Pinterest gets into the storytelling game with Story Pins

Looking back, it is at least striking to see the evolution of communication through stories.

Stories have gone from being the basis of a social network such as Snapchat to a resource used by all the others, from Instagram to Twitter with its Fleets and even Whatsapp.

Now it is the turn of Pinterest, which finally brings Story Pins to Spain after a few months working in the United States.

In essence, it cannot be said that they vary much from one social platform to another. They are short videos made from the combination of various resources such as videos or photos and texts.

In any case, there is an important difference with respect to its competitors (and by "its competitors" we refer especially to Instagram).

Since the beginning of the format, stories have been ephemeral, content that is consumed within 24 hours and then disappears. It is true that Instagram had a trick up their sleeve  with featured stories so that this effort would not be lost, but in the case of Pinterest Story Pins it is quite different.

This type of pins are fully integrated into the structure of boards and do not disappear, we choose which one best encompasses the content and there it stays for search.

In a way we can say that it is almost a hybrid between stories and Instagram's own 

The first thing you need to know is that this is not a feature open to all profiles. At the moment, it is not available by default on Pinterest accounts.

This means that if you want to start creating Story Pins now, you have to request approval from the network. It is a procedure that is done very quickly; just log in to your account here and click on the corresponding button. Within 1 to 2 days they will review your request and give you an answer (in my case it was immediate).

Once the process is completed, it is really simple. In your profile, in "create" menu you will see a new option: "create Story Pin (early access)". Let's start with the 4 necessary steps.

It is not much of a mystery. Basically drag and drop (or upload from your device) the images and videos you want to use in your story.

You can use a maximum of 20 resources with certain size limitations. Photos should not exceed 20 MB and videos should not be over 100 MB.

The interface design is very intuitive and easy to use. The screen is divided into three areas:

Here you can add a lot of useful information for those who follow your Story Pins. By default, there are 3 categories: recipes, crafts and a blank one.

With these templates, you can incorporate a list of materials needed to follow a tutorial or the cooking time and portion size (if applicable).

Now we are finishing, we just need to choose the board where we want it to be published and define some tags to help indexing and the Pinterest search engine when categorizing the content.

Do not worry if you see that you have left out any details; Pinterest stories can be edited and even allow you to add internal notes to keep better track of your actions, check statistics...

We can really say that not all eCommerce take advantage of this social network, but its possibilities and its ability to prescribe in a certain segment make it a platform to take into account.

If you need help to put your strategy and your boards in order, perhaps our guide for beginners on Pinterest and the decalogue of good practices for businesses can help you.

Images| Unsplash and Pinterest.