The topic of Pinterest was raised at an event I attended last night. Specifically, many were interested in taking advantage of the social medium’s Rich Pin feature. I thought I’d write a little about what I know on the subject. This post doesn’t include every technical detail, but it should get you started. Feel free to ask questions below.
The six types of pins currently available are app, movie, recipe, article, product and place. Article is what most bloggers will use, with recipe for food blogs, and products on online stores.
Get Started
How to set this up without coding each page yourself depends on your website software. First, see if you already have what you need by running one of your page urls (article, recipe, product, etc.) through the Rich Pins Validator. If it does not validate or you do not like the information being displayed, your site will need some tweaking.
Update Your Website (if necessary)
There are too many possible website set ups to list here, but most any site can be configured for Rich Pins.
If you use WordPress, you should use a plugin or get your designer/developer to include the necessary fields in your theme (or page templates). If you have an SEO plugin like Yoast or All-in-One installed, you may already have the tools in place. There are many settings—see your plugin documentation or search for the name of your plugin plus “rich pins”—but you wi activate Open Graph Meta Data or Social Meta (sometimes under “Social” or “Facebook” settings). If you want Recipe Pins, try Easy Recipe or many others.
Shopify and Squarespace users, you are in luck, it’s already included. Both services have relationships with Pinterest. See this article from Squarespace and this info from Shopify.
Again, there are countless types of websites. If I haven’t mentioned your software or service, talk to your website developer or hire us to help!
Apply for Rich Pins
Once your website validates, and you are happy with the results, you can apply for rich pins at the same url.
From Pinterest:
Thanks Amelie! Very helpful and easy to understand. I have now applied for rich pins. When approved, will my normal pinning process still work (I have a Pinterest save button in my browser bookmark area)?
Hi Danielle! So glad it was helpful. Yes, this should have no effect on your pinning process.