Pinterest for app marketing: pins that keep getting found

Pinterest for app marketing works best for apps that help people plan, cook, train, decorate, dress or study, because Pinterest is where people search for ideas before they act. Make tall vertical pins, write keyword-rich titles and descriptions in the words people search for, group pins on clearly named boards and link each one straight to your App Store page. Pins can keep getting found long after you post them, so steady posting adds up.

Which apps fit Pinterest?

Pinterest behaves more like a visual search engine than a social feed. People arrive with an intention: dinners for the week, a home workout plan, a small balcony garden, a revision schedule for exams. If your app helps with something people plan ahead, it probably fits.

Every pin idea in the table assumes the app's listing supports it. Pin what your app really does.

Pinterest is a weaker fit for utilities (a VPN, a file converter), most games, dating apps and B2B tools. People rarely plan those on a board.

A quick test: type the problem your app solves into Pinterest search and look at the results and the autocomplete suggestions. If you see guides, checklists and plans in the style you could make, your audience is searching there.

What makes a good pin for an app?

A pin is a tall image or video with a title, a description and a link. The best app pins look like a useful idea someone wants to save, not an ad. People save pins to come back to later, so give them something worth coming back to.

Size and layout

• Vertical, not square. Pinterest has long recommended a 2:3 ratio (for example 1000×1500 pixels). 3:4 is a close match and displays well. Very tall images may be cut short in the grid, so check how yours looks in the feed.
• A headline on the image. Five to eight words, large enough to read on a phone, saying what the pin is: "Weeknight dinners for the whole week."
• Show the result. A planned week, a tidy shelf, a finished routine. Add a real screenshot of the app where it helps explain the idea.
• Brand lightly. A small icon or app name near the bottom is fine. Keep the headline about the idea, not the app.

Video pins

Pinterest supports video pins, and vertical video fits the grid well. Your 9:16 short can work as a pin if its first frames make sense without sound and show the idea quickly. Check Pinterest's upload screen for current video specs before you post.

Turning a carousel into several pins

You don't have to post a carousel as one unit. A five-slide carousel often holds two or three strong pins: the hook slide, the slide that shows the solution with a screenshot, and sometimes a slide with a useful list. Post each as its own pin with its own title and description, all linking to the same App Store page.

How to write pin titles and descriptions people find

Pinterest search reads your pin titles, descriptions and board names. That makes the words matter more than on most networks: write in the phrases people type, not in your brand voice.

1. Search your problem on Pinterest and note the autocomplete suggestions. Those are the phrases people use.
2. Pick one main keyword phrase per pin, such as "easy weeknight dinners" or "beginner home workout".
3. Put it at the start of the title. At the time of writing, titles can run to about 100 characters, but only the beginning may show in the feed.
4. Write a description of one to three sentences that says what the pin shows and who it helps, using the main phrase and one or two related ones naturally. Descriptions can be much longer (about 500 characters at the time of writing), but they don't need to be.
5. End with what to do next, such as "Plan your own week in [App name] on the App Store."
6. Add your App Store link as the pin's destination.
7. Save the pin to the most relevant board first.

Here's the difference keywords make:

And a description for the first one, for a fictional meal planner whose listing mentions shared shopping lists: "A simple five-day weeknight dinner plan for busy families, with one shopping list for the whole week. Plan your own week in [App name] on the App Store."

Hashtags play a small role here. Pinterest leans on the words in your titles and descriptions, so spend your effort there. The captions and hashtags guide covers how each platform treats them.

How should you set up boards for an app?

Boards are folders for pins, but their names also tell Pinterest what your pins are about. Name them the way people search, not after your brand.

• Good board names: "Weeknight dinner ideas", "Meal prep for beginners", "Family grocery lists".
• Weak board names: "[App name] content", "Our posts", "Inspo".

A good starting point is five to ten boards, each built around one part of the problem your app solves. Give each board a one or two sentence description with its keyword. Save mostly your own pins, plus the occasional genuinely useful pin from others, so the boards read as helpful collections rather than a catalog.

