195 – Pinterest Carousel Pins

This post was updated May 21, 2024.

Today we are going to be talking about a Pinterest feature that isn’t regularly used – Pinterest carousel pins. 

Pinterest carousel is a feature that seasoned marketers can test out after they’ve set up a great Pinterest marketing foundation. It’s something optional that you can explore once you’ve mastered the basics. 

If you’re still working on setting up that strong foundation, or are working on growing your Pinterest marketing, make sure you’ve downloaded the Simple Pin Pinterest Planner. It’s over 20 pages of monthly trends, stat tracking, checklists, and more. And it’s free! 

What Is A Pinterest Carousel Pin? 

According to Pinterest:

A carousel is a pin with multiple images. Carousels are a great way to showcase different features of a product, advertise multiple products at once, or tell your brand story in chapters.

People see the carousels in their home feed just like they would any other pin. 

They can swipe through the different carousel images (called “cards”) directly from their feed. They can also tap on the carousel and swipe through each card to its corresponding URL, essentially swiping through the different landing pages. 

When someone saves a carousel, they save the entire pin, including all the cards within it. 

Keep in mind that the pinner might not know to swipe when they encounter a carousel pin. You need to communicate to the pinner that they need to swipe. 

Why You Should Test Pinterest Carousels? 

This is not a major feature of Pinterest. In fact, it was a feature that, until recently, was only available to promoted pin advertisers. We also don’t believe that this feature will necessarily drive a lot of traffic.

We do think it’s good to test it out these types of Pinterest features every once in a while, for those of you who are seasoned marketers. It’s a great way to diversify your strategy. 

Here at Simple Pin, we’ve added a UTM tracking code to our carousels so that we can report back about whether or not they are working for us. We’ll be able to see if anyone is clicking on the carousel or onto our site by viewing the results in our Google Analytics. 

Carousel pins are also a great way to display groups of products. 

If you’re a product seller and want to show multiple views or colors, this is a great way to showcase your products. You can also test this out if you have a blog post with multiple options for a recipe, or a variety of steps in a DIY project that you’d like to break down. 

How to Create a Pinterest Carousel Pin

The instructions to Pinterest carousels state that you can only use them for ads (i.e., promoted pins), but that’s not true. You can use them organically. 

To get started, have all of your images downloaded to your computer so that you can upload them all at once. When you upload, you will be prompted to create a carousel or a collage. Choose “create a carousel”:

Once you choose the carousel option, you’ll be able to reorder your images and choose the links you want to attach to the images:

If you are a product seller who has a category page, you can link to that main category page instead of choosing multiple links. 

You can have the same description and URL for the entire carousel. This is what I recommend when you begin testing. Then if it’s working, you can test out some variety. 

Make sure you add a call to action, especially telling them to swipe left. 

Finally, you’ll add your title, description, and destination link, and you’ll upload to a particular board. You can only upload manually and then repin to another Pinterest board. 

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You cannot schedule to Tailwind. Manual pinning is not what we typically recommend, but it’s fine for testing out these carousels. 

Here’s a quick video to help you see how to upload a carousel video to Pinterest:

Who Should Test Carousel Pins? 

So who should be testing out these carousel pins? 

If you are a seasoned marketer on Pinterest who has some extra time and you want to play around with your pin images, give it a go. 

Product sellers who have multiple colors, layouts, or covers of the same product might find this useful. 

Bloggers who have multiple points and steps in their posts might want to create a carousel pin. This set of images can all be linked to the same destination. 

A service provider could use a carousel to showcase their wins for potential clients. They could show examples of their work for the user to see and explore. 

You can find an example of a great carousel from The Garter Girl on Pinterest and two from us at SPM as well:

• SPM Carousel pin example 1
• SPM Carousel pin example 2

Every once in a while we want to showcase what we are testing here at SPM. 

If we just stay in the same wheelhouse of content creation, scheduling, and utilizing Pinterest ads, and we never explore extra features, we’ll never know if they work or not. And if we don’t know, we can’t inform you!

Is this something you want to try? Join the conversation below. Ask any questions you might have and let me know if you plan to try it.

More Pinterest Resources:

How to Set up Pinterest Catalogs for the Verified Merchants Program

Is Product Creation the Next Step in Your Business?

How to A/B Test Pinterest Images