We all have friends who seem to spend every waking hour on Twitter or Facebook. And now they have a new social media platform on which to focus their obsession – Pinterest.
If you haven’t heard of Pinterest yet, where have you been? It’s the newest social network and it’s shaping up to be very popular.
The concept is really simple. If you’ve ever made a scrapbook or collage before, you can think of Pinterest as a virtual scrapbook. If you find an image or photo online that you like, you can easily add it to one of your Pinterest boards. The attraction seems to be in the creation and sharing of Pinterest boards – not only can you create your own ideas and collections of images, but you can also share your ideas and access the boards of others.
We asked the team what they would use Pinterest for and we got a lot of different responses. One member of the team told us they would use a board as a “mood board” for an interior design project whilst another said they would amass a collection of their favourite album covers of all time.
But why is Pinterest so popular when the concept seems simple and well, not very innovative? The majority of Pinterest users are women between the ages of 25 and 44 – the top spenders in our economy. It doesn’t take a genius to work out the attraction to advertisers and marketers. Another reason to sit up and take note is that Pinterest is growing faster than Facebook did when it was first launched. However, this could simply be a by-product of our eagerness to use new social media platforms.
Right now, Pinterest is available by invitation only, but this seems to further add to its appeal. We were quite excited when we received our exclusive acceptance email and once we got started we found it quite hard to stop using the service. Actually, Pinterest isn’t as exclusive as you might think. The site has picked up several million new sign ups in the last few months.
The future for Pinterest looks bright. More and more marketers are using the platform as a ‘goto’ channel for their sales campaigns and referral programs. You’ll also see the ‘Pin It’ button appearing on more and more sites and there are rewards to be had. Consumers pinning an image or sale item will often be rewarded with secret sale alerts and other incentives. Whilst Facebook doesn’t need to start getting the needle (sorry) just yet, it seems that Pinterest is definitely one to watch in 2013.
What are your experiences with Pinterest? Are you wondering how you can factor it into your marketing strategy? We’d love to hear your ideas and tell you a little more about the power of social media in business.
