Clare, my SCM501 tutor, has asked me to choose a social media tool that I haven’t used before and to investigate it. I immediately thought of Pinterest! It just jumped into my mind. I was glad, because looking at the array of social media tools in the above Conversation Prism I didn’t want to spend time choosing one.
I took a stab at my password and I was in. I had setup a Pinterest account when it first came out, for Pegasus Rental Cars, added some boards and pins and then left it. At that time I didn’t totally understand what it did and how my business could benefit from it. So this research will be all the more valuable for me.
The first thing that hit me when I logged in were images of a Lamborghini Huracan LP610-4, and being a bit of a car nut there was some time wasted (or not!). I think it shows you pins that match your own interests.
I had a read in Wikipedia and was blown away by the depth of information it had on Pinterest. The site started in March 2010 and, just four years later, in May 2014 it was valued at $5 billion!
Pinterest is a place to discover ideas for all your projects and interests, hand-picked by people like you.
Pinterest is a visual discovery tool where you create topics (boards) and add images (pins). You can follow and share with your friends and family and anyone else who has similar likes.
It is very popular for planning weddings as you can set up a board with everything you like from hair styles to wedding gowns, etc and share ideas with others. It’s also great for planning holidays. You can collect info on where to go and what to see before you leave. Then when you get back you can pin your own images, these will then be seen and shared by others. It’s a huge resource pool.
Researching travel destinations is fun in Pinterest
It is also very popular for food and recipes, DIY, crafts, womens’ clothing and home decorating. The sky is the limit as to what it can be used for but here’s some idea: organising events and projects, cars, pets, babies/children, photography and funny captions and quotes.
Celebrities are big on it, but mostly women and fashion. Pinboards can also be used by teachers to plan lessons and references for their students. You can choose from a list of topics or just use the search bar to find what you are interested in.
Even the wives of the 2012 US presidential election created Pinterest accounts! Michelle Obama’s boards consist of: Family, Great Memories, Around the White House, Recipe Ideas, People who Inspire me and, of course, Why we Vote. Interesting to see that she currently has 57,542 followers whereas Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign only has 40,327. Social media is increasingly being used by politics. I couldn’t find John Key yet though.
As per other social media sites you can link your Pinterest activity to Facebook, Twitter and Google+. You can log in to Pinterest using Facebook and they also have a mobile app (I just discovered I have this on my iPhone so will check it out).
There are 30+ billion pins to explore! And 70 million users. 2 million pins are sent every day. This thing is HUGE!
I did wonder how copyright worked (read what I learned about copyright in this course). Pinterest allows you to add a Pin It button to your browser so you can grab any image on the Internet. This can get a bit tricky, as although Pinterest promotes the flow of information, surely the user should be careful not to Pin copyright material. And how would you know, if the pins you are sharing within Pinterest are copyright or not?
Pinterest does allow websites to use a ‘nopin’ HTML meta tag so they can opt out, meaning you won’t be able to Pin their images. In 2012 Pinterest added automatic attribution of authors in images coming from Flickr, Behance, YouTube and Vimeo. Since we’ve already talked a bit about copyright in class, I find these image sites and potential copyright issues interesting.
At first glance, Pinterest seems to be used mostly by individuals and almost seems frivolous, without a serious purpose, albeit a bit of fun. 83% of the global users are women with the predominant age range in the US being 35-44 (interesting as I would have guessed a younger skew). The men are still there though, PlayBoy has 7,074 followers and the US Marines 27,249. In comparison Womens Health Magazine has 294,729 followers (yes, I did try to find PlayGirl but alas they don’t seem to have an account!).
Pinterest allows businesses to setup pages and brand studies show that Pinterest is more effective at driving sales than other forms of social media. This is probably because it’s so visual. To be effective a business must have pins that users want to share. Businesses can put the Pin It badge on their website, allowing Pinterest users to quickly grab their images. This is a neat piece of marketing as the image retains the website url and will therefore lead to increased traffic. B2C business such as retail and clothing companies with style trending do well on Pinterest.
One thing’s for sure, if the female is the decision maker in buying your product or service, then you should consider Pinterest. Think Lifestyle and Interest and go on from there. Say for example you sell wedding gowns. Why wouldn’t you be using Pinterest? Brides browse Pinterest for gown inspiration, put images of your gowns up, they see their dream dress, they buy it from you. Simple.
On my travels I found the Pinterest Business Guide which I have added to my reading list. Get it here, you will need a pdf reader.
Pinterest has its own Analytics. Businesses can track their activity and find out what Pinners like most. Pinterest also allows technology providers, including Hootsuite, to access the data collected on their users. Pinterest will generate its first revenue this year from advertising, when it begins charging advertisers to promote themselves to the site’s users. It is estimated that ads on the site could generate as much as $500 million in 2016!
Pinterest is working well for many businesses. Click here to read how Caribou Coffee, the second largest specialty coffee and espresso retailer in the US, launched their new coffee by engaging Pinterest users to inspire them with images. I wanted to check out how NZ brands were doing, but discovered it’s not as easy as Twitter to find official accounts in Pinterest.
Would I use it personally? When I logged in to check it out, I found friends, family and businesss colleagues already using it. I can see the benefits of using it and it’s certainly very engaging (in fact, quite hard to draw yourself away) so yes, I think so. It would be a great resource for recipes and knitting patterns. I could also see it would be great for stuff for the grandchildren, such as making things, games, activites and the like (the pin that said Potty Train in 3 Days stood out!). The issue is time, so I doubt I will use it personally right now.
Would I use it for business? Looking at what I had already setup for Pegasus Rental Cars, I don’t think it’s suitable for that business. By that I mean I cannot see Pinterest leading to any sales or business. I certainly think it would be useful for my Travel HQ business. As I am dealing with sports and school groups this would be a perfect platform to get known and attract new business. Using lifestyle and interest boards would attract users and in turn promote Travel HQ. Fundraising is a huge challenge so I could see a board on that working well.
I spent way too much time on this project, but did learn a lot in the process. As I said earlier, it’s frivolous and fun and can be a big time waster. However it’s not just images and is actually full of information on anything you may need, so it’s a great resource too.
Check it out and make up your own mind 🙂
Nana's Hype 