Pinterest – Whats It All About?
By Paul Cunningham
Must admit to only becoming aware of this new social media phenomenon a few weeks ago and, having done a bit of research, I thought i’d share it just in case any of you also fall outside the 11 million+ registered subscribers Pinterest has to date.
How Does Pinterest Work?
Pinterest is essentially a picture sharing site where registered users ‘pin’ their images to their own ‘pin board’. Now this can be anything at all – it can be random stuff that you just like and want to share with others or it can be a number of images relating to an interest of yours. For instance you might have a passion for 60′s British roadsters, old corporation logo’s, vintage mens watches or a holiday cottage you really need to rent out. As a member you are able to browse subjects and if you come across something you’ve got an interest in you then ‘follow’ it just like you do inTwitter and you will then be notified when any new images are added to the board. You can also leave comments and join in discussions on each of the images that appear on the site.
How Will It Help A Company?
Well if you’re running a business that’s selling or producing something which would benefit from good images (which is pretty much anything) ie clothes, photography, accommodation, artwork etc this seems to be a very good oppurtunity to set up some boards to market your services because your photographs can contain links back to your own web sites product pages. The best long-term strategy from a sales angle would be to be a part of the community spirit for a short time before ‘hard-selling’ your products, ie ‘pin’ a few personal pictures and then over time bring in your items. This approach is possibly not totally neccessary but its just a personal choice when i join something which wasn’t intially designed to be a sales site.
If we take the holiday cottage letting example I mentioned earlier,it could be someone has a cottage they wish to let in Wales for the eight or nine months of the year they don’t use it. They have a problem on Google because the first 5 pages are filled with the large rental companies & so they get a board on Pinterest and fill it with photos of the cottage itself. They also upload pictures of the surrounding countryside, nearby places of interest etc etc and then wait for other Pinterest subscribers to find the board, follow them and, perhaps, hire the cottage.
Why Havent I Heard Of It & Will It Be Around Long Term?
I’m not sure why its had such a low profile so far as there are 11m people already registered – (although it seems the majority are located in the States) . Much like Facebook & Twitter before them though if they continue at this pace of growth its only a matter time before every one’s talking about Pinterest. You would probably question wether we need another social media website but Pinterest is clearly different & its definitely simple to use so it could fill a gap we didn’t know we had.
From a business viewpoint its another no-brainer – if your company has a product or service which will potentially profit from a lot of people seeing images of what you have for sale you need to be on Pinterest. Its free to join and millions of people go to it each week. Only slight negative currently is that its invitation only and I’m not sure why this is but its a method which has been used to create interest in joining an ‘exclusive club’ before (remember Gmail invites?) which I think will change in time.
Paul Cunningham has 11 years experience in website design & for the past five years has specialised in search engine optimisation,in Stockport, UK. The team at Web Site Design Lab have helped hundreds of small & medium sized local business maximise their revenues via cost effective SEO in Manchester and all over the UK.
