If you are using Pinterest you will know how important great images in your blog and web pages are to encourage sharing of your content by visitors to your site. This is sometimes a challenge for those of us who are offering services rather than beautiful products.
But even if you have great visual content to share, I came across a challenge at a recent Pinterest training programme I was running where the course delegates were in the fashion and beauty business. They post great images to their blog, mostly when on location, and often have only their smart phone which they use to create and share content.
Here are two recommendations that I provided for them which I hope you will find helpful if you have limited design skills and only a smart phone. For both of these ideas I am suggesting you invest in the iPhone app Diptic.
1. Include information on your blog post images – you may not wish to do this for all the images that you post in your articles, however on one of the images in your blog post I recommend that you describe what your article is about and if this image is then posted to Pinterest it will increate the possibility that people will click back through to your website to find out more information.
You can see this in action with the image that I have posted at the top of this article.
Ideally, make this a square image so that you can also use it when posting images to your Facebook Page.
2. Consider creating longer images that work especially well on Pinterest – taking a selection of the images you are including in your blog post and develop a longer graphic, or even an instructographic, including guidance and tips on how to achieve the issue you are covering in your article.
In the case of the people I was teaching from the fashion sector this could be how to create a certain look or providing fashion tips, both hot topics on Pinterest.
An example can be seen here where I created an instructographic on how to create a Rainbow Cake for St Patricks Day.
Or this example of a longer graphic that I created showing how Pinterest inspired a school project for one of my daughters who had to make an Easter bonnet with a difference.
These instructographics were created using desk top software but what can you do when you only have your iPhone?
This is where Diptic is a very useful application.
I have countless apps on my iPhone to use for visual content marketing and of course for fun, and had invested in Diptic some time ago but was no longer using it. Then I discovered they have released a new feature which means that you can now:
– create collages
– change the aspect of the collage so that they can be tall narrow images (perfect for Pinterest instructographics)
– add text to your images using many different fonts
– add a frame to your images
– change the angle of the frames (in the example below you can see how I made a V shape at the top of the instructographic I created in just a couple of minutes using Diptic)
– use the new feature where you can fill empty frames in your collage with solid colour and of course add text over it as you can see in this example below.
Two Features I Would Like To See In A Future Release of Diptic
I do think Diptic is worth the investment of US$0.99 and it is also available in the Google Play store for Android phones. However there are two developments I would love to see – I have been in contact with the developers about these ideas so here is hoping!
1. It would be great to install your own fonts – the selection is extensive on Diptic but if you want to use a custom font to match your online visual identity that would be terrific.
2. Secondly it would be great to have numerous font fields to use to create your instructographic – at the moment there is only one font field. A work around at the moment would be to create an image with a solid colour, add text, save the image and then import those instructional images back into your collage.
Of course it would be great to have a designer to assist in creating stunning instuctographics – but we don’t always have the resource to do that for every article we craft, and as in the case of this weeks workshop delegates, sometimes all we have to hand is a smart phone.
I would love to know what your favourite apps are to create great images for your Pinterest marketing and blog articles when you only have a smartphone to hand. And if you create some instructographics using Diptic or another smartphone app please do share them with me over on Facebook.
And don’t forget if you would like to see the visual content that I am bookmarking over on Pinterest you can follow me there.
