Pinterest

Pinterest turns active listings from your connected Etsy shop into pins, publishes them on a daily schedule, and can keep your queue topped up automatically.

When to use it

Use Pinterest when you want to turn existing Etsy listings into pins that lead directly back to those listings.

What you get

  • A searchable picker for active listings in your verified Etsy shop, showing which listings you have already pinned
  • A composer to edit each pin's title, description and alt text before it is published
  • AI-written pin copy: one click writes a Pinterest-style title, description and alt text from your listing, optionally working in keywords you choose
  • A choice of listing photo, or up to five photos as a carousel pin
  • Image layouts: the photo as it is, a tall 2:3 crop (centred, or smart cropped), or a text template with a headline and subtitle, with a live preview
  • A board and board section picker, including creating a board without leaving CraftRank
  • Links back to the listing, tagged with UTM parameters so Pinterest visits are easy to spot in your reports
  • A publishing queue that spreads pins across the day, with a pins-per-day setting, your own posting hours and timezone, priorities, and pause
  • Scheduling for a specific date and time
  • Automation: pin every new listing, keep the queue topped up with Smart Pins, and route pins to boards by Etsy shop section with Smart Boards
  • A history of every pin CraftRank has published for you, with a retry for any that failed
  • Analytics from Pinterest: impressions, saves, pin clicks and outbound clicks for your account and for each pin, over the last 7, 30 or 90 days, plus your top pins

Each published pin uses one pin from your monthly allowance, whether you publish it straight away or it goes out from the queue. Queuing is free, and a pin that Pinterest rejects is not counted. If your allowance runs out, queued pins wait for the monthly reset rather than being dropped.

Writing pins with AI

Etsy titles are written for Etsy search, which often means a long list of keywords. Pinterest works better with a short, readable title and a description of two to four sentences. In the composer, use Write all with AI, or the sparkle button on a single pin, to draft that copy from your listing's title, description and tags. Add a few keywords first if you want particular phrases included.

The AI only uses facts from your listing, so it will not invent materials, sizes or offers. Read each draft before publishing: you can edit anything, or reset a pin to your Etsy copy.

Image layouts

Pinterest shows tall 2:3 pins (1000 by 1500 pixels) at their best, while most Etsy photos are square or landscape. Pick a layout per pin in the composer, or for every pin at once:

  • Original sends your Etsy photo as it is.
  • 2:3 centre crop crops a tall pin from the middle of the photo. Most product photos are centred, so this is the safe choice.
  • 2:3 smart crop crops around the busiest part of the photo instead. It helps when the product sits to one side, but check the preview.
  • Text template places the photo (centre cropped) above a panel with a headline and an optional subtitle, in a light or dark theme. Leave the headline blank to use the first phrase of the pin title.

The preview next to each pin shows the image as it will be published, at a smaller size. In a carousel, the text panel goes on the first image and the others are centre cropped, so every card has the same shape. Set a default layout, theme and subtitle in the Settings tab; automated pins use them too. Nothing is edited on Etsy: the layout is applied only to the image sent to Pinterest.

The queue

Choose Add to queue in the composer and CraftRank publishes one pin per slot. Slots are spread evenly across your posting hours, so five pins a day between 09:00 and 21:00 means roughly one pin every two and a half hours. A slot that passes with nothing to publish is skipped rather than made up later, so filling the queue in the evening never floods your followers.

  • High priority pins take the next free slot ahead of normal and low priority pins.
  • Scheduled pins go out at the time you chose, whatever else is in the queue.
  • Publish now sends a queued pin straight away without using a slot.
  • Pause queue holds everything. Nothing is lost, and scheduled pins that came due while paused go out when you resume.

Change pins per day, posting hours, timezone, your default board and your default image layout in the Settings tab.

Automation

Turn these on in the Settings tab. Automated pins join the queue like any other pin, so they follow your posting hours and only use your monthly pins when they publish. Choose a default board first: automated pins go there unless Smart Boards route them somewhere else.

  • Pin new listings checks your shop every few hours and queues each listing you have published since you turned it on, at high priority.
  • Smart Pins keeps about a week of pins in your queue. It starts with listings you have never pinned, most favourited first, then re-pins listings that have not been pinned for 30 days. Smart Pins are low priority, so anything you queue yourself goes first.
  • Write automated pins with AI drafts their copy with AI; otherwise they use your Etsy title and description. You can edit any queued pin before it goes out.
  • Smart Boards sends each Etsy shop section to its own board, for example prints to one board and mugs to another. Sections without a board use your default board. The composer can use the same routing.

Use Run now to check straight away instead of waiting for the next automatic run. Steady daily pinning tends to do better on Pinterest than large bursts, so three to ten pins a day is a good place to start.

Analytics

The Analytics tab shows your whole Pinterest account, read live from Pinterest each time you open it, so it includes pins you made outside CraftRank. For any pin CraftRank published, Stats in the History tab shows the same numbers for that pin alone.

  • Impressions: how often your pins were shown.
  • Saves: how often people saved them to a board. Saves keep a pin circulating long after it is published.
  • Pin clicks: clicks to open the pin.
  • Outbound clicks: clicks through to your Etsy listing. This is the number that brings buyers to your shop.

Click a number to chart it day by day, and sort Top pins by any of them. Pinterest keeps 90 days of analytics, and the latest one or two days are usually still being processed, so they appear once Pinterest has finished them.

Pinterest only shares analytics with business accounts. If your account is a personal one, the tab explains how to switch (it is free and keeps your pins and followers), then use Check again.

How to read the results

After publishing, CraftRank shows how many pins were created. Any listing Pinterest could not publish stays in the composer with Pinterest's own reason, so you can fix it and try again. The History tab links to every published pin on Pinterest. In Analytics, compare outbound clicks with impressions: a pin that is seen a lot but rarely clicked usually needs a clearer image or title, while a steady outbound click rate means the pin is worth re-pinning.

Turn it into action

Connect Etsy and Pinterest, set your pins per day and posting hours in Settings, and choose a default board. Queue a first batch of your strongest listings (use AI to rewrite long Etsy titles, and a 2:3 layout so square photos fill the feed), then turn on Pin new listings and Smart Pins so the queue never runs dry. Check your History tab now and then for any pin Pinterest rejected, and the Analytics tab every week or two to see which listings earn outbound clicks.

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