Sociality Squared’s Sweet Guide to Pinterest’s Rich Pins

Sweet Pins Featured Image

What are Rich Pins, and why should you care? “Rich Pins” are to Pinterest as “Twitter Cards” are to Twitter. Both allow you to share more information than you normally could while making your shared content stand out from the crowd, thus helping you to sell more products, advertise your movie to additional viewers and get your app downloaded onto more Apple devices. Let us introduce the six current Rich Pins to show you exactly how they can assist you and your brand on Pinterest:

 Place Pin Example Hawaii

Place Pins

 

Place Pins are pinned to the “Pack your bags” board, which features an interactive OpenStreetMap atlas of the Earth dotted with Pins that correspond to the specific location presented in the pinned image.

The extra value of setting up a Place Pin is clear-cut for Pinners in the tourism industry. Imagine someone pins a spectacular image of a herd of stampeding wildebeests taken on safari in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. It would not only be a popular Pin due to the beautiful animals and expert camerawork involved, but because the Place Pin would be pinned on the northern edge of Tanzania to showcase exactly where nature fans can get a close and personal experience with a variety of African wildlife. In addition, some users are sure to take an interest in the park itself. If you want to drive interest to a specific location and have a spectacularly striking image that captures the essence of a locale that others will want to go out of their way to visit, Place Pins are worth investigating.

Product Pin Example Stegosaurus Pillow

Product Pins

 

A benefit for anyone using Pinterest to drive sales, Product Pins feature an item’s current price, availability and a link to the online store that carries the featured product. From how the store selling the item pops up as browsers hover over the Pin to the way favorited Product Pins send notifications when prices drop, it is clear that Product Pins were created to move products to the fans who already appreciate the pinned products. Don’t forget that no matter what you are selling, the bonus features of Product Pins can only go so far without superb images of your wares.

 

Movie Pin Example Jurassic Park 3D

Movie Pins

 

Designed with film buffs in mind, Movie Pins proudly display the movie’s theatrical poster or DVD cover as the Pin’s image, along with information such as ratings, reviews and cast to build interest for the movie. Whether it’s a massive summer blockbuster or a lesser-known indie flick, Pinterest users are proud to share films they enjoy and are excited to see, and it certainly doesn’t hurt to have a Movie Pin of your production available to be re-pinned for the movie-going masses to share.

 

App Pin Example Fruit Ninja

App Pins

 

If you are an iOS developer, you are going to really appreciate App Pins. Select an image relevant to your app, such as a screenshot, promotional image or its icon and the Pin will sport a link back to the app’s spot on the App Store clearly labeled “Pinned from itunes.apple.com” underneath the Pin’s description. The best part? If users are browsing Pinterest via an Apple product, they can download your app instantly through Pinterest with one touch.

App Pins are also the easiest Rich Pins to create: simply navigate to an app on the App Store, and from its App Details section click the Share button and select the Pinterest option on your iOS device. You may need to fine-tune the App Pin with the exact image and information that you wish the Pin to display, but getting one started is as simple as that.

Unfortunately for Windows, Blackberry, Android and other app developers, App Pins are exclusively compatible with iOS apps at this time. That aside, if you have a killer app on iOS and can pin it alongside a noteworthy image that people will want to share, it’s certainly worth the effort to set up your own App Pins.

 

Article Pin Example Insectobot

Article Pins

 

Since you likely divide pinned content into separate boards already, Article Pins are an excellent way to link an article to a relevant group of popular Pins. Article Pins may include the piece’s author, a brief description of the linked story and, most importantly, a catchy headline, but all of these specialized Rich Pins clearly display an icon and caption of where the article is featured. If you have an important editorial piece that needs to spread across Pinterest, be sure to attach eye-catching photos and interesting leads to your Article Pins.

 

Recipe Pins

 

This Rich Pin does exactly what you’d expect it to: Recipe Pins may feature an ingredient list, cooking instructions and specific information about a dish including dietary concerns or how difficult the course is to prepare. As with all Rich Pins, you will want to use an appetizing image to lure gourmands to your Recipe Pin, but consider holding back some information to encourage interested chefs to click through to the website hosting your recipes.

 

Creating Rich Pins

 

Once you’ve decided which Rich Pin(s) to use, you will need to research the necessary meta tags needed for it (see the links below for the official Pinterest meta tag guides for each Rich Pin). Once you are up to speed, enter the correct meta tags for your Rich Pin on your website.

After you have conquered the technical side of Rich Pins, you will need to apply to use them by entering one URL that contains the meta tags for your Rich Pins here. After you have received a message stating that your Rich Pins have been validated, a representative from Pinterest will contact you via email within a few weeks. When your website is ready for Rich Pins, all of your pins that link back to your meta tags will appear as Rich Pins.

 

Place Pin Technical Guide

Product Pin Technical Guide

Movie Pin Technical Guide

Article Pin Technical Guide

Recipe Pin Technical Guide

 

Whether you are sharing information about your quadruple chocolate cookie recipe, favorite monster movie or the greatest game that has ever graced your iPhone, just keep in mind that the best way to get your Rich Pin moving from board to board is to use the most dazzling images, infographics and photographs that you have on hand. We’re absolutely excited to see what the next wave of Rich Pins will look like, but more importantly, how people utilize Pinterest’s latest info-sharing Pins.

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