Pinterest, the Gateway Drug to Business By: Paige Breedlove
Introduction Pinterest has a unique way of creating an escape for people. It gives them the chance to gaze at a computer screen for hours, creating imaginary weddings, decorating mansions that don’t exist and crafting wreaths that could give Martha Stewart a run for her money. Pinterest exploded on the scene in 2010, and has been the fastest growing social media site ever, surpassing the frenzy of what is Facebook and Twitter. This new social media craze has the stats that say, we’re here to stay. With over 10 million users in just a short period of just 9 consecutive months, Businesses have taken notice of the site’s immense growth and are deciding to engage their audience and brand their companies through this ever-‐growing media platform. How the Pinning Began Pinterest by some has been deemed the anti-‐aging start up. The small start up company called Cold Brew Labs founded by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp. These three guys started the now mega social media site with just a small group of investors and an idea. Pinterest was developed in 2009 and the site was officially launched as a closed beta in March 2010. Closed beta versions of a website are only accessible to a certain group of people. Pinterest used the closed beta method in the origination
of the site so it could closely track its users as a test market for the website. Pinterests CEO’s decided the closed beta method would grant them greater knowledge in their research to see what Pinteret’s target market was to gain stronghold consumer analysis. The CEO’s were so consumed in this research phase that they would personally write some of the site’s users. Pinterest’s CEO Ben Silbermann personally wrote to the website’s first 5,000 users giving them his personal cell phone number and he actually met with some of the pinners. The company really wanted to gain a strong understanding of who a Pinterest pinner was. The CEO’s of Pinterest created this mission statement, “Our goal is to connect everyone in the world through the 'things' they find interesting. We think that a favorite book, toy, or recipe can reveal a common link between two people. With millions of new pins added every week, Pinterest is connecting people all over the world based on shared tastes and interests” (Pinterest.com/about, 2010). What is Pinterest? In the beginning, Pinterest was an invitation only social media site where users had to be invited by an active user and then approved by the site to gain access. Smart. This set the tone for the site, giving it an elitist feel. Not everyone had immediate access to the site making the consumers who were on Pinterest feel special, in turn, those feelings translated into the word of mouth advertising. In
the social media world, people began to react to the invitation only meaning, “You’re only the who’s who of social media if you are a Pinterest user.” The invitation only site let the users escape into the world of all things beautiful. All things beautiful found on the web of course. Pinterest is a site where users organize and share pictures of interest and categorize their thoughts onto virtual pinboards. Terminology: Pin: “An image added to Pinterest. A pin can be added from a website using the Pin It button, or you can upload images from your computer. Each pin added using the Pin It button links back to the site it came from” (Pinterest.com/about, 2010). Pinboard: “A board is a set of pins. A board can be created on any topic, such as Cool Posters, Recipes For Dinner, or Wish list. You can add as many pins to a board as you want” (Pinterest.com/about, 2010). Follow: “Following someone means you'll see that person’s pins shown to you in real-‐time on Pinterest. If he/she creates a new board, you’ll automatically follow the new board as well. You can follow individual boards if you're only interested
in seeing pins being added to specific boards. You can un-‐follow other people or boards at any time: they will not be notified” (Pinterest.com/about, 2010). Although pinning, re-‐pinning, organizing boards are an immediate staple of what makes up Pinterest, the best part of the site is that incorporates social media into every facet. Not only can users find pictures they love and pin them to their organized boards, but also they have followers and can follow friends and re-‐pin their pins as well as like them. Not only can pinners browse pin boards created by other people and discover inspiring new things from others who share similar interest, but also pinners can share pins on Facebook and Twitter. Pinterest’s Appeal to Businesses A photo-‐sharing site where women make up almost 90 percent of its users is attracting major market dominant brands, may seem like an oxymoron to marketing majors. Why would big business choose a site with such a focused target market? Here’s why: Pinterest has over 2.2 million daily active users and approximately 12 million monthly users. These users don’t just click on and off of the site either; the bounce rate for an average pinner staying on Pinterest is 89 minutes. This means two times more people are visiting pinterest than Twitter, LinkedIn, myspace and Google+ combined. Pinners are not just accessing the site from
