How to Create Animated Pins

How to Create Animated Pins

There are four types of pins that you can create and share on Pinterest – static, animated, video, and story pins.   A static pin is what we’ve been creating since we started sharing our creations on Pinterest but now we’re seeing more and more animated, video, and story pins.  We already have tutorial on how to create video pins and story pins, so today we’re going to share the easiest way to create animated pins.

Creating and sharing animated pins is a sure way to improve your reach on Pinterest and will ultimately help your account grow.  We can guarantee an increase in your Pinterest impressions if you start adding animated pins to your boards today!

What are Animated Pins?

Posting videos to your Pinterest account is very important right now. Pinterest wants to show off your videos and makes them more of a priority than static image.  But this can be an issue for some of us who don’t have a lot of videos to share. The easiest way to make a video pin is to turn a static image into a short video using animated design elements.  Animated pins are great as Pinterest is looking at these like video pins. So they are getting more weight straight out the gate like a video pin does.

How to Create Animated Pins

If you aren’t familiar with animated pins, we’re here to help!  And, guess what?  They are so easy to make.  I’m going to share how we make animated pins quickly using Canva.  I also have a list words to use when searching for animated elements.

1. Create a new design.  We recommend creating pins that are 1000 x 1500 or 1000 x 2000 px.
2. Next, upload your image or use an image from their library.
3. Add text and your URL if you want.
4. Now it’s time to add animated elements.  Select “Elements” and click on the 3 dots next to the search box at the top.  Type an element that you would like to add to your design and select animated.  Click “Apple Filters” and Canva will only show you animated elements that match your search word.

Animated Elements to Search For:

Knowing what to search for is the hardest of creating an animated pin so we’re sharing our favorite search words.  When you search for the following terms, you’ll find a great selection of animated elements to use in your animated pins.

• Arrow – When you search “arrow” in Canva and select animated, lots of fun arrows show up.  This is a great way to emphasize something specific in the picture.
• Line – When you search “line” in Canva, you’ll see a lot of ways to underline text and highlight a specific part of your image.
• Star – Another fun animated element to add to images is a star.
• Square, Rectangle, and Circle –  Searching a specific shape in animated elements is a great way to draw attention to the title of your pin.  This is a great for round up posts, informational posts and more.
• Clipart – It’s also fun to add animated clipart to images.  Add an animated gift to a gift guide, snowflake to a winter fashion trend, and so much more!
• More animated elements to search – highlight, attention, promote, sparks, and presentation.  If you want to search through all the animated elements, search “animated”.

Tips for Created Animated Pins

We have a few tips for creating animated pins. First, all video pins need to be at least 4 seconds long so animated pins also need to be at least 4 seconds long. And, just like video images, animated pins are not as easily shared. You cannot load these to tribes, others cannot save them through tailwind to share to their followers so you need to add a healthy balance of static pins and animated pins to your account.

Do not add animation to the actual image or text that you add to your design.  This will cause the images to have a blank screen when added to Pinterest before the animation begins.

Recommendation For Success with Pin Creation

• Create fresh new pins daily and share them regularly.
• Create one story pin for each post you share on your website.  Story pins can also be a  collection of recipes, tutorial ideas, shop listings, etc.
• Create one animated pin for each blog post.
• Pin a variety of pins throughout the week to keep your website’s board filled with daily new content.  Try not to pin everything all at once.  Use the scheduler in Pinterest to schedule your pins out.

Creating animated pins and sharing them on Pinterest is a great alternative to video pins especially when you don’t have very many video pins. It’s also a fun way to get more creative with your pins.  If the thought of making animated pins is already stressing you out, please contact us.  We are here to help and we have a fantastic team of pin creators who love to create pins that stand out on Pinterest.