As a visual person, I was really drawn to Pinterest. I joined Pinterest early and created interest boards for Art, Home Decor, Gardening … I planned a home renovation, collected images and bookmarked articles.
But at first I didn’t anticipate how brands, bloggers and entrepreneurs would use Pinterest for business.
“Pinterest? I just don’t get it” Clients, friends and family have all had this reaction to my new-found obsession with Pinterest.
So let’s talk about it …
What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a visual bookmarking tool that helps you discover and save creative ideas. Pinned images link back to the original source website or blog article.
Pinterest isn’t a search engine
Pinterest isn’t Google. It isn’t a search engine crawling and indexing the web. The only way your website content will show up in Pinterest results is if a person (you or your site visitor) pin it to a board.
“Discovery is this thing that people do all the time right now in stores, in museums, in physical spaces. So many of our public physical spaces are organized around a collection and they are organized to help you access and browse through that collection to find the things you find meaningful. We’re just a digital version of that experience with a much larger inventory that cuts across different types of things.”
Ways Pinterest is used
Sharing is something that humans naturally do. People share content on Pinterest for different reasons.
We may Pin, Tweet, Post … to
- share information: We find something great and we want to help spread the word
- bookmark content: If we like or share content we will be able to find it later when we want to read it in more depth
- build a reputation: Social sharing can bolster your reputation as an expert in your niche or industry
- connect with others: To find a tribe or build a following in our niche area
- express our identity: We want to show off our great taste so others will identify with us and like us
- create collections – Pinterest taps into our love of collections and the enjoyment many of us get out of collecting things – hockey cards, sports memorabilia, collector plates, stamps.
- create a virtual inspiration or dream board: Pinterest is helpful for planning a wedding, a home renovation, collaborating on a design project, and for saving quotes and images to inspire you in life, art, or in business.
- curate content: Peg Fitzpatrick talks about Feeding the Content Monster.
Pinterest is a great source to find content to share across social media platforms and source of inspiration for writing your own blog posts.
Content curation is finding targeted, interesting content to share on social media. – Peg Fitzpatrick
Pinterest isn’t just for sharing. An increasing number of Pinterest user choose Pinterest over Google when searching for DIY projects, recipes and more.
Why you should use Pinterest for your business?
If all the ways Pinterest is being used doesn’t make you start seeing the possibilities for your business — perhaps the staying power of pins will!
People who pay attention to social sharing statistics have found something interesting. Sharing your content on Pinterest has a longer reach than on other social media platforms. Tweets and Facebook posts don’t have staying power in the news feed that a Pin has on Pinterest boards.
“Pinterest provides great value to your social media efforts because Pinterest pins last a LONG time! While return on investment (ROI) and social media are a murky topic – at best – Pinterest is proving to be the best use of your time.” — Peg Fitzpatrick
Pinterest keeps driving traffic and Pinterest is growing in popularity.
According to Hello Society
“Pinterest is neck-and-neck with Twitter to be the second most used online social network, and a referral powerhouse, sending more traffic than Twitter, Yahoo, Google+ or LinkedIn.” “Nearly half of all iPad social sharing activity is on Pinterest; on the iPhone, it comes second only to Facebook”
Are you ready to get started with Pinterest for your business?
