What makes the perfect Pinterest post? That’s the question Curalate wanted to answer, so they researched 500,000 images in a recent study and identified eight specific factors that affect how many views and re-pins your Pinterest pins get. This is important information for brands that want to more effectively leverage the visual marketing opportunities that Pinterest offers.
The infographic below shows all of the details from the study. The highlights include:
Faces or No Faces?
Images that show a person’s face are repinned less frequently than images that don’t include a face. The study reveals that images without faces in them receive 23% more repins than images that include faces.
How Many Colors?
As you might expect, images with multiple colors that are dominant in the image receive 3.25 times more repins than black and white images or images with any single color.
What Color is Best?
Just as colors like yellow and red catch people’s attention offline and on web pages, images that are reddish-orange get approximately twice as many repins as images that are blueish.
Does Lightness Matter?
The answer to this question is a resounding, “Yes.” Curalate found that images with medium lightness received 20 times more repins than images that are very dark.
Is a Specific Saturation Level Important?
The sweet spot appears to be 50% saturation. The study found that images that are 50% saturated get 10 times more repins than desaturated images.
What Should the Background Look Like?
You might think that a single product image with a blank background will get more repins than images with cluttered backgrounds, but the opposite is true based on the data from Curalate. Images with less than 10% background are repinned 2-4 times more than images with more than 40% background (meaning more than 40% of the image is empty background).
How Does Aspect Ratio Affect Repins?
Vertical images should have a 2.3 aspect ratio. Curalate found that vertical images with an aspect ratio between 2.3 and 4.5 get 60% more repins than images that are very tall and skinny.
What Texture Is Best?
Images with a smooth texture are repinned 17 times more than images with a rough texture.
8 Tricks for Repinnapble Pins
Here are the 8 tricks brand marketers can leverage from the study data:
- Avoid images with people’s faces in them.
- Use images with multiple colors.
- Pin more images that are reddish-orange than blue.
- Adjust your images to medium lightness.
- Use images with 50% saturation.
- Avoid blank backgrounds. Instead, keep the background of your images to less than 10%.
- Pin images with visual interest that are high-texture.
- Avoid vertical images that are very skinny.
You can see the complete infographic below and visit the Curalate website using the link above for all of the details.
Images: Talk2Frank, Curalate
Susan Gunelius is the author of 10 marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and technology books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, an award-wining blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com, and her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, TodayShow.com, and more.
She has over 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Today, her clients include large and small companies around the world and household brands like Citigroup, Cox Communications, Intuit, and more. Susan is frequently interviewed about marketing and branding by television, radio, print, and online media organizations, and she speaks about these topics at events around the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
