A ‘Pinteresting’ Addition to the Social Space
Given the growing importance of visual content in online marketing, Pinterest’s launch couldn’t have been better timed. Although launched in late 2010, it was in the summer of 2011 that the social community woke up to this ‘Pinteresting’ addition to the online marketing space. Thismoment’s research on how Pinterest has performed in a fiercely competitive, visually rich, social space shows that:
- Although Facebook continues to dominate, Pinterest is generating more referral traffic than YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+ combined (Infographic Labs).
- Its visually powerful landscape, combined with the addictive social aspect, is making Pinterest the preferred search engine for visual content.
- The social photo-sharing channel crossed the 10 million US monthly users mark faster than any other independent site in history (Pinbliss).
Why Marketers Want a Piece of the Pinterest Pie
While some brands are still exploring Pinterest, the likes of P&G have taken the plunge with some visually compelling campaigns. P&G’s Thank You Mum campaign, for instance, (launched earlier on YouTube using Thismoment’s DEC platform) is the company’s first marketing foray onto Pinterest.
Although people use Pinterest to share things they identify with, what’s in it for brands?
Using Pinterest, brands can:
- Increase Website Traffic: Each ‘pin’ is actually a link to an external website. By pinning content that captures consumers’ attention, brands can drive traffic to their websites. Interested users simply have to click through to visit the brand’s website.
- Drive Engagement: Visual content drives higher engagement; and one of the reasons why brands on Pinterest see improved engagement is because it’s a visually rich social sharing site. Another reason is its user-friendly layout. It’s only natural that consumers, who find it difficult to navigate through a social site, refrain from engaging further with the brand. To engage with brands on Pinterest, all consumers have to do is ‘follow’, ‘repin’, ‘like’ or ‘comment’.
- Target the Female Demographic: Over 90% of Pinterest users are women. This is good news for brands that have the female demographic as their biggest consumers. Now that they know where their target audience is, all brands have to do is deploy the content.
Some Do’s & Don’ts
Although fun-to-use, there are certain ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ that brands should remember before marketing on Pinterest.
Do:
- Upload Content that Showcases Your Expertise: Viator’s Pinterest page, for instance, positions the brand as ‘the traveler’s one-stop-shop for researching, planning and booking destination activities in more than 400 destinations worldwide‘. The key is to feature visual content that reflects what your brand is all about… at the first glance.
- Embed the ‘Pin it’ Button to Your Website: We suggest brands feature the ‘pin it’ button on their websites to share their pins with their web visitors. This is great form of cross promotion.
Don’t:
- Get Too Promotional: Using Pinterest exclusively for self-promotion can make your brand seem like it cares excessively about sales and little about engagement. For, marketers, the idea should be to showcase the lifestyle their brand promotes.
- Have Only One Board: Haphazardly stuffing all the content into one board gives a cluttered appearance. Given that Pinterest is all about visual marketing, marketers should create specific boards for specific topics. Check out Sony Music Pinterest page to see how it’s done.
What the Future Holds
The skeptics expect the Pinterest obsession to ebb eventually, making it just another photo-sharing site; and there are others who think that Facebook’s dominance will relegate the new entrant to obscurity. Whatever maybe the case, Pinterest currently is an important chapter in every brand’s marketing guide and looks to stay this way for a long time. It will, however, be interesting to watch how Facebook, after the recent launch of the visually rich Timeline for brand pages, responds.
Although not in the infancy stage, in social media years, we’d say Pinterest is still rather young. That said, for marketers looking to build their brand appeal and do more than just sell something online, Pinterest certainly appears promising.
- Shama Ahmed
Thismoment
