Pinterest has risen from obscurity to become a social media phenomenon while still in its relative infancy. The beauty of the site, which is essentially a visual bookmarking tool, is its fresh approach to a well-established beast, the social bookmarking tool. The best known of these sites and platforms are Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Digg – each tapping into the human desire to connect, share, discover and inspire around interest points.
It’s all good news for image-hungry consumers, but many businesses are still pondering just how relevant the site is to social marketing before testing the waters. In this post we round up the basics of why and how to leverage this rapidly-growing social network.
What’s unique about Pinterest?
According to Scott Monty, global head of social media for Ford, one of the cleverest functions of Pinterest is the way it accommodates “custom content delivery”. By following individual topic boards (eg. Kids, Pets, Photography), rather than entire streams of users, people can quickly tap into exactly what is relevant and interesting to them.
Pinterest users can view 100 interesting things on screen at one time and share them in an instant – providing an addictive visual fix.
The site’s user demographic is largely female-dominated, stemming from a girly passion for pinning arts and crafts images, hairstyles and wedding dresses, yet men are increasingly engaging with the site. Categories such as Cars & Motorcycle present obvious opportunities to engage with largely male users, while content around topics like Food, Health, Green/Environment, Geek and Luxury appeals broadly to both genders.
What are the stats?
According to the first major piece of research carried out on Pinterest by RJMetrics, its levels of ‘engagement, retention and virality’ are some of the strongest of all online businesses. For instance:
Pinterest is engaging its users two to three times better than Twitter did at a similar time in its history.
Pins link out to a vast universe of sites. The most popular source of pin content, Etsy, represents only 3% of pins. Google follows in second place, then Flickr, Tumblr and weheartit.com
Pinterest is currently referring more traffic than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube combined.
Over 80% of all pins on Pinterest are re-pins, indicating that the majority of content is shared and recycled.
(Statistics courtesy of RJMetrics)
What does Pinterest mean for brands?
There are quite a few ways that businesses can harness Pinterest to reinforce their brand, build loyalty and authority and even drive web traffic and sales – but a hefty dose of creativity is essential.
Needless to say, posting images is going to be easiest for companies with visually stimulating products to share. If your business is more service-orientated, you’re going to have to think outside the box.
Competitions are a perennially popular way to get users to share images (think along the lines of ‘re-pin to win”), while special deals and exclusive offers also pose instant share-ability.
Make the most of content that you are already using on other social sharing sites like Twitter or Google+, repurposing it for Pinterest boards.
Create boards that relate directly to your industry, collating visual lists that present your expertise and specialist knowledge. Take time to construct boards thematically, rather than just around lists of products. Scott Monty points to Whole Foods as an example of a business hitting the nail right on the head.
What’s your view?
Are you incorporating Pinterest into your social media strategy yet? We’d love to hear your stories about how you, or other businesses you’ve come across on Pinterest, are using the site creatively.
Link
