Should You Start Using Pinterest?

By: Joe Prasad
Category: Social Media
March 23, 2012

Social networking has become a tool for every company that wants an easy and affordable way of attracting customers and Pinterest represents the newest site that many businesses should have on their list.  Pinterest, like Facebook or Twitter, allows easy and rapid communication but through images as the dominant medium.  This might sound trivial, but Pinterest recently outpaced Google+ for referral traffic to retail sites, making it a resource that no consumer centric business, large or small  should ignore.

 

A Pin is Worth a Thousand Words

Pinterest relies on a huge community to post and comment on pictures and videos.  These images, called ‘pins’, can be placed on separate boards that are arranged by themes: if you want to post pictures of a wedding cake, a Ferrari, or the Civil War Era, you can be sure to find a board on Pinterest that serves your needs.  59% percent of users are between 25 and 40, and the about the same percentage of visitors are women. Companies are beginning to realize the vast amount of web traffic that can be harnessed through these simple boards.

 

 

Pin While Browsing

Anyone that wants to pin need only install a ‘Pin It’ add-on button from the site and go roaming for images.  Once you find the picture you are looking for, just pin it, tag it for a particular board, and add a short caption (such as “this cake looks delicious”).  If you would like, add a price to the pin in the description.  There are smartphone apps that allow one-touch Pining once you find an image that you feel the world needs to see.  Boards that will display the pin can be very general or very specific; you can find images about baseball and you can find images about baseball during the 1927 season.

 

Create a Digital Catalog

How are companies capitalizing on this?  Pinterest is like a catalog that is guaranteed to draw millions of viewers.  What’s more, it is entirely open, so that you can follow activities without having to get approval (as you would for Facebook).  A company can directly link their products on Pinterest, or promote them using other social networking sites like Twitter.  Businesses can easily find inspiration amongst their customer base.  Searching through the directory or browsing the boards creates a massive power shift: customers can browse a board that has the product they want to buy before they so much as plug it into a Google search.

 

Quality Images Only Please

Without a doubt the greatest tool is the visual aid.  A status update may take a minute to read; a Pinterest image takes a second to look over.  A single picture says more than a status update or tweet on Twitter ever could.  Previous interactions with customer’s had to be words, audio or video: Pinterest changes the game by appealing to the visually-oriented.  What’s more, your customers can “re-pin” the images they found appealing to their friends and spread the word about a favorite product or company.

 

How are you using Pinterest for your business? Please share your thoughts and let me know if I missed something.