You don’t need to be afraid of Pinterest! Learn how to protect images with a few simple tips.
Pinterest is a great platform to share your content with a wide audience. Wedding photographers can find brides, Etsy sellers can find new customers, brands can introduce new products… and so on. However, many people are wary of having their content stolen and want to protect their images on Pinterest. While there is no way – I repeat NO way – to completely protect your images from the wild world of Internet sharing, there are steps you can take to make images harder to steal and to help insure you receive the credit you deserve.
1. Watermark Your Images
Adding a watermark to your images is a great way to make sure those who see it know that the image belongs to you. You can easily create a watermark in Photoshop or you can even create watermarks in Microsoft Word. While putting your watermark over the entire photo will make it much more obvious who the owner is, it will make users less likely to share your image. For Pinterest it’s better to use a simple watermark in the a corner, so the quality of the image won’t be reduced but users will know the photo belongs to you.
2. Block “Right Clicks” on Your Website
Keeping people from going to your website and “Save as…”-ing your images is as simple as adding script to your websites code. Instructions on blocking the “Right-Click” can be found here. By adding this code users will not be able to “Save as…” your images, but will still be able to Pin them from your site.
However, if you don’t want your images to be pinned at all you can add a “no pin” script to your website. Pinterest has provided instructions on how to use the “no pin” code on their website.
3. Adding Content to Pinterest
Sometimes users can be their own worst enemies when it comes to adding owned content to Pinterest. At the top of your Pinterest homepage, there is a menu item that says “Add+”. Clicking on that takes you to a menu that looks like this:
To add content to your Pinterest page you can either use the “Add a Pin” or the “Upload a Pin”. If you click “Add a Pin” the content you upload will automatically link back to your website. However, if you choose to “Upload a Pin” you must go to the pin after it’s uploaded and add your website. To do that hover over the pin, click “Edit”, and add the site in the link section.
Another easy way to add pins from your website is to install a “Pin it” button on your bookmarks bar. The PinLeague blog explains the “Pin it” installation for Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Internet Explorer.
From your Pinterest homepage, you can also find the code to add a “Pin-it button” to your website and images directly. Providing the link to users will make them less likely to try and steal the image to post it themselves.
4. Keep Track of Your Presence Online
Knowing where your images are on the web is a great way to make sure they are being used properly and that you are getting full credit. If you’re curious where your Pinterest traffic is coming from, it’s a good idea to sign up for Tailwind’s Pinterest Analytics Dashboard. From the dashboard, you can see which images from your website are most popular on Pinterest, who pinned the image and what the conversation around the image is.
You can also reverse Google image search any picture on the web. Just upload the image and Google will show you where on the web the image is coming up.
Again, while these tips will help protect your content on Pinterest, there is no way to fully protect images online. From simple screen shots to more in depth code scraping, if someone wants to steal your images they can – it’s a risk you take as soon as you add an image to the web. Just rest assured that the majority of users are not interested in purposely stealing from you!
Know of any other good tips to help protect images? Let us know in the comments!
All copy originally posted on the Tailwind Blog.
Permalink: tailwindapp.com/blog/protect-images-on-pinterest
Related articles
