Pinterest has been a great source of traffic for many bloggers who use beautiful pictures in their posts. However, there has been a lot of controversy lately over Pinterest and copyright violations.
Many people are afraid to pin images from sites for fear of getting sued. Some are even going so far as to ask the site owner (via email, Facebook, Twitter, etc) before they pin images.
As bloggers, we love (almost) any site that helps us share our posts with people so naturally we want people to be able to pin our stuff. To help people know that your site and posts are pin friendly here are some tips:
Put a Pin Friendly button or text in your sidebar
Place either a button that says your site is Pinterest friendly or text in the sidebar. Make sure that the button or text is high enough so that people will see it when they are reading the post. You can see an example of pin friendly text in the sidebar on my cocktail blog.
Put Pin Friendly text at the bottom of your post
This might seem like a lot of work depending on how often you post, but you can put text at the bottom of every post saying that the post is pin friendly. This will ensure that after reading the post people know that they are welcome to pin it.
Use a Pin It Button in the blog post
Pinterest has a Pin It button that you can place in your blog posts. Fill out the URL of the post, the URL of the image, and a short description of the pin. Then place the code in the HTML of your blog post.
If you are on a self hosted WordPress site there are plugins that you can use for a pin it share button including:
Pinterest “Pin It” Button - places a pin it button on the image that a user will see when they hover over the image.
Pin It On Pinterest – places a pin it button at the end of the post and you can decide what image gets pinned and the description for the pin.
Shareaholic - includes a share on Pinterest button in the post share icons at the bottom of the post.
Social Discussions – includes a Pin it button in the post share buttons at the bottom of the post (looks different than the Shareaholic share buttons).
(Note these are just a few options for Pinterest sharing buttons, there are many out there).
Personally, I recommend putting pin friendly text or a button in your sidebar along with a pin it button in your posts. The text/button in the sidebar immediately lets people know that your site is pin friendly and the pin it button in blog posts makes it easy for people to pin your images.
Remember the easier you make it for people to share your content, the more traffic you can drive to your site.
About Jessica Torres
This is such a wonderful post, Jessica. I have yet to add some pin friendly text or button on my site, but I plan to now.
They are both great to help people know that your site is pin friendly.
Great post, Jessica! I don’t use Pinterest enough. Given that, I don’t have any pins related to it on my blog … going to have to change that! I’ll put it on the list.
Glad to hear that Sharon.