Sunday, February 26, 2012

Pinterest - What Is It All About?

Must admit to only being aware of this relatively new social media phenomenon recently and, having done a bit of research, I thought i'd share it in case any of you also fall outside the 11,000,000+ registered users Pinterest has to date.

How Does Pinterest Work?

Pinterest is primarily a photo sharing site where registered users 'pin' their photos to their own 'pin board'. This can be anything you want - it can be random things that you just have an interest in and want to share or it can be different images relating to an interest of yours. For example you may have a passion for 1960s British sports cars, defunct company logo's, vintage mens watches or a holiday cottage you need to rent out. As a user you can easily browse topics and if you see something you have an interest in you can 'follow' it just as you do onTwitter and you'll then be informed when any new pictures 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 Might It Help My Company?

Well if you're running a business that is selling or producing something which would benefit from good images (which is pretty much anything) ie clothes, photography, accommodation, artwork etc this looks like it's a good oppurtunity to create some boards to advertise your products and services because your images can have links to your own sites sales pages. The most beneficial long-term strategy from a sales angle would be to join in with the community spirit for a short time prior to 'hard-selling' your products, ie publish a number of non-business images and then slowly bring in your items. This method is possibly not absolutely essential but its just my own preference when i join something which isnt intially intended to be a sales site.

If we take the holiday cottage rental property example previously mentioned,it may possibly be somebody has a cottage they need to rent in Wales for the eight or nine months of the year they can't use it. They struggle on Google because the first four or five pages are filled with the large rental companies and so they get a board on Pinterest and fill it up with images of the cottage itself. They also upload photographs of the surrounding countryside, local places of interest etc etc and then wait for other Pinterest users to come across the board, follow them and, hopefully, rent the cottage.

Why Havent I Heard Of It & Will It Be Around Long?

I'm not sure why its had such a low profile so far as there are 11 million + people already registered - (although it seems the majority are located in the States) . Like Facebook & Twitter before them though if they keep going at this rate of growth its only a matter time before everybodys talking about Pinterest. You would probably question wether we need another social media website but Pinterest is definitely different & its definitely simple to use so it may possibly fill a gap we didn't know we had.

From a business perspective its another no-brainer - if your company has a service which will potentially profit from a lot of people seeing images of what you are selling you need to be on Pinterest. Theres no charge to subscribe and many millions of people go to it every week. Only slight negative at the moment is that its invitation only and I'm not certain why this is but its a strategy which has been used to generate interest in joining an 'exclusive club' before (remember Gmail invites?) which I'm sure will change in time.


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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 http://www.websitedesignlab.co.uk have helped hundreds of small & medium sized local business maximise their revenues via cost effective SEO in Manchester and all over the UK.


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