Use a free Pinterest business account. At the time of writing, it gives you analytics for each pin, including outbound clicks, which tell you how many people tapped through to your link.

Where should your pins link?

Straight to your App Store page. Every extra step between the pin and the download button loses people. If you use a link page elsewhere, that's fine for bios, but a pin has its own link, so use it directly.

If you have custom product pages set up in App Store Connect, point each pin at the page whose screenshots match the pin's promise. A pin about weeknight dinners that lands on a page opening with the weekly plan feels like one continuous idea.

To see what's working, compare outbound clicks in Pinterest's analytics with the traffic sources App Store Connect shows for your app. Neither number is perfect on its own; measuring installs from social media explains how to read them together.

How long do pins keep working?

Much longer than a typical feed post. A TikTok or Instagram post usually gets most of its views in its first few days. A pin works more like a search result: as long as people keep searching the phrase it matches, it can keep being shown, sometimes for months. That changes how you plan.

• Evergreen beats trendy. "Beginner home workout plan" is searched every week. A meme reference is forgotten in a month.
• Pin seasonal ideas early. People plan ahead on Pinterest. A good rule of thumb is to post seasonal pins several weeks before the season starts; the seasonal app marketing calendar helps you plan the dates.
• Refresh winners instead of deleting them. When a pin keeps sending clicks, make a new image on the same idea with a new title.
• Post steadily. A few fresh pins a week, every week, beats fifty in one afternoon and then silence.

How to make app pins without a designer

The slow part of Pinterest is making enough tall, on-brand images to post steadily. ReelMyApp makes carousels in 3:4, the closest of its three ratios to a classic tall pin, with art direction taken from your app's icon and screenshots. You paste your App Store or Google Play link, describe your audience in a sentence or two ("home cooks who plan the week's dinners on Sunday"), and download the slides as PNGs. Each slide headline is short, and the last slide shows your real icon and a real screenshot.

From there, turn the strongest slides into separate pins and write a keyword title and description for each. Every carousel also comes with a posting plan that includes Pinterest, with best day and time windows.

Pinterest mistakes to avoid for apps

• Square or landscape images. They look small in a grid built for tall pins.
• A bare screenshot with no headline. Without context, nobody knows what the pin is for.
• Brand-only titles. "[App name] update" matches no search anyone makes.
• Linking to your profile or homepage instead of the App Store page.
• Posting in bursts. Thirty pins in a day and nothing for a month undoes the steady build that makes Pinterest work.
• Images that promise more than the app does. A pin that doesn't match the page it links to wastes the click.

Key takeaways

• Pinterest fits apps people plan with: meals, workouts, home, style, study and life events.
• Make tall vertical pins (2:3 or 3:4) with a short headline that names the idea.
• Write titles, descriptions and board names in the exact phrases people search for.
• Link every pin straight to your App Store page or a matching custom product page.
• Pins can keep working for months, so favor evergreen ideas and post steadily.
• Check current size and character limits in Pinterest before you make a batch.

Frequently asked questions

Is Pinterest good for app marketing?

For apps that help people plan, make or improve something, it can be. People use Pinterest to look for ideas before they act, so meal planning, fitness, home, style and study apps fit better than utilities or games.

What size should a Pinterest pin be?

Tall and vertical. Pinterest has long recommended a 2:3 ratio, and 3:4 is a close match. Check Pinterest's current guidance before you make a big batch.

How long can a pin title and description be?

At the time of writing, about 100 characters for a title and about 500 for a description. Put the main keyword early in both, since only the start may show in the feed.

Can a pin link straight to the App Store?

Yes. Each pin has its own destination link, so you can point it at your App Store page or at a custom product page whose screenshots match the pin.

How often should an app post on Pinterest?

A good starting point is a few fresh pins a week, posted steadily. A new image for the same link counts as a fresh pin, so one carousel can become several pins.

Do hashtags matter on Pinterest?

Much less than keywords. Pinterest search reads your pin titles, descriptions and board names, so write those in the words people actually type.