Pinterest is a relatively new kid on the block of social media marketing. Firstly designed as a way to spread images on a social level, it is now used as quick fire way of researching trends, drawing attention to topical issues and of course, showcasing your brand’s products.
Unlike Facebook, Twitter and many other social networks, Pinterest can be said to be relatively simple as a tool. By reducing the communication to a series of re-postable pictures, Pinterest has created a simple easy social network that is addictive to users – a very enticing prospect for brands trying to push up their website traffic. According to Stephanie Lichtenstein, founder and president of Micro Media Marketing, Pinterest drives more traffic than YouTube, Google+ and Linkedin combined. Why is Pinterest becoming more effective than other social media? Let us look at the 5 reasons below.
1. A Picture Speaks a Thousand Words
Firstly, Pinterest only has one sole focus. Unlike many of the other social networking sites, Pinterest is only about pictures. With limited text available on the site, aside from descriptions, the main focus is the spread of visual resources from one person to another. With each user adding photos and cartoons and illustrations, and then others copying and sharing those pictures, a network of collages have evolved which showcase not only art and design but also products.
How does this benefit business?
As a brand, posting pictures of your own products allows the general public to see what you’re offering as a company. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, this social network only really allows for certain industries to progress with this method, such as fashion, art and design or food, but those forums should certainly utilize the quick spread of information on Pinterest to allow the pictures of their products to go viral.
2. What’s Trending?
The layout of Pinterest is like a whirlwind collage of visual information from all different types of sources – individuals, businesses, creators, replicators. This allows users to be immediately presented with what other users are interested in. As with buying patterns, people prefer peer reviews of almost anything, therefore when faced with ‘popular’ images, most users will generally agree with what is trending.
How does this benefit business?
With an immediate appearance of what is popular, you can tailor your brand posts and photography of your products to mirror trending posts within Pinterest.
3. Less Steps to Success
Although many businesses use Twitter for marketing, people are rarely likely to click on a link with the limited information given through a post on Twitter. Equally on Facebook, posts will lead to the page where users have to ‘like’ the page then actively search for your website and on and on and on. With so many steps involved, potential customers are deterred from buying from you as it’s not easy. To convince someone to buy your product, you need to make it as practically simple as possible, and that’s what Pinterest does. When a user clicks on a picture in Pinterest, it is hyperlinked to lead directly to the original website source.
How does this benefit business?
With certain social networking sites such as Facebook, learning how to create a website link that is discreet to the user is not the easiest thing to do. On Pinterest however, when you ‘pin’ a picture from your website to the boards, it automatically hyperlinks that picture to the page where consumers can buy your product. This makes for quick and easy sales.
4. Backlinking to Create Traffic
In addition to the hyperlinks on pictures, each visual aid ‘pinned’ on to a Pinterest board has a link to the original source of the picture. This is a way of ensuring that all posts give credit to the original artists, photographer or company that the picture came from. It also creates a lead for users to know where they can find the product.
How does this benefit business?
By creating a website link every time a picture is posted from your website, it creates a series of backlinks to your site which help to promote your brand. By ensuring that backlinking is present for your company, it increases the ‘search’ results on search engines and in turn increases hits on your website.
5. Social Integration
As we know, one social media tool alone is not always the most efficient way of making your brand known to the public. It certainly doesn’t allow for consumers to find you easily on searches. However, Pinterest integrates seamlessly with many social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, allowing replication of your posts when you ‘pin’ on Pinterest.
How does this benefit business?
By integrating social network sites it has two main advantages for branding. Firstly, it creates more posting content as posts are replicated between sites. Secondly, by integrating the systems it allows users to find your brand more easily through Pinterest as well as through search engines.
[Recommended read: Retailers Try To Reap The Benefits Of Pinterest]
About the author : Freelance writer Emily Jenkins has a keen interest in social media. Her writing focuses on all the steps it takes to promote your business, from building an eye catching website using www.shopwpthemes.com, to setting up social networking sites, to organizing a schedule to release content.
I really liked this post. Pinterest is a great tool. I agree with the point that pinterest is better than twitter and facebook as we don’t need to search for links. We can automatically get what we want by clicking the image. 🙂
I don’t know the reason but Pinterest sucks for my site. I get no more than 10-15 visits from Pinterest though I get lot of repins. Its Strange………
It seems like almost every new image-sharing site nowadays can become a tool for making business and earning money. Pinterest sure is interesting and is simpler unlike that of Facebook and Twitter. Thanks for sharing the many ways how Pinterest benefits online and offline businesses.
Pinterest is great because we pin a stuff with images and Images are self explanatory. Apart from FB I love it howwver I am not so active there. but I will be doing there.
Pinterest can be a great tool for business depending on what you do. You need to take into account that their audience is composed primarily of female users between the ages of 25 – 55. If you’re not getting much traffic, referring to the comments above, than you should work on appealing more to their audience.
I agree that Pinterest is becoming the next social marketing media tool, but I guess Pinterest is actually meant for female. Most of the Pinterest users are female. If you have a website about flowers, recipes, shopping and pets you can get a hell lot of traffic. But for others it’s useless. I am sorry to say this, but it’s not for a guy like me. Thanks.
Pinterest has really grown up rapidly since it was initially announced. It has now become my second highest referral traffic generator after Facebook, it works really great.
I sort of hate pinterest. It seems like it is all that internet marketers want to talk about, but I hate using it. Its hard for me to imagine someone liking to use it, which makes it realy hard for me to integrate Pinterest in to my social media sharing strategies apart from making it an available sharing option.
I have a pinterest but never gotten any real traffic from it, any tips about this?
Use interesting images! That should help!
Cool thank you. Im looking to use this as a tool for my blog. Thank you.
Nice post Peter. Pinterest is one that has slipped through the net for some companies and marketers.