Pinterest: Secrets to Better Board Covers
One way to get more people to see your Pinterest boards is to change the board covers occasionally. Changing the cover image is a fairly easy way to get a whole new look, and you can still keep the same content on your boards. Here are some ways I like to make mine look fresh. By the way, if you’re a startup just getting started on Pinterest, you might want to read my Pinterest Tips for Startups.
Change Your Covers Every Month
I like to change board covers every month. You might have a favorite pin that isn’t getting enough traffic. Why not make that pin the cover for your board? While you’re at it, edit the text so that it’s easier to find in search (I love Pinterest’s search, by the way). Give some thought to your board covers–your pins might not go viral, but you’ll be rewarded with more likes and repins.
Use Seasonal Colors
February Pinterest Board Covers
I particularly like using the same color for board covers. For February, for instance, I used green. Since I’m a nature lover, I like to incorporate seasonal changes. Here in California, spring really begins in February, so I chose green for all my covers. Some people love black and white photography, so they always choose black and white. Winter could be white, Easter could be pastel, and so on.
Make Your Covers Tell a Story
What story would you like to tell? If you’re an animal lover, maybe you could have closeups of animal faces on your covers. You could make a visual story that moves from top to bottom, left to right. If you sell books about Python (the language) your covers could include a giant snake, that winds around the board covers, with the head at the top left and the tail at the bottom right. Or how about a simple white line across a black background? Pinterest is a visual medium, so there’s lots of room for creativity. Think of how Google changes up their Google doodles.
Create an Uncluttered Look
How about using similar imagery across all your board covers? A simple image, perhaps a circular theme, would be wonderfully zen. What if you took a simple texture from Flickr’s Creative Commons and wrote the name of your cover on it, and did that for each cover? For instance, Love, Simplicity, Organizing, Play?
Use Your Most Popular Pins
How about choosing your most repinned pins as your board covers to give your fans an idea of what they’ll find on a board? This is like crowd sourcing in a way.
Do You Change Your Board Covers?
What do you want your Pinterest account to convey? Leave me a comment below!
Seasonal colors is a great idea!
Thanks for the actionable advice.
Hi Bridget,
You’re welcome! Actionable works for most people. Thanks for commenting, too.
Carol
This is an excellent tip, Carol. I plan to share this with my remodeling folks, too.
Thank you, Tess! So kind of you to stop by. Remodelers can benefit from pretty board covers, for sure.
Sincerely,
Carol
Thanks for sharing this Carol. I need to get more active on Pinterest since I think it favors my business (images). I’m wondering if it was something I read by you that has me changing my cover colors. Right now it’s orange but as fall approaches I’m going to select another color. I don’t change them every month but it sounds helpful.
Hi Patricia,
Yes, I wrote a blog post about Pinterest board covers, and I change mine fairly often. I might update that post again, since I’ve got some other tricks up my color sleeve. :D
Thanks for the comment!
Carol
I saw a tweet Patricia wrote to you about changing board covers. Intriging, so I searched for you. Love all these tips. Now Im a fan of yours everywhere. Gonna think about your ideas and decide which ones I’ll implement. Has to flatter my jewelry, hmmm
Hi Roslyn,
Jewelry is of course very visual, so having beautiful board covers is critical for jewelry designers. Thanks for taking the effort to find me, read my blog, and implement as well.
You made my day!
Carol
Didn’t think I could do the uniform color scheme but I COULD. Given Autumn has many colors, I had a pin on every board that worked. I’m a visual person, my jewelry is inspired by nature and how things look overall is so important to me. This is what I was missing for my Pinterest boards and didn’t know it until I made the change. When you have a chsance, take a look: http://www.pinterest.com/earthmoondesign/
Hello Roslyn,
You’re right about Autumn having many colors–yellows, golds, metallics, oranges, reds, would all work. Copper would certainly be appropriate. And of course, you don’t have to change them every month–you could change board covers four times a year, for instance, for each season. But changing the board covers gives your followers fresh jewelry to look at, and possibly buy. :D
Thank you again for the follow. And I like what you’ve done with your covers. :D
Sincerely,
Carol
How do you change the cover of all your boards to black and white.? I want to create an uncluttered look.
Hi Missie Rabdau,
First pin a black and white pin that you like and then choose it as a cover by hovering over the middle of the cover, until you see the “change cover” button appear. From there, you can choose the cover you like. Then do that with all your boards. Basically the same as choosing any cover.
A trick I just started using is to save pins to secret boards that I’ll use as covers the next time I update my board covers.
Thanks for the question and let me know how it works out for you!
Carol
Thank you for the advice! I have been seeing more and more business Pinterest account using the same image for all board covers, with the name of the board cover set against a background of their choice, so all board covers look the same.
I thought I would try this out by creating an image that reflects my blog’s theme/logo, but now I am questioning whether having all boards look the same would turn people off from looking at my page.
Is having all board covers look the same, when “the same” means a reflection of your business image, a bad thing?
Thank you for any help.
Yours,
Mariana
Oh, those generic covers are popular on Pinterest, Mariana. I’m not fond of them myself. You might want to test them for a few weeks and see what the result is.
Thank you for stopping by.
Carol