IT'S EASY TO ENABLE RICH PINS

#midlife blog crestingthehill.com.au

Sometimes I can be a little bit slow on the uptake when it comes to all this technology that goes with blogging and social media. I don't tweet and I don't instagram and I'm not on LinkedIn. I also know that I should have been doing something a little more intentional with Pinterest but had resisted up until now.

I did get organized enough to change my Pinterest page to a Business and that let me set up Pinterest Analytics - which are really interesting to look at - I wrote about doing that here. Since then I've been reading a lot about Rich Pins on various blogs and on Pinterest, but when I looked into how to go about it, it all seemed rather daunting and there was HTML coding involved and my mind just starts to shut down when things get too technical.

Well, that is now a thing of the past! I have been reading Elena (from Fabulously 50 and living with Batman)'s blog on using Pinterest to increase blog traffic and she was very committed to the idea that it could be used for content bloggers too. She has a really easy to follow guide for how to set up Rich Pins and I got all enthusiastic.......except that it was really about how to set it up with a Yoast plug-in on Wordpress blogs and mine is a Blogger blog.

While I was still feeling motivated I thought I'd have another look around Google and see if there was an easy way to do it with Blogger. Everywhere I looked talked about updating HTML codes and it all looked a bit scary. I finally bit the bullet and followed the steps (that looked fairly straightforward) in a post that has now been taken down - but this one seems to give the same useful information. Amazingly enough it worked first time and then I took the next step and validated it with Pinterest. The Pinterest validation was done and dusted and email confirmed within 2 minutes of applying - I am stoked!

So what does a Rich Pin do that a normal Pin doesn't? Well, it's supposed to get more clicks and viewings for your Pin (and presumably for your blog). I don't know if that will happen - time will tell, but it does add more information to each Pin uploaded from my blog. I've included a sample below:

#midlife blog crestingthehill.com.au

It gives 1.) my picture and blogsite address, 2.) the blog heading I used in bold, 3.) my description that I would have added anyway, and 4.) that it was pinned from my blog.

It added this automatically to heaps of my blog pins back to when I first started Pinning them. So I have now ticked off another "to do" task and I'm feeling quite proud of myself in the process. If you haven't done this yet then have a go and let me know how you went.

Final update - I don't get a lot of traffic to my blog from Pinterest, but these were my stats for the couple of days after I changed to rich Pins on August 5th:

#midlife blog crestingthehill.com.au

18 comments

  1. Nice job! I added rich pins about a month ago (fortunately I have Yoast so it was easy). I love all the little perks. One other, on my recipes it shows a list of ingredients, which I find handy as a vegetarian pinner.

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    1. Hi Debbie I was quite envious of Yoast users when I saw how easy that made it - but I'm glad I persevered because it's good to have it all done and dusted!

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  2. I must admit that I used to think it was a big deal and after I did I regretted not trying it earlier. Crazy, isn't it?
    Pinterest is my number 1 source of traffic and I after all these years (I'm a member since it was invite-only), I still love it.
    Thanks for sharing it on #TipTuesday

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    1. Hi Deb - I'm still working on making Pinterest more useful to my blog as well as just being a fun pastime - I'm impressed you've been on it so long!

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  3. Good tips. Good for you! Looks like that spike may be a good thing.

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    1. I'm not holding my breath Haralee but it was a nice surprise to see they do make a difference.

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  4. Thanks for sharing this, Leanne! I'm on Blogger too and I always just find tips for Wordpress. So great to see this step by step from Jenn. Gotta take a closer look now. Thanks so much!

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    1. Good luck Joy - I'm not terribly tech savvy so I'm always thrilled when I find something that works first time and is easier than I expected!

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  5. I really appreciate that you found all of this out! I love Pinterest, but have been struggling with Rich Pins. I'm heading off to give it a try! Thanks for the tips!

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    1. Hi Rena - I hope it works as easily for you as it did for me - everyone is so positive about how rich pins help so it's nice to be on board with it all now - let me know how you go :)

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  6. Hi Leanne! Okay you've convinced me...I have Yoast already so I have absolutely no excuse not to do this...and I'm already getting traffic from pinterest so this should help get more right? Thank you for the tips! ~Kathy

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    1. Hi Kathy - I would have done it sooner if I had Yoast - the process looks a lot easier than doing the HTML stuff so give it a go and it might increase your pinterest traffic even more!

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  7. Thanks so much Leanne for including my blog post! I'm so glad it was helpful.

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    1. My pleasure Jenn - thanks for making it so easy!

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  8. Thank you for this post Leanne!!! I keep saying I need to put more effort into Pinterest - and this seems like a good place to start. It is actually my favorite social media format - but I haven't done a whole lot with it yet. This has been a busy summer, and I have barely been getting posts written, and not much more. Soon as I get caught up I will be exploring these links and trying this.

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    1. I love Pinterest Susan - I find it a really relaxing way to spend/waste time! I'm not sure that rich pins will ultimately make much difference but it was good to get it in place :)

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  9. Thank you so much, I so need to do this. I have been approved for rich pins, now I just need to set it up, you are giving me the push to do that. Thanks so much!

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    1. No problem Nikki - it's nice to have it up and working, although I doubt it will make a great deal of difference to my blog, but at least I've done it :)

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