Brands can now pin how-to guides on Pinterest, but not as ads

Pinterest’s how-to pins can include beauty tutorials, recipes and workout guides.

Since 2013, brands and publishers have been able to pin things on Pinterest that go beyond the traditional pic-and-text pins. They’ve been able to include app-install buttons, maps, article info, product prices and availability, recipes and movie ratings. Now, Pinterest is adding how-to guides to the mix.

On Tuesday, Pinterest is showing off the first set of how-to pins that people can click on to see step-by-step guides on how to do things like make a soft pretzel or get in an intense yoga workout. Brit & Co, Delish, Elle, Food.com, Greatist, Home Depot, Marie Claire, Style Me Pretty and Sunset are among the first brands and publishers to use these new types of pins.

For now, brands will not be able to run these how-to pins as ads, according to a Pinterest spokesperson. And only people visiting Pinterest’s site or using its Android apps in the US, the UK, France and Germany will be able to access them, though the company plans to add iOS devices eventually.

The how-to pins look similar to standard pins, but underneath the normal photo and caption will appear a few thumbnails representing the steps in the guide. People can click on that thumbnail section to open the full guide, which they’ll be able to scroll through.

The how-to pins are aimed at guides in categories that appear to be particularly popular on Pinterest (at least in terms of the number of category-specific pins): DIY and crafts (3+ billion pins), health and fitness (500+ million pins), food and drink (4+ billion pins) and hair and beauty (1+ billion pins). Pinterest isn’t putting limits on the content that can appear within these guides. But if you’re a brand or publisher, don’t expect to be able to hijack these pins to your every whim. For example, brands and publishers won’t be able to use these how-to pins to run listicles, the spokesperson said.

If someone follows a brand or publisher using these how-to pins, that person will see them in their home feed on Pinterest. They can also be found on the brand’s or publisher’s profile pages or within Pinterest’s search results. These how-to pins — like the other Rich Pins that include more info than a photo plus caption — may show up higher in Pinterest’s search results because they contain more information that Pinterest can sift through when determining how relevant a pin is to someone’s search query. That additional info could come in handy for targeting purposes if and when Pinterest decides to add these pins to its ad portfolio.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Tim Peterson

Tim Peterson, Third Door Media's Social Media Reporter, has been covering the digital marketing industry since 2011. He has reported for Advertising Age, Adweek and Direct Marketing News. A born-and-raised Angeleno who graduated from New York University, he currently lives in Los Angeles. He has broken stories on Snapchat's ad plans, Hulu founding CEO Jason Kilar's attempt to take on YouTube and the assemblage of Amazon's ad-tech stack; analyzed YouTube's programming strategy, Facebook's ad-tech ambitions and ad blocking's rise; and documented digital video's biggest annual event VidCon, BuzzFeed's branded video production process and Snapchat Discover's ad load six months after launch. He has also developed tools to monitor brands' early adoption of live-streaming apps, compare Yahoo's and Google's search designs and examine the NFL's YouTube and Facebook video strategies.