Using Pinterest.com as Part of Your Online Marketing Strategy

I’ve had a Pinterest.com account for about a year now, so I was quite surprised to see that it’s becoming such a phenomenon recently. Personally, I don’t think I’m particularly utilising it to the best of its ability; while I like to think I’m somewhat creative, my internet habits tend to drift towards tech news sites and blogs, and I rarely find myself in a position where I need to ‘pin’ a remarkable image.

However, I do go on the site from time to time and on each visit my homepage is flooded with stunning images from my graphic designer, fashionista, and art-inclined friends who are clearly befitting from Pinterest’s features.

This got me wondering how this kind of ‘vision board’ site could be implemented as part of an online marketing strategy (for the right company). There are definitely a few obvious uses for Pinterest in online marketing, but there are also a handful of other techniques that are flying under the radar.

Note: I need to make it clear that Pinterest.com will not apply to all businesses. You should be able to tell just from the site the kind of businesses that will benefit from this are creative, crafty, visual,  graphic, arty, etc. Your local Chinese restaurant? Probably not gonna work too well.

The Obvious – Portfolio’s

You could have guessed that when I said ‘obvious’ benefits, portfolio’s was one of them. Pinterest is a great platform for organising and presenting portfolios of images and videos.

If you’re new to Pinterest then let me explain. A ‘Board’ acts kind of like a folder you’d have on your computer. You can name a folder ‘Things I like’ (for example) and then when you add or ‘pin’ an image, you select which board you’d like to pin it too (i.e. which folder you’d like to put it in.)

Once you get this you’ll understand why Pinterest works for portfolios. Boards can have an unlimited amount of pins so if you’re working on a big project/promotion/product you could pretty much capture the entire thing in one board, and invite everyone to come and look at it.

You can also pin videos, add them to boards etc. so the same principle can apply to video projects, and of course you can have a board with both videos and images in. (The image to the right is a board, called Illustrations, which contains just images).

The eCommerce – Shopping Experience

As I mentioned above, Pinterest can be a good online marketing platform for most industries, but it can only be a great platform for some. One of those industries is online retail.

The site has a section called ‘Gifts’ which will display the price of an item (and link back to the retailer) when it is pinned from the online retail store. For retailers, this is great; people will pin the stuff they love, and followers of their boards (who will probably be like-minded people) will also see that stuff, as well as the price and where to get it from.

Because of interactions like this, Pinterest is being seen as a new type of vertical search service that is arguably more targeted and more refined than any of Google’s ad matching algorithms. Start building a following on here and people could be sharing, pinning, and even buying your products as a result of the site.

The Necessary – Meeting Influencers

Meeting influencers is where the ‘like-minded people’ point mentioned above comes into play. Pinterest makes it relatively simple to connect with the influencers of your industry and interact with the pins and boards that they have shared.

Pins will show you how many times they have been repinned, as well as the original owner of the pin. The snowman image is an example of a popular pin that shows the amount of repin’s and the original owner of the pin.

This information means you’ll be able to work out how influential a pin is (and the owner of that pin). The comments boxes can also contribute to finding members and also offer a way of interaction for businesses that may be present on the site. You’ll also be able to see a persons ‘followers’ and ‘following’ on their profile which will also point you in the direction of other influential users (very much like  Twitter).

Here’s a really good example of a well utilised Pinterest.com profile for personal use: http://pinterest.com/caroljws/

And a good example of a business profile using Pinterest.com for online marketing: http://pinterest.com/edosalon/

The Social – Adding and Sharing

The only down side is that you can’t share out whole boards (yet anyway, I imagine this will come in time). Once you click into an image you can Tweet it out, Facebook Like it, etc. but the only option with boards as a whole is to Facebook Like it which doesn’t really constitute as sharing as it can’t be re-done, as such.

Adding followers and following members is really where you need to focus your efforts on Pinterest. As mentioned above, like-minded people will tend to follow each other so if you’re on someone’s following list you’re likely to be attributed with the same labels that ‘someone’ has. I.e. if someone has boards dedicated to art, and they’re following you, it’s likely that it’s because you also share art related pins.

Think of it in the same way as Facebook or LinkedIn works; with Facebook you’ll search through friends of friends (who will likely have the same interests), and with LinkedIn you can see someone’s connections (who will tend to work within the same industry).

The only way to truly engage with Pinterest.com as part of your online marketing strategy is to give it a go. Like I said, as a marketing strategy, it will only benefit certain industries but that’s not to say it can’t be used as another form of informal communication for individuals (again, much like Twitter. Not all Twitter users discuss their business).

See also: Connecting Pinterest.com to Your Website and Social Pages