10 things you may not know about Pinterest

Pinterest?  Another social networking site? It’s just social isn’t it and not for my business!  If these comments echo your thoughts then please read on.

Yes, Pinterest is a social networking site, a visual one rather than communication via the digitally written word though of course, you can make comments.  But wait a minute let me rewind … Pinterest is a site where you can digitally pin images on boards.  Essentially you are creating what the design trade would call mood boards.

1. You can create mood or pinboards using your own images or images that are royalty-free i.e. available for use by anyone or you can repin other users’ images.Repinning is the biggest source of images on the site; roughly 80% of images are sourced from other users.  The potential for this is that your pins are likely to be seen by more and more users as they are repined – we’ll come to how this helps.
2. Pinterest is not only the fastest growing ‘start-up’ reaching 10 million users in less time than Facebook, Twitter or any other social media site, but in regards to number of users, it   already ranks amongst the highest, coming third after Facebook and Twitter.Not only that, but Pinterest continues to attract 12 million unique visitors every month and 2.2 million visitors every day.  In March 2012 104 million visits were made to the site.Pinterest currently drives more referral traffic to websites than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined.
3. When you add an image Pinterest finds the image via its image URL.  To discover what this is, just right click on the image and click ‘copy image URL’ from the menu choices.  Paste this URL into the box on Pinterest.Now anyone who repins that image links to its URL.  If that image address happens to be to your website then you’ve achieved an organic link which will help you rise in search engine ranking.
4. Don’t just promote your goods and services – in that way Pinterest is very much like all other social networking sites – other users respond better if you are not blatantly self-promoting.But at the same time, it is the perfect place to promote your products.  If your products aren’t tangible, find related ways to promote them.  An estate agent for example used the town where they had most properties as one of their tools, covering amenities and history.
5. Did you know that you can add a Pinterest button to your website?
6. Once you have your Pinterest profile up and running, use Google Analytics or a similar tool to see how many of your website visitors are referrals from Pinterest.
7. Pinterest helps to give your brand personality.  As we already know brands or businesses have personalities which attract their target customers.  Pinterest is another tool on your marketing toolbar!
8. Do you know how other brands use Pinterest?  Some use it to showcase their products; some to strengthen their lifestyle image and some to run competitions.  A clothing retailer ran a competition called ‘pin it to win it’ where visitors were encouraged to pin their products with a chance to win the same.
9. What can you learn about your potential Pinterest customers?Almost 70% of users are women
   50% of users have children
   The biggest user group is aged 25 – 34
   The 35 – 44 age group isn’t far behindBut you can check out who is repinning your images and aligning themselves to your business/brand.  What do they repin and who do they engage with?  This should give you some valuable insights
10. How do you get people to follow you?  One way is to make sure you follow people especially those who already command a large audience.  This way there is potential for more people to see your pinboards, repin and follow you.The user with the biggest following of almost 2.5 million is Jane Wang, one of the founder’s mother!  See the remainder of the top 10 users with the most followers here.