What's Next Marketing

Chances are, you’ve heard of Pinterest. Your girlfriend is pinning wedding or home décor ideas obsessively. Your mom is cooking and crafting things she saw on someone else’s pinboard. Maybe you’re building your dream closet. (I know I am!)

There’s no doubt that Pinterest’s popularity has skyrocketed in the last several months. Although access to the “Virtual Pinboard” is restricted to invitation only, over 3.3 million users have signed up and the site boasts 421 million page views. That means its users are pretty active and oh by the way, women, the most powerful consumers, make up 70 percent of its user base.

Pinterest was named one of the top ten social media networks of 2011 and was recently listed as one of the 60 new Timeline Apps from Facebook. If there was ever a time for a brand to start using Pinterest, it’s now. Here are four tips to help you get your feet wet and harness its PINtential.

 

1. Promote Your Products

This is fairly easy to do on Pinterest if you sell some sort of good. Simply upload a photo of said product, link back to your website and write the price in the pin description. This will automatically create a price banner across the image. If you sell products directly from your website, you could use the “Pin It” bookmarklet to do this too.

I’d avoid too much of this, though. Pinterest Etiquette Rule #3 states, “Avoid Self Promotion.” Remember, you have to walk the “salesy” line in social media, and its especially difficult on Pinterest. Keep reading for ideas to keep you on the right path.

 

2. Build Your Brand’s Identity

Pinterest is the perfect platform to build a visual representation of your brand’s identity and there are two easy ways to do this. First, use pinboards to showcase your brand’s culture. The great thing about Pinterest is that you can literally choose the images you want to represent your brand. Perhaps your brand identifies with a preppy New England lifestyle. You could easily create boards reflecting that culture. Pin images of iconic spots along the New England coast, the clothing, the food, etc. I’m visualizing Ralph Lauren models eating lobster in Nantucket just thinking about it. Help your followers do the same by creating that image for them.

The second way to build brand identity is to let your followers gain an inside glimpse into the people behind the brand. One of my favorite digital publications has a different pinboard for each of its editors and contributors. The authors then use their pinboard to feature the things they love. This helps put a face to each employee and in doing so, it allows users to create a sense of familiarity and possibly even camaraderie with the brand. Who wouldn’t want that?

 

3. Inspire Collaborations and Boost Engagement

Once you’ve got the hang of Pinterest, try using the contribute function of the pinboards. To do this, you must manually add people you are following to your “Contributors” list for an individual board. This allows users to pin images to your boards. They could contribute to your lifestyle boards, upload pins of goods or services they wish you offered or even share images of themselves enjoying your product. This is an easy way to get around the self-promotion issue, since your fans are doing the promoting for you. It also boosts engagement with your existing fan base and encourages others to start engaging with you.

 

4. Use Pinterest as Free Research

If you aren’t convinced that Pinterest is right for your brand, then the least you could do is use it as free market research. Find yourself an invite to Pinterest and create a personal account. Then just sit back and observe. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest doesn’t create private profiles. Generally speaking, any user can view any pinboard. This means you can see what potential fans of your brand like. An easy way to gather this information is to click on the different categories of boards and pins. This shows pins from everyone on Pinterest, not just users you follow. Pinners are sharing tons of information about themselves: what they eat, what they wear, where they travel, etc. Start noticing recurring trends and use that information to your brand’s advantage. If tropical locales are trending on the travel page, figure out how you can make that relevant to your brand. There are tons of inspiring marketing ideas lurking on Pinterest, you just have to discover them!

 

The Bottom Line

Whether you use Pinterest to build engagement with fans or simply for research, it can be useful for every brand out there. As its popularity continues to grow, so does its potential. Now is the time to jump onto the Pinterest bandwagon and these tips will help get you started off on the right foot.

Tell us, is your brand on Pinterest? How are you using it and what benefits have you seen so far?

 

Want to see what Lauren is pinning? Follow her Pinterest boards!

 

Tags: collaboration on pinterest, pin it, pinterest, pinterest etiquette, pinterest for brands, pinterest for business, pinterest promotions