Making & Hiding Long Pins for Pinterest using Canva

Using Canva for Pinterest MarketingNow that we have started discussing some ideas for your Pinterest marketing, I thought I would go into how I make those long pins you find on my recipe pages. If you have ever clicked on the Pinterest button at the beginning or end of a post:

Using Canva for Pinterest Marketing

then you have seen the red P in the top left. Clicking on that brings up a screen full of options to pin to your Pinterest page from.

Using Canva for Pinterest Marketing

You will notice how I mentioned yesterday all of my non-long pins are horizontal. That is not something you should do. I am so used to shooting in landscape when I should be doing it in portrait. I am working on it and hoping to start making changes to recipes as they come out. Those small horizontal pictures are not going to stand out in Pinterest. The long ones however, have a much higher rate of re-pins. I don’t blame people, they are so much more eye catching and enticing. I find myself always gravitating towards the longer pins for my own personal inspiration pins too!

I make all of these long pins in Canva. The learning curve in Canva is pretty short. It is pretty self explanatory with a couple of pieces of info.

  1. I make my long pins in a custom pixel size because even though they have a ton of options, there isn’t one for long Pinterest pins yet.Using Canva for Pinterest Marketing
  2. Use the “use custom dimensions” in the top corner and select 735 x 2102 Using Canva for Pinterest Marketing
  3. Now you’re in Canva editor Using Canva for Pinterest Marketing
  4. That white tall rectangle is your long pin. You upload your own photos into the page and you can drag/drop them onto the image. You can add text, shapes, colors, overlays, etc. I would go into it but all of this is the artistic side which is unique to you. So instead I will link you to their tutorials page.

Once you are happy with your pin, download it for web and upload it into your media folder like any other photo.

Time to hide this pin! Why are we hiding it? It isn’t really great for the flow of your post, looks like a bit of a distraction and serves no real purpose for the person reading the post since it doesn’t help in making the dish. I’ve seen blogs that hide it and those that don’t and I personally prefer it hidden.

A great blogger’s resource called Food Bloggers Central wrote a tutorial on how to hide these pins which is super helpful and EASY. So let’s do it! As a side note, if you are a new food blogger, Nagi and Food Bloggers Central is an INVALUABLE resource. She is brilliant and generous and helpful and has been a huge part of my growth as a food blogger. Bottom line, she’s a cool lady and you will learn a ton from her. For free, btw.

We are going to insert it into the text editor of your post. Directly to the right of the “Add Media” button you will see two tabs, Visual and Text. You normally work in Visual which looks like a version of Microsoft word, you see formatting, images, etc. Text will show you coding.

To hide your photo, go into the Text editor and add the following code:

<div style=”display: none;”>

Then add the image directly after that coding. AFTER the image code add

</div>

Here is an example of the coding:

Using Canva for Pinterest Marketing

Now save your post and try pinning the page. You should see the long pin. Look at the post, you should NOT see it on your post page. This means the long pin is only visible when someone goes to pin your recipe.

I also use Canva for my post’s featured images and my Twitter header. Every morning when I update my social media profiles with the newest posts I add a new Twitter header for the day. Usually just the two photos in my long pin put side by side in the preset “Twitter Header” image size. Done in 30 seconds, updated in even less than that. I’ll eventually make a post about Twitter, but I’m still learning, so I want to know a bit more before talking about it with you guys. 🙂

To make photos in canva optimized for your blog (assuming you are using Foodie Pro) like the one at the top of all the Blogging Resources posts, use the Foodie Pro Featured Image size: 680 pixels wide for main content section

PS, in case this post has made you crave Sour Patch Grapes, head on over to the recipe and make some! They only take a few minutes! Sour Patch Grapes are my new go to for my sour candy fix! With only two ingredients, these candied grapes come together in seconds and taste like you threw deliciously tart green grapes into the machines at the Sour Patch Candy factory!

 

Hope that helps! Pop back in tomorrow for an In ‘n Out Double Double!

Sabrina

About the Author: Sabrina Snyder

Sabrina is a professionally trained Private Chef of over 10 years with ServSafe Manager certification in food safety. She creates all the recipes here on Dinner, then Dessert, fueled in no small part by her love for bacon.

Sabrina Snyder is a professionally trained personal and private chef of over 10 years who is the creator and developer of all the recipes on Dinner, then Dessert.

She is also the author of the cookbook Dinner, then Dessert – Satisfying Meals Using Only 3, 5 or 7 Ingredients, published by Harper Collins.

She started Dinner, then Dessert as a business in her office as a lunch service for her coworkers who admired her lunches before going to culinary school and becoming a full time personal chef and private chef.

