Pinterest Pin Types Explained: When to Use Each One

Whether you're brand new to Pinterest or you've been at it for years, understanding what each pin type is built for changes how your content reaches people. The right format in the right place is how you get in front of the right audience and turn that into traffic, leads, and sales.

So let's go through them, and when to reach for each.

What Happened to Idea Pins

Pinterest has been focusing more on the ads side of the business, and I think that drove the shift with idea pins. They took them away as an organic format you can create.

An idea pin was a short video or slideshow. My agency used them to give people more information before they clicked through. Now it's ad-only.

Here's the caveat, and it's one of the biggest things I teach. If you use a scheduler like Planoly or Tailwind, watch for a checkbox when you upload a static pin. It's usually called a simplified pin, and that's the old idea pin format wearing a new name.

Uncheck that box. The traffic, the leads, and the sales tend to stay away from these, because my mentor and I have gone through how the backend classifies a simplified pin, and it lands in a different bucket than a standard pin.

Pinterest Pin Types Explained: When to Use Each One: Spotify

Pinterest Pin Types Explained: When to Use Each One: Apple

Standard Image Pins

Plainly from Pinterest, an image pin is a featured single image.

You have two ways to make one. Build it in Canva or PicMonkey and upload it, or go into Pinterest, upload a background image, and add text on top in their creation tool.

Here's why standard pins matter. From what we've seen in analytics and backend code, they perform better for content where you want traffic moving toward leads and sales. The platform trained users on this: you see a pin, you click through. That behavior is already built in.

Video Pins

Video pins are moving, structured pins, and they're a gift if you're making TikToks, reels, YouTube videos, or podcasts.

I say moving because there's more range than people expect. Take an audio file and let the waveform move while people listen. Build a picture slideshow, layer multiple images, or make a faceless video pin.

Visibility on video runs strong. The click-through is where it gets tricky, since people have to find the button, and Pinterest puts that URL in different spots depending on the device. So I mix formats based on the job each pin needs to do.

Yes, You Can Pin the Same Content More Than Once

This comes up constantly, and the answer is yes. For every piece of content, whether it's awareness, consideration, or purchase, you want multiple pins in multiple formats.

Say you have a podcast with video, audio, and a blog post.

So you make a static pin for the blog post. A video pin from a snippet of the podcast video. A moving pin with the audio running behind an image. Each of those three cycles to multiple relevant boards, with your interval spacing in between, and then you move to the next format and do it again.

That's how understanding pin types turns your already-produced content into fresh content on the platform.

Match the Pin Type to the Funnel Stage

Your awareness content is mostly blog posts, podcasts, YouTube videos, and social posts. Consideration content is lead magnets, case studies, reviews, and comparisons. Purchase content is paid products and services, trial offers, and landing pages.

For awareness, I want video and standard image pins. For consideration, standard pins often work better on their own, because you're bringing someone straight through to sign up and hand over their email. For products and services, I usually do both, especially with physical products, where you have testimonials, behind-the-scenes footage, and product videos alongside your images.

Sizes, Rich Pins, and Product Pins

Pinterest has square pins. I stay away from them. The platform has always been about that longer vertical image, the 2:3 ratio, so stick around 1,000 to 1,500 pixels. You can go longer, up to 1,000 by 2,100. Most people I see land between 1,000 x 1,500 and 1,000 x 1,800,.

Rich pins automatically sync information from your website: recipes, articles, products. You get current pricing, availability, cook time, ingredients,.

Product pins come from a connected catalog. Hook up Shopify and your product images sync over. Set up the catalog and you can apply for verified merchant status, which helps Pinterest share those products wider.

Final Pin Drop

Pinterest hasn't changed so much organically that you can't monetize it. If your growth or leads or sales are slower than you hoped, stay with it. Real results are still very much available here.

Pick one piece of content you already have. Make a standard pin and a video pin from it, and send each to the boards where it genuinely belongs.

📌 Book a PinChat → laurarike.com/pinchat