Source: upmeme.com via Tor on Pinterest
After a solid year in business, Pinterest has moved from being the “next bright shiny object” to being a key part of many companies’ online marketing toolkits.
Here’s why it’s time for results-driven marketers to start taking a good hard look at Pinterest.
What is Pinterest?
First, some quick background.
Pinterest is the social networking site that allows you to share, collect and discover interests by posting – “pinning” in the jargon – photos and videos to your own (and other people’s, with permission) “pinboards”. You can upload your own photos and videos or you can pin things you find on the Web.
People use Pinterest to visually organize gift ideas, home decor ideas, fashion ideas, visual memes, design ideas, architecture ideas, you name it.
Why Pinterest matters for Internet marketing?
So why does that matter to you as a marketer. A couple of reasons.
First, is Pinterest’s massive audience. As of last July, the site had 23 million monthly unique visitors. And those who like it, like it a lot. Those visitors viewed over 1.7 billion pages a month.
Next is their ability to drive traffic to your site. When you, or other people, pin content from your site to Pinterest, that content automatically links back to your site. Many businesses are finding that Pinterest is now driving more traffic to their sites than Twitter and other high profile social media sites.
Built in sharing capability – so people can share images not just with other Pinterest users, but on Facebook, Twitter and via blogs – means your message and links back to your site, can reach even more people.
And, last but not least, Pinterest is well optimized for search. So content posted to Pinterest can easily be more findable on search engines than content on your own site – it can be a key pathway for people to discover you online.
Who should be using Pinterest for Internet marketing?
Of course, some businesses are better positioned to have marketing success with Pinterest than others.
Businesses that sell to women, or whose purchases are highly influenced by women, can often do well on Pinterest. Pinterest’s audience skews heavily female, with some estimates suggesting women make up 80% of the site’s user base.
Businesses targeting young families have a huge opportunity. A huge segment of Pinterest users are young families, who find Pinterest to be useful in helping them juggle jobs, fun and parenting.
Businesses that have highly visual products or services, or who can come up with creative ways to make their products or services visual, will have a better chance of getting attention. It’s a site about images after all.
Products or services that hit the big Pinterest categories – fashion, food, family, home and design – are also well positioned.
So that’s the “what, “why” and “who”. Next time, I’ll talk about the “how” – ways to make your Internet marketing with Pinterest more effective.
