Wow has the new social site Pinterest roared onto the scene as the newest platform to join the ranks of Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
If for some reason you haven’t heard all the buzz, Pinterest is an online bulletin board where you can post images of things you love. It was launched in 2010 and has more than 7 million visitors since December, which was up from 1.6 million in September.
Here’s the real buzz, according to content sharing site Shareaholic, it is driving more traffic to company websites and blogs than You Tube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined!
Consumers are using the site to add and organize images into specific categories. You can ‘pin’ something new and your followers will see what you added to your site. They can then comment, like or re-pin it to their own boards/page. Pretty cool and you can see how images and content can go viral pretty quickly.
Why should business care?
Well, if you are a retailer for example, you can post images of your products and link them back to your own website, the trick is that you also need to engage with others peoples boards and re-pin their images and contribute. Again, don’t don’t forget this is the age of social engagement, which means you need to maneuver the maze of social media and engage with people. The key as a business is not limit the sales pitch and instead pin pictures of related products that will inspire people who visit your page.
If your business has lots of visuals Pinterest can be great for you vs those businesses that do not. If you are a CPA firm it might be hard to share interesting images vs if you are a gourmet food store with all kinds of visuals.
Remember to follow interesting people and boards that inspire you, start pinning some other people’s images and you will start to get some followers. Once you start to build followers you could pin a special or coupon and see where the road leads from there.
