Social networking site Pinterest is rapidly gaining ground in the social media market. But its phenomenal rise in popularity has left a lot of marketers and media commentators baffled at its status as one of the most used social networking platforms, and asking, “Are we watching another Facebook take form or is this just another one of those sites that are in today and out tomorrow?”
What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a virtual pinboard where you can arrange and share pictures of interesting content you find on the web or upload. You can use the pinboard for many things, from showing off your personal dress style, to sharing your favourite books and places you want to visit…virtually anything you find of interest can be ”attached”
Pinterest launched in March 2010 and, according to Tech Crunch , in December 2011 it made the top 10 list of social networks (ranked by the number of visits). In January this year, it provided more referral traffic to online retailers than LinkedIn, YouTube and Google+ combined.
Branding Magazine reports that Pinterest holds the record for the fastest growing site in history to break 10-million unique visits in a week, and receives an estimated 1.5-million visitors each day! And these are only a few of the impressive leaps forward it has made in a little more than two years.
How do I use Pinterest?
Pinterest works much like StumbleUpon, another social networking site for browsing the net, finding content (video, images) and pinning it to any of the pinboards under your profile. You then share these pinboards with the Pinterest community, and can also link your boards to Twitter and Facebook.
I love fashion, African literature and street art, so if you visit my profile on Pinterest, you will find pinboards that display this. People can then re-pin anything of mine on their own pinboards, and add comments and engage about the content as well. If people like what you are pinning they can follow you (as done on Twitter).
There is also a YouTube tutorial on how to use Pinterest.
How does one join Pinterest?
You need to be invited by an existing user, or visit the website http://www.pinterest.com to request membership (you will be added to a waiting list until the Pinterest team sends you an email with registration permissions).
What adds to Pinterest’s success is that when you register your account, you will be asked to sign up using either your Facebook or Twitter logins, which means you don’t have to create yet another password when signing in. Pinterest allows you to also invite your Twitter followers or Facebook friends who are on Pinterest to follow you.
So why should marketers care?
All marketers should take a look at how people make use of Pinterest. Its usage statistics alone tell a story of what users respond to on social media platforms. Information posted by United States-based online news site Mashable on 25 February, reported that Pinterest has approximately 1.36-million average daily visitors, with an average 15.8 minutes spent on the site.
The bulk of the businesses and services that have marketed successfully on Pinterest are product-based. But they should be cautious about how they engage on this platform because it opens the company to a world of pinners who (as on all social media platforms) are not fans of marketing.
StumbleUpon is successful because it made internet searches more fun. On the site, instead of Googling through loads of irrelevant content to find something interesting, someone suggests a website and you simply follow the link.
Pinterest puts this idea on steroids.
Picture this: you are the owner of an online shoe shop, and a Pinterest user thinks one of your pairs of shoes is stunning and pins an image of it to one of their boards. Later, others may like the shoes and re-pin on their boards and, all the while, the shoe shop owner receive an accelerated traffic stream to your website.
Pinterest is bound to go viral in South Africa in no time. However, as it stands, the jury is still out on any form of extensive usage of Pinterest for direct marketing. There have been successful marketing campaigns on Pinterest, but businesses must beware of direct marketing on this platform. The value of Pinterest lies in the natural marketing that comes from users pinning and re-pinning content on their profiles.