s easier a majority of the time unless you’re e-commerce or have a lot of links to Pinterest’s affiliate partners that you could use. In that case mobile is the best way to publish.
Also, if you plan to reuse content (like reels or TikTok’s and images) desktop works fine. If you plan to create content on Pinterest, the mobile device has more features for that.
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3. Product linking is still wonky/only worth it if it’s your own products or if you are active with ShopStyle, Rakuten or Amazon
Like any new feature on a platform, it will take some time to work out the kinks with product linking in Idea Pins. Sometimes it just won’t accept a link or it can take awhile to load the images from that link.
One of the major downsides, for me, is that they only partner with a few affiliate link programs – Shopstyle and Amazon are the only ones that about 1/3 of our clients use on a regular basis. Most clients mainly use RewardStyle which is not currently a partner with Pinterest.
In conclusion, Idea Pins have lots of little things to learn, but the important thing is just try them out. Add them to your weekly Pinning routine, and you’ll start to see patterns in what performs best for your content.
