Pinterest just became a whole lot more useful to businesses with the announcement of new “Rich Pins” on the official Pinterest blog today.
Instead of just linking back to the pin’s origin, each new Rich Pin will provide users additional information about that item aimed to better put them in a position to make a purchase.
There are three different types of Rich Pins, each with its own unique set of characteristics and opportunities for brands: Product, Recipes, and Movies.
Product Pins
For items like clothes and furniture, the new Product pins offer real time pricing, availability, and where to buy the item.
Pinterest has launched with large brand partners like eBay, Home Depot, Modcloth, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Overstock, Sony, Target, Urban Outfitters, Walmart, but even more interesting is the inclusion of DIY eCommerce Sites like Etsy and Shopify, allowing both large retailers and boutique creators the ability to take advantage of these new features right away.
Recipe Pins
From local restaurants to food bloggers swapping recipes, food is a big deal on Pinterest.
Pinterest gets this, which is why Recipe pins allow brands to provide information like cook time, ingredients, and servings to help foodies and food bloggers create new creations using branded pins.
Some of the launch partners include 101 Cookbooks, Better Homes and Gardens, Bon Appetit, Chobani, Epicurious, Good Housekeeping, Martha Stewart Living, Nestlé Very Best Baking, Real Simple, among others.
Brands can often be found posting great content on their boards, both from their sites and others. Thanks to Recipe Pins, as those get repinned, the recipes and information stays with it.
The best part is that this isn’t limited to just food brands, so any brand (for example KitchenAid) could start creating a content campaign around recipes on their site and then bring that experience into Pinterest.
Movie Pins
Pinterest’s Movie pins contain content ratings, cast members, and more designed to provide a new layer of information about these movies.
The decision to launch with Netflix, Flixter, and Rotten Tomatoes is an interesting combo as they pair ratings and reviews along with accessibility.
Ratings, scores and cast information from Rotten Tomatoes creates a new layer of “expert” or popular reviews, and then with Netflix and Flixster as streaming services easily clickable from your computer, you can start watching the movie right away.
While this unique funnel is available to only digitally distributed movies right now, I don’t think it will stop there; AMC Theatres or Fandango is the perfect partner for Pinterest to offer local show times underneath pins of new movies on the mobile app.
Could you imagine this evolution including a link to buy right tickets from within the pin? I can.
How to get Rich Pins
If you’re a business on Pinterest, here’s how to start using rich pins
- Decide whether you want to implement product, recipe or movie rich pins
- Read the developer documentation for the type of pin you chose
- Add the appropriate metatags to your site
- Validate your rich pins, then apply to get them on Pinterest
While this sounds really simple listed as 4 steps, the more technically inclined should note that it requires setting up one of three supported collection methods: oEmbed, hRecipe and semantic markup (if this is a foreign language to you, ask your developer).
Pinterest’s Future
As we have seen before, more and more people are using Pinterest to collect and organize their favorite items from around the web, while discovering new products and interests through social interaction.
With more than 48 million unique visitors globally, and a 15 percent share of all active online adults, it’s no secret that it’s time for Pinterest to get actionable.
Rich Pins can provide a more comprehensive link between actions on the site and sales conversions, helping to strengthen the credibility of analytics for brands on Pinterest.
These new pins not sponsored, and there’s no ad partnership in place with the launch brands, but these new pins definitely position users to be on the site and interacting longer, with a clear call to action to help creators drive new sales.
Discussion Question: How is your brand creating content for others to consume on Pinterest?