As a personal chef Sabrina would cook for families one day a week and cook their entire week of dinners. All grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning was done along with instructions on reheating. As a private chef she cooked for private parties and cooked in family homes in the evenings for families on a nightly basis after working as a personal chef during the day.

Sabrina has been certified as a ServSafe Manager since 2007 and was a longstanding member of the USPCA Personal Chef Association including being on the board of the Washington DC Chapter of Chefs in the US Personal Chef Association when they won Chapter of the year.

As a member of the community of food website creators Sabrina Snyder has spoken at many conferences regarding her experiences as a food writer including the Indulge Food Conference, Everything Food Conference, Haven Food Conference and IACP Annual Food Professionals Conference.

Sabrina lives with her family in sunny California.

Dinner, then Dessert, Inc. owns the copyright on all images and text and does not allow for its original recipes and pictures to be reproduced anywhere other than at this site unless authorization is given. Read my disclosure and copyright policy. This post may contain affiliate links.

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Comments

  1. Sabrina I know that this post is a couple of years old, but it’s fantastic and thank you! I’ve been making my long pins manually in Canva and this way is so much easier. Thanks so much, Laurel

  2. Thanks for this great article and I tried hiding my first long pin today but this little work around didnt work. The code showed up on the home page instead and the longpin didnt pop up when I tried to pin it. I wonder what I am doig wrong? I literally copy and pasted the above codes before and after the image in text editor. Anyway I learned a lot from this article 

    1. I use this everyday and it works fine for me. I wonder if it’s a theme issue?? I’m glad you learned a lot either way.

  3. Hi Sabrina, thanks for such helpful tips! It’s much appreciated for a new blogger like myself. I’ve followed your instructions and also referred to Nagi’s post but I don’t see a pin it button on my post or on Nagi’s example when I try it. Does this still work or has it changed, do you know? Thanks for your help!
    P.S. Healthy sour patch grapes – what a neat idea! 🙂

  4. People often ask me how to get more traffic  this has to be one of my top tips to increase Pinterest traffic to your website or blog!  Pinterest is truly an amazing platform, especially if your industry is visually driven like recipe blogging or fashion.  We definitely eat with our eyes first so one of the keys to great traffic is to be seen!  How do you up your odds of being seen on Pinterest?  Create long pins for your posts!

  5. Thank you, Sabrina, for all the tips! So useful for a newbie like myself. Also love Food Bloggers Central and all of Nagi’s resources. You’ve found a follower in me <3

  6. I’m working on this but I have a question – there is white space around my images in Canva. How do I get rid of those? Thanks! The tutorials are no help.

    1. If your images are too small for the space you’re filling pull on the edges to stretch them to fill the space. If you want to take a screenshot and email me I can take a peek. contact @ dinnerthendessert.com 🙂

  7. Tommorrow I’m going to pin a bunch of your stuff to our boards because I was at my wit’s end trying to figure out how to hide these long pins on the page. Thanks a million!

  8. I have a question, I am on wordpress and just tried this and I could see it in my preview… I don’t think it works on my blog, will hit publish with fingers crossed.

    1. If you can see it either in your preview or in your editor it didn’t work. Can you email me the exact text of your coding or a screenshot so I can see it? The code is very exact, I have gotten used to it over the last month. [email protected]

  9. I’ve literally read and used this post every time I create a recipe post, thank you so much for posting this! Honestly I really appreciate it! 🙂 Happy weekend!

  10. You are crazy helpful! This is awesome! I would have never figured Canva out or even thought of it. Thank you from the newbies of the blogoshphere.

    1. I’m so glad to help! Seriously, I have a new list of blogging topics to write about as soon as my crazy January is over. Also, a week ago I got Canva for Work (10$/month) and now that the blog can support additional resources, it is an even bigger time saver!

      1. How has that benefited you? I couldn’t really figure out how to use it so I cancelled it. Then again< I didn't put that much time into trying to figure it out lol

        1. So for Canva for Work the thing I love about it most is probably the resizing tool. It lets me make one image then open the image in the other social media sizes. One or two quick fixes to stretch to fit the sizing and I am good to go. I also love it because it saves my “brand color” so when there is dead space in the image my navy blue populates in it and my font is chosen by default. I can also save in folders and my logo is in one place. Would I say it is a necessary purchase? No way, free Canva is 99% of everything they offer. With as crazy overwhelmed as I am and with the fact I use Canva every single day it just made sense for me to spend the 10$/month to save the 10 minutes a day with the shortcuts. Don’t buy it if you are narrowing down a list of services with budget as a priority. Once my blog started covering its costs I loosened the budget a bit to save time which hopefully gives me more time to grow the blog. 🙂