Wouldn’t it be nice to have your website visitors share your content on Pinterest?

Well, they can and will, if you make it easy for them!

Although the Pin It button has been around for years, there is still a considerable amount of service providers out there not taking advantage of the possibility of more content distribution and free growth.

This post was first published in August 2018 and last updated in October 2021 to reflect the current Pinterest best practices.

This post contains an affiliate link for Tasty Pins which means that if you click through and purchase the plugin, I receive a commission at no additional cost to you. 

Pinterest Best Practice: How to Promote Your Content & Increase Your Traffic by Adding A Pinterest Save button to Your Site

First of all, what is the Save button?

The Pinterest Save button (previously known as a Pin It button or a hover button) is an add-on that helps people save your content to their Pinterest boards without leaving your site.

You most likely have seen one out in the wild – a Save button is the clickable Pinterest logo that appears on a website’s images.

Clicking this button opens an image picker form and lets the visitor save any image on the page (except images that have saving disabled via Tasty Pins or custom code).

The button has 6 different looks:

Why is it so important for your content distribution?

So, you might be wondering…

Why should I bother? What’s in it for me? 

In layman’s terms, when someone uses your Save button = more of your content on Pinterest = boosted impressions and more clicks to your site.

Pinterest is no longer just a place to get inspired. It’s equally about actionable tips and as a visual search engine, Pinterest is on a mission to serve the best content on a silver platter to your target audience.

Attracting your dream audience, boosting your visibility, and driving targeted traffic to your website are more easily achieved by applying the latest best practices.

Recommended reading: Pinterest Best Practices for 2020: 5 Ways to Use Pinterest for Business

Recently, Pinterest has emphasized installing a Pin It button as a way to increase the distribution of your content on Pinterest.

The Save button is a best practice that encourages your existing, returning audience as well as new visitors to promote your original content by saving it to their boards.

Need one more reason (besides the fact that people are saving your content and marketing your business for you)? Insight into metrics that help you track the content visitors are directly saving from your site and create more content that your audience is craving.

How to install a save button on your WordPress/Showit site in < 1 minute

The recommended way of adding a Save button on your website is to use the official Pinterest widget builder. This ensures your button gets automatic updates and you see the results in your Pinterest analytics. 

There are two types of Save buttons you can add to your site: automatic (clickable Pinterest logo will appear on every image on your site) and hover (the Pinterest logo only appears on images when you hover over them) buttons.

Use the Pinterest widget builder to customize the look and functionality of your button, then add the code to your website.

Of course, there are other ways.

In 2018, I listed the jQuery Pin It Button plugin as an alternative. It is a free WordPress plugin that for a long time was loved due to various options for customizing and (not) displaying the button on some pages on your site.

However, I no longer condone or recommend using anything other than the official button (and the Tasty Pins plugin that uses the recommended Pinterest pinit.js script, for that matter).

jQuery Pin It Button, in particular, is no longer regularly maintained and tested with new WordPress versions. Although the button functionality is still there, unmaintained plugins can cause unexpected errors, and make your site susceptible to a boatload of problems.

I’ve also been asked about Social Warfare as it includes a Pin It option, however, my recommendation to use the official Pinterest button still stands. Although it pains me to not recommend SW since I used to be a loyal long-time user, only use it at your own caution. Social Warfare is notorious for breaking and crashing sites after updates and this is a problem they haven’t been able to fix for a long time.

The verdict? The recommended way of adding a Save button on your website is to use the official Pinterest widget builder. It takes less than a minute and includes adding a line of Javascript code to your site.

If you’re looking to get more Pinterest savvy, you might be interested in Tasty Pins. Tasty Pins (which is what I use) is a standalone plugin specializing in Pinterest images optimization.

As mentioned, Tasty Pins includes the recommended save button code, which means that it’s always up to date with Pinterest’s best practices. If you have TP, you don’t need to install the button separately. Tasty Pins also comes with a built-in ability to disable saving certain images on your websites (which is why the Save button does not show up on most images in this post).

Are you a Squarespace gal?

With Squarespace, adding a save button is even easier – it’s already built into your website, you just need to enable it.

In your Home menu, click on Marketing.

Click on Pinterest Save buttons.

From the drop-down menu, choose where the button will appear on your site.

According to Squarespace:

Select Enabled for Blogs to add the buttons to s and s in   only. The buttons won’t appear on  images.

Select Enabled for Blogs, Pages and Products to add the buttons to s, s, and Product Page images.

Before you go, pin this information for later!