Something Just Got Pinteresting: Do You Know Why?

Truthfully, I don’t know.  I just started.  I do know it’s the fastest growing social medium right now, and it’s easy, it’s popular, it’s visual and it’s pretty powerful.  It resonates with the “scrapbooking” crowd (i.e., lots of women between the ages of 25 and 54).  Yet while it’s predominated with wedding dresses, stylists, crafters and foodies, there are starting to be a lot more businesses using it to showcase their products. Celebrities are pinning.  Nonprofits are pinning. And pundits are using it to “pin” from their blogs. Time will only tell if this is successful. Still, there’s a lot about which to be excited.

First, in case you don’t know what it is, Pinterestis a social bulletin board. It allows you to “pin” anything you find on the web, and organize it into themed image boards that you create. All you need to be able to pin something is a URL. Here’s the basic process: (1) Surf the internet. (2) See an image/video you like. (3) “Pin” that image/video to one of your Pinterest boards. You can follow boards that others in Pinterest have created, find folks who’re already there, or invite people to join. Anyone can follow what you pin and “re-pin” those images onto their own boards. And vice-versa.

This guy (Chuck English) doesn’t quite like it.  In Pinterest? Five reasons why it’s not worth your time he raises some of the issues that may have entered your head:

          

It’s of course challenging to try to be in every channel our constituents are in, especially given the limited resources with which most nonprofits have to work.  That’s why it’s an experiment, and why a cookie cutter approach won’t work.  Every organization is different.  But it’s hard to argue with the data. A recent survey by BlogHer found that more women say they’ve made a purchase based on a recommendation they saw on Pinterest than any other social media network.

They do say a picture is worth 1,000 words.  For organizations with great visuals, I think Pinterest is more than worth the shot.  After all, Pinterest is driving more referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube and MySpace combined.  According to Biz Report, new statistics recently released by social sharing tools firm Shareaholic reveal that Pinterest is driving almost as much referral traffic (3.6%) as Twitter (3.61%). That’s nothing to scoff at.

People love visuals.  They tell a story.  Even for organizations that don’t have lots of visuals, they should be doing more to find them and incorporate them into their messaging.  Maybe Pinterest will force folks to do this, and that will be a good thing all around.

Because it’s visual, Pinterest offers an excellent medium for building your brand’s unique feeling proposition. Check out this great Mashable article about how Whole Foods is making use of the medium. It’s not just about the “product”; it’s also about the values you project into the community and to which your supporters aspire.  Pinterest enables folks see a different side of you.  For example, most of my boards are about social media, content marketing, nonprofits and fundraising. But you’ll also find some boards attesting to my love of color, holidays and a few random interests. It gives you a fuller picture of who I am.

Some examples should give you a notion of the power of this medium. Amnesty International has used it to provide a reading list of books that will help to make the world a better place. They also sell tee shirts and pin inspiring quotes. NRDC uses it to suggest gift ideas for the environmentally conscious. Charity:watershows photos of people impacted by the organization’s work. Unicef pins videos showing ways you can help. AARP shows tech trends and devices that help improve lives.  Plus, a number of businesses have run successful contests on Pinterest, finding that the medium drives users to actively engage with their brands

If you want to build a following, you do have to spend some time each day attending to this (while you don’t need more than 10 minutes, I must confess to not being particularly good about this personally). Here’s an infographicwith some suggestions about how to drive traffic to your site.

Sometimes being an early(ish) adopter has benefits. You c an get in there and create a fan base before everyone else jumps on the bandwagon and people tire of the endeavor.  Once they’re following you, you’ve got a much better chance of keeping them engaged (provided you have a good content marketing strategy, and are creating ‘pins’ worth sharing).