I know the last thing most of us need is another social media platform to manage, but I’ve found just that in Pinterest. While Pinterest has been around since 2008, it recently found an increasingly large following.
According to the website Pinterest is a Virtual Pinboard. This platform allows members to organize and share ideas and products found across the web. Categories run from wedding planning, to home interiors, favorite quotes and recipes. Basically anything can be ‘pinned’. So why not use it for business? Especially those with a product or service to sell.
On my personal Pinterest account I’ve got boards for My Next House, Babies and Party Planning/Decorating. I’ve pinned pieces from various companies ranging from furniture designers to recipes from Better Homes and Gardens and the Joy of Cooking. The best thing about Pinterest is the ability to push ‘pinners’ back to your website. Not every business will be able to use this forum successfully and of course each social media platform needs to be reviewed from a reputation management perspective. But this one is fun and relatively easy to implement.
The most positive thing about Pinterest is the ability to like something and repin it, but very little is focused on negative interaction with a brand or product. So if you are a food company, start with recipes using your products but pin other items to your boards as well. As with Facebook, this is about sharing ideas and not shameless self-promotion. If you go too far, no one will follow you, if you engage with your target audience, you can be heard and pins can travel fast among other, non-following pinners. Pinterest also provides a “pin it” tool that can be used to automatically pin content from your site to the social network, so if you don’t want to join, but want your products to get there, this is a nice option. It is also strikingly addictive!
From an agency perspective, I’m still looking at how it could be useful for corporate strategy planning and brand building. Imagine a team coming up with a pin-board of what it’s followers want or usually repin on their boards. I’ll be trying that in the near future!
