post mate · docs
Platforms

Pinterest

Image and video pins, boards, the link field that actually drives clicks. Why Pinterest scheduling is different from social.

Pinterest is the network most cross-posting tools support half-heartedly. We support it as a first-class target because the ROI per pin compounds for years if you treat it like SEO with images — see our Pinterest scheduling guide for the philosophy.

What you can post

TypeSupportedNotes
Image pinJPG / PNG, up to 20 MB
Video pinMP4, up to 2 GB
Idea pinPinterest deprecated Idea Pins for new uploads in 2024
CarouselPinterest's product carousel is invite-only

Pin field rules

Every pin has more fields than a typical social post — Pinterest is search-driven, so the metadata matters.

  • Title — 100 characters max. Treat this as the SEO title.
  • Description — 500 characters max. Treat this as the SEO body.
  • Link URL — the destination people land at when they click the pin. This is the whole point of a pin.
  • Alt text — 500 characters. Used for accessibility and image search.
  • Board — required. The board the pin is added to.

Media specs

  • Format: JPG, PNG (still images); MP4 (video)
  • Aspect ratio: 2:3 (1000×1500) — what Pinterest actually promotes. Squares and landscapes get downranked in the feed.
  • Recommended resolution: 1000×1500 minimum, 2000×3000 for high-DPI displays
  • Video specs: 4 seconds minimum, 15 minutes maximum, MP4 H.264

Boards

When you connect Pinterest, we fetch your boards and surface them as a dropdown in the editor. You can pin to one board at a time — to publish the same pin to multiple boards, schedule it multiple times with different board targets (Pinterest counts each as a separate pin in their algorithm, which is what you want).

Per-post settings we expose

  • Board — required dropdown
  • Title, Description, Alt text, Link URL — all individual fields

Pinterest's account quality signal rewards steady output heavily. Spamming 30+ pins a day triggers their spam classifier. Pinning 2-5 times a day, every day, is roughly the sweet spot — enough to look "active," not enough to look automated.

The scheduler in Post Mate is built for this — drop 10-20 pins into the queue and let it space them out over a week.

Common rejection reasons

  • 400: invalid_board — the board you targeted was deleted or renamed after you connected. Re-pick from the current list.
  • 400: image_url_invalid — the link URL doesn't load, or it's a localhost URL we can't reach from our staging.
  • 403: rate_limited — you're pinning too fast. Pinterest throttles at roughly 5 pins per minute per account.

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