How to use Pinterest for business: setup to first pins

Updated October 22, 2026 · 7 min read

Step 1: get the account right

Create a free business account, or convert the personal account you already have. The exact menu steps are in Pinterest business account: setup and what you get. Then do three things before anything else:

1. Claim your website. Pins saved from it will show your profile picture, and Analytics will show you how often your content is saved.
2. Add rich pin markup if your site has products, articles or recipes. Open Graph or Schema.org tags in the page head are all Pinterest needs, and your shop or blog platform may add them already.
3. Write the profile for search. Display name with your topic ("Oak & Thread | Handmade Linen Clothing"), a bio under 160 characters with the main keyword in the first sentence, a clear profile picture.

Everything on the account inherits from this. A profile that says what you do helps Pinterest understand every board and pin you add later.

Step 2: find the words your customers use

Pinterest searches are short, plain phrases: "linen dress summer", "kitchen pantry organization", "wedding photographer poses". Before you name a board or write a pin, build a list of those phrases for your business.

Three sources, in order of effort:

• The Pinterest search bar. Type your main topic and read the suggestions. Press enter and look at the colored tiles under the search box. Both are real searches.
• Pinterest Trends (trends.pinterest.com, business account needed). It shows which phrases are rising in your region and when they peak each year. The numbers are relative, with each graph's peak set to 100, so use it to compare terms, not to count searches.
• Our keyword tool. Enter a seed phrase and get related searches with monthly volume, so you can see which of your ideas has demand and which is a phrase only you would use.

Aim for twenty to forty phrases and sort them into themes. Each theme will become a board. Each phrase will become a pin, a page, or both. More on choosing them in Pinterest keywords.

Step 3: build boards people would search for

Boards are the folders that tell Pinterest what your pins are about. A board's name and description attach to every pin on it, so name them for the search, not for yourself.

Give each board a description of two or three sentences that uses the keyword and a couple of close variants in normal language. Start with eight to twelve boards. If you have personal boards (recipes you want to try, a holiday you are planning), make them private so the public profile stays on topic. Pinterest boards covers creating, sectioning, archiving and merging; board names and descriptions covers the wording.

Step 4: make your first ten pins

Pick the ten pages on your site you most want visitors on. Product pages that sell well, your best articles, the service page people book from. For each one, make a pin.

A pin that works has five parts:

1. A 2:3 vertical image, 1000 by 1500 pixels. Other ratios get cropped in the feed. Pinterest's own creative guidance also says to put a small logo on every pin, away from the lower-right corner where its product icons sit.
2. A short text overlay that a phone screen can read: what the page is, in five to eight words.
3. A title of up to 100 characters with the main keyword at the start.
4. A description of up to 800 characters that uses the keyword in the first sentence, then says what the person gets when they click.
5. Alt text and tagged topics. Alt text describes the image literally. Tagged topics are chosen from Pinterest's own interest list, up to ten, and replaced hashtags.

Publish two or three a day rather than all ten at once, and save each to the most relevant board first. The first board a pin lands on carries the most weight for what Pinterest thinks the pin is about.

Then make a second pin for each of the same ten pages with a different image and title. Pinterest prefers fresh pins to re-saves, and the second image often outperforms the first. The full field-by-field guide is Pin titles and descriptions.

Step 5: a weekly routine you can keep

Pinterest does not publish a pin-frequency number, and the accounts that grow are the ones that keep going for months. Pick a pace you can hold. This routine takes about two to three hours a week.

Scheduling tools are fine as long as you approve every pin yourself. Anything that saves or re-pins automatically, or loops old pins, is against Pinterest's developer guidelines and puts the account at risk.

Step 6: read the numbers that matter

Open Analytics from the hamburger menu on the web, or the chart icon in the app. Two numbers tell you whether Pinterest is working for your business:

• Outbound clicks: Pinterest's definition is "the number of times people perform actions that lead them to a destination off Pinterest." These are visitors.
• Saves: "the number of times people saved your Pin to a board." These are people who want to come back, and saves also push the pin to more searches.

Impressions and the monthly views number on your profile tell you Pinterest is showing the pins, not that anyone is acting on them. A pin with high impressions and no clicks is being shown for searches it does not satisfy, so rewrite its title or move it to a better board. The full walk-through is in Pinterest analytics explained.

Three examples

A shop: handmade linen clothing

• Boards: Linen Dresses, Linen Summer Outfits, Sustainable Fashion Basics, Capsule Wardrobe Ideas, Linen Care Tips, plus a seasonal board such as Fall Linen Layers.
• First pins: one per best-selling product, linking to the product page, with the product rich pin pulling price and availability. Titles like "Linen midi dress with pockets, made to order" rather than the product's SKU name.
• Weekly: two new product pins plus three lifestyle pins (an outfit, a care tip, a styling idea) that link to collection pages. Lifestyle searches are far larger than product searches, and they bring people who have not heard of you.
• Later: add a catalog so products can appear as shopping pins, and look at the Verified Merchant Program once the site and account are old enough to qualify.

A service business: a wedding photographer

• Boards: Outdoor Wedding Photography, Wedding Photo Poses, Engagement Session Outfits, Small Wedding Ideas, Wedding Timeline Tips, and one board per venue type you shoot.
• First pins: your best gallery images, each linking to a blog post about that wedding or to the inquiry page. The title carries the search: "Golden hour couple poses for a barn wedding."
• Weekly: a few pins from each new shoot, plus one planning pin (a timeline, a checklist) linking to a page with a contact form. Planning searches happen months before the booking.
• Why it works: couples plan weddings on Pinterest for a year. Your pins are found at the moment they are choosing a photographer, and a pin from this year's season still brings inquiries next year.

A blog: budget family meals

• Boards: Easy Weeknight Dinners, Budget Meal Prep, Kid Friendly Recipes, Slow Cooker Meals, Freezer Meals, Grocery Budget Tips.
• First pins: two pins per top recipe, with recipe rich pins pulling ingredients and cook time. One pin with the finished dish, one with a step or an ingredient flat lay.
• Weekly: pins for each new post, plus fresh pins for the five posts that get the most outbound clicks. Check Trends for next month's seasonal dishes and pin them early.
• Revenue: traffic first, then affiliate links where they fit. Pinterest allows them with a clear disclosure; see Pinterest affiliate marketing.

Mistakes to avoid in the first ninety days

• Boards with mixed topics. One board for everything tells Pinterest nothing. Split it.
• Pinning to a home page. Link to the specific product, post or service page the pin shows.
• Same description on every pin. Pinterest's spam rules call out repetitive text, and the November 2026 community guidelines tighten that further.
• Stopping at week four. The quiet first month is normal. Pins keep gaining impressions for months.
• Chasing followers. Followers help a little; search brings most of the traffic. Spend the time on keywords and fresh pins.

Where to go next

• Pinterest marketing: the complete guide
• Pinterest SEO: how search works
• How to grow a Pinterest account
• Pinterest ads: objectives, formats and what they cost