Social media moves fast—and we’re not just talking about the sheer volume of conversations. Social platforms are constantly making changes, which can make a marketer’s head spin. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+ each made multiple changes in 2013 that will help vastly improve your social media marketing. Over the next week, we’ll be featuring one or two important updates from each social network and detail how you can use them to your advantage this year and beyond. We’ll also provide real-world examples of how brands are utilizing these new features for inspiration on how you can too.

The New Pins on Pinterest: The Details

Article Pins

Previously, pinned articles only included an image and a link. Article Pins now give more prominence to the details of the article, helping to capture the attention of pinners.

Article Pins highlight detailed information about articles like:

  • Story Headline
  • Author
  • Description
  • Source URL

How Brands are Using Article Pins:

Time Magazine users Article Pins to showcase its content, paying attention to use compelling images and concise descriptions to capture readers’ attention.

Time article Pin

How to Use Article Pins:

  • Promote your content! Branch out from Twitter or Facebook when it comes to promoting your text-based content.
  • Make sure your content is standing out with a compelling title, image and description.
  • Create separate boards to showcase your written content so users can easily find the topics that matter to them.

Rich Pins

Automatically adds actionable details to images you pin from your company’s website. The details are pulled from your website and will update if the website is updated. There are three categories available:

Product Pins

  • Include pricing, availability and where a user can purchase.
  • Can include a click through to the product page on your company’s website
  • Price Alert emails get sent to users when a product they’ve pinned is reduced in price.

Recipe Pins

  • Includes details like ingredients and cooking and prep times to recipes added from your website.

Movie Pins

  • Include ratings, cast details, reviews and other details to images shared from Netflix, Flixster, and Rotten Tomatoes.

Rich Pins are available for companies of all sizes including those that have Shopify websites and small business pages on eBay and Etsy. Each business must add provided tags to their website and then apply to have them validated.

How Brands are Using Rich Pins:

Target highlights its popular pins on a Pinterest board called “Pins You Love.” The board features the brand’s most-pinned products as Rich Product Pins that show the price and availability of the product and click through to the product page on Target.com.

Target partnered with Pinterest for the launch of Rich Pins and reported that they helped increase Pinterest traffic to its website by 70%.

Target rich pins

Better Homes and Gardens uses Rich Recipe Pins to showcase recipes featured on its website. Highlighting the recipe details allow users to quickly decide if they want more information, potentially leading to increased time spent on the brand’s website. Highlighting important details like dietary restrictions (“Gluten Free” in the below example) helps users find and share the recipes they’re most interested in.

Better Homes rich pins

How to Use Rich Pins:

Improve your social ROI. Rich Pins can help push traffic to your content by highlighting details that are important to the user. They also have the potential to increase sales by providing the details users want before making a purchase and of course, by adding direct access to purchase pages.

Place Pins

  • Can be added to any board that has the map feature enabled. (Go to Edit Board, Add a Map)
  • Include location details like address and phone number and populate an interactive map.
  • Place Pins are optimized for mobile

How Brands are Using Place Pins:

Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts organizes its Pinterest content into boards to help pinners plan their vacations. The brand’s “Concierge Recommends: Europe Uncovered” board highlights hotel locations across Europe as well as local content and attractions to assist in travel planning.

Pinterest place pins

How You Can Use Place Pins:

  • Pin your location. If you have a brick-and-mortar business, use Place Pins to highlight your address and contact information so users can easily find your store.
  • Be an expert in your space. If you’re a local company, use Place Pins to be part of the community by providing resources like top restaurants, sightseeing spots, etc. If you’re a sporting goods company pin the top locations for hiking, biking or places to catch exciting athletic events.

Promoted Pins

Pinterest is testing Promoted Pins with pre-selected companies, allowing them to promote pins on category feeds and search results.

  • No information has been released on when this advertising opportunity will be expanded to other businesses.
  • Now is the time to experiment with your Pinterest presence. If you’re not being well received on the platform, putting ad dollars behind your posts might not pay off. Your product or service needs to be one that makes sense for the platform’s audience.
  • It’s a safe bet that Promoted Pins will work much like Promoted Tweets. Start thinking about ways you could utilize the feature and pay attention to the type of content that is currently working for your brand so you’re ready when the time comes.