Today I thought it would be fun to share a simple trick that I've incorporated into my blogging workflow for about a year now that has helped my content go viral on Pinterest!
Every social media platform is a little different and Pinterest is all about the tall, vertical images. If you look at your pinterest feed, notice how the vertical images take up much more real-estate and catch your eye much more readily than the horizontal images -- especially those that tastefully incorporate text!
Every social media platform is a little different and Pinterest is all about the tall, vertical images. If you look at your pinterest feed, notice how the vertical images take up much more real-estate and catch your eye much more readily than the horizontal images -- especially those that tastefully incorporate text!
These tall, vertical images with text overlay usually link through to a blog post with helpful content related to the title so they get shared and re-pinned a TON, but notice that you don't see these images in the blog posts themselves. That's because they just aren't ideal for blogging -- they are much too large for a blogging platform. That's where the trick comes in!
There's a simple way to incorporate HIDDEN images into your blog posts that are ideal for pinning. I first learned this tip from my friend Natalie Franke and was SO THRILLED to know this ultimate blogging secret! If you have the Pinterest widget installed on your browser, go ahead and click it now. Notice that a vertical image with text overlay for this post appears among the rest of the images for this post, but you don't see that particular image anywhere in this post. Magic!
Actually, truth be told, it's not magic, it's just a simple snippet of html code. This code allows you to hide an image, but have it appear when a reader clicks the Pinterest button to essentially "bookmark" your content on their Pinterest boards. This is the code:
There's a simple way to incorporate HIDDEN images into your blog posts that are ideal for pinning. I first learned this tip from my friend Natalie Franke and was SO THRILLED to know this ultimate blogging secret! If you have the Pinterest widget installed on your browser, go ahead and click it now. Notice that a vertical image with text overlay for this post appears among the rest of the images for this post, but you don't see that particular image anywhere in this post. Magic!
Actually, truth be told, it's not magic, it's just a simple snippet of html code. This code allows you to hide an image, but have it appear when a reader clicks the Pinterest button to essentially "bookmark" your content on their Pinterest boards. This is the code:
So you will want to simply store this code somewhere handy so you can copy and paste it into the html or code-side of your blog posts. The image url is the url where the image lives on your server or blog. So when you right click and open an image in a separate browser window, this is the URL you will want to paste into the spot in the code that says INSERT IMAGE URL HERE. And then if you want to, you can even write a suggested caption that will appear below the image when a reader goes to pin it, saving them time. They can always customize this later, but the caption you supply will be the default.
Here again, is the code. This time in a version you can copy and paste from:
<div style="display:none;"><img src="INSERT IMAGE URL HERE" alt="INSERT IMAGE CAPTION HERE"/></div>
As mentioned, I've started to create these vertical images optimized for Pinterest for every content-related blog post that I want to encourage my readers to share. Not everyone clicks the Pinterest button to bookmark posts they want to come back to, but when my readers do, they tend to pick the image with text overlay that perfectly describes the post. In addition to using hidden images to make it easier for my readers to share my content, I also use them to share and promote my own content through my Pinterest profile and some group boards I am a part of. So I don't just wait for others to pin my content, I am pro-active in pinning it myself -- using my Pinterest-optimized images -- so that I can jump-start the process of getting it out and noticed on Pinterest's platform. A number of tips posts I have created for brides have gone viral in this way, being shared and re-pinned by thousands.
Here again, is the code. This time in a version you can copy and paste from:
<div style="display:none;"><img src="INSERT IMAGE URL HERE" alt="INSERT IMAGE CAPTION HERE"/></div>
As mentioned, I've started to create these vertical images optimized for Pinterest for every content-related blog post that I want to encourage my readers to share. Not everyone clicks the Pinterest button to bookmark posts they want to come back to, but when my readers do, they tend to pick the image with text overlay that perfectly describes the post. In addition to using hidden images to make it easier for my readers to share my content, I also use them to share and promote my own content through my Pinterest profile and some group boards I am a part of. So I don't just wait for others to pin my content, I am pro-active in pinning it myself -- using my Pinterest-optimized images -- so that I can jump-start the process of getting it out and noticed on Pinterest's platform. A number of tips posts I have created for brides have gone viral in this way, being shared and re-pinned by thousands.
If you found this genius tip helpful, please take a second to pin it to Pinterest AND click here to receive special email access to my most helpful content!