Are you interested in the new social phenomenon that is Pinterest?

I’ve pulled together some information to explain what Pinterest is and also have included interesting articles on this phenomenal site where “Pinners”organize and share things they find on the web on boards, similar to a virtual scrapbook.

To get an account, you can go to Pinterest.com and request an invitation, or, have a friend invite you.

Of course this is a social site, so you can view the boards displayed by others, helping people reveal common links and share the things they love. Straight from Pinterest, “Pins are the most useful when they have links back to the original source. If you notice that a pin is not sourced correctly, leave a comment so the original pinner can update the source. Finding the original source is always preferable to a secondary source such as Google Image Search or a blog entry.”

You can invite friends by adding their email addresses, or uploading your contacts from Facebook.

When you sign up for Pinterest, it automatically has you follow the boards of your Facebook friends, and puts a Pinterest section on your timeline. You can change this by going to Pinterest Help

 

 

 

As long as you’re following at least one board of a fellow Pinner, you can @mention that Pinner in a pin/repin description. Ex. @Rebecca Blackwell – I thought you’d like this one…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can also let other people contribute to your boards (pin the things they want to add to it), user specific. Here’s how.

I’m fascinated by the statistics and the user demographics!  As of now, this site has over 4 million users and is still on an invite-only membership basis.

“Google Ad planner shows that users are:

• Largely women (a 80% to 20% ratio). So there’s some truth to Matt Buchanan’s post on Gizmodo yesterday that proclaims Pinterest as “a Tumblr for ladies”.
• Aged mainly between 25 and 44 (accounting for 55% of the group, 30% are 25-34, 25% are 35 – 44)
• Just 25% of users have a bachelors degree or higher
• The majority live off a household income of $25-75k”

This article shows the demographics of Pinterest members in the United States and compares them with those of the U.K. Floating Path – Demographics of Pinterest

THE POINT of Pinterest from a Marketing Standpoint

From Jura Koncuis of the Washington Post Style blog, “It’s an online filing system (of your LIKES)… It’s also why marketers are flocking to the site. It’s becoming a huge source of traffic to online stores thanks to those who decide to make the dream pinboards a very real purchase.”

Some say that this site is a perfect marketing tool for: tourism marketing, product marketing (especially for online stores), fashion, design, and anything that is made appealing through photos.

Also, in a recent Social Media Today article, they explain how “Pinterest is generating more referral traffic to websites/blogs than YouTube, Google +, and LinkedIn combined” of course, done by pinning content on their sites that is “re-pinnable” and commenting on other’s pins, and sharing other’s content.

Yes, this is the same song, different verse. In order to be successful in using social media as a marketing tool, you have to produce engaging, viral content, interact with others (comment, like, repost), and be social!

 What’s my conclusion? If you’ve got a “picture perfect” business model, you’d better be on Pinterest! And, I’m going to be posting case studies of traffic before/after the use of Pinterest on a couple different sites so stay tuned for the results…

 

 

Be sure to add the Pinterest icon to your website and the “pin it” icon to your blog if you do get involved in the “pinning” community!

 

 

YOUR THOUGHTS… Are you on Pinterest? What do you think? Please comment below!