their home computers, the average Pinterest pinner accesses the site from more than 2 devices, and whether it’s a PC, mobile, or tablet, Pinterest is assessable everywhere. Why are businesses taking notice? Traffic. Pinterest is driving more consumers to websites and blogs that YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIN combined. Pinterest is a recommendation engine, and a source for widespread awareness and sales. Consumers come to Pinterest for ideas and inspiration about products and they leave with a site where they can purchase that very product they desire, these people are potential adovates and influencers on a brand. The activity on pinterest is comparable recommendations and reviews. Pinterest is the gateway drug to the business. If a business is trying to figure out if they should dive in the social pool a little deeper and use Pinterest as an advertising medium, there is now a tool that can help them do just that. Decide. Entrepreneur.com says, “Users go to MarketMeSuite.com/pinme, enter their company’s URL and instantly see how many pinners are promoting that company on Pinterest. The very basic website bypasses the convoluted alternative: applying to join Pinterest and waiting up to 24 hours to receive an invitation; once inside, a company can conduct only a hit-‐or-‐miss search using keywords (not a specific URL) to see who has pinned a photo of one of its products”(Duncan, 2012). Since time is money, business can now forecast
whether they would be successful using Pinterest without wasting time to create an account. Businesses can see before hand if people are pinning their company and things related to their company. As always, when preparing to market via a social media site, what matters is content. With any other marketing strategy, you don’t want to use Pinterest to talk about yourself directly; you want to use it to appeal to the people. Advertisers cater to their customers by showing them that they understand them, and by offering things and or content that fill voids in there lives. Businesses do this by sharing things they like; things that are helpful and not only inspire the company itself but their customers. Tell your company’s passions story by telling your customers. To be successful marketing on Pinterest, companies must research what their consumers are looking at on their accounts and develop content that focuses consumer needs and wants. Here are some tips for creating engaging content on twitter that businesses can used to gain more traffic to your business: Use creative captions to attract pinners to the pin. Pinterest developed a search feature that takes keywords from captions underneath photos and categorizes them. By using key words that are broad will attract pinners to your content because that a lot of people will be typing in broad search terms. It is also important to use key words that will link straight to your business. For example, if you own a monogramming business, include broad key words such as, home
décor, wedding gifts, baby shower gifts, monograms, and gifts. Since many people come to Pinterest to get ideas, someone who is looking for a unique idea for a wedding gift may stumble upon your business and increase traffic to your businesses website. Also, and important thing to remember when creating captions is to use a call to action. An example of a call to action statement would be: click this pin to visit the best site for monogramming, and give the pinner a compelling reason to click the image.. Another great example for a call to action statement I found for a makeup company, “Pin now, read later -‐-‐ A list of drugstore make-‐ups that are duplicates of department store brands.. pretty much the greatest pin on the planet” (makeuploversunite.tumblr.com). Statements such pin now, read later is a call to action and a stating that the pin is the greatest pin on the planet adds excitement to the caption. Not only do creative captions build traffic to your site, but incorporating a “pin it” button on your website will further engage your current fans. Using a pin it button allows business accounts to embed a pin it button on your website for any image on Pinterest. A very important part of gaining traffic from your website to your Pinterest account is letting consumers pin anything from your site. Even if the photo is not on Pinterest, this allows consumers to capitalize on your business instead of only accessing your images on Pinterest alone. Putting a pin it button next to everything on your site, whether it’s a photo of a product the company is merchandising or the button is at the end of a blog post, the pin it button allows the customer to feel special. When a consumer is in the mind set
that they discovered the photograph and they can show their followers the great pin they found, it creates a feeling of pride. Getting the consumer to tap into a sense of emotion is always priceless. The savviest marketers understand that successful products appeal to the heart, not the mind. Excitement and anticipation are two emotions that can be tapped into consumers by the use of contests. Contests have the ability to deeply engage the consumer. When a consumer discovers they have a chance at gaining a product for free, that always creates excitement. The excitement of the contests leads consumers to anticipation, constantly bringing the person back to the site to see if they have picked a winner. Although a company may be loosing money in the tangible product they are giving away, what is priceless is the traffic the company is generating. Contests deliver traffic and Pinterest has a great platform for contests to flourish. When it comes to using Pinterest for company contest, Volvo has done an impeccable job of creating a contest that was engaging and appealed to their fans. Now, Volvo fans can take a joyride with Volvo’s new Pinterest campaign called “Volvo Joyride.” Clickz.com said, “In the new promotion, Pinterest users who create a pinboard named “Volvo Joyride” through September 26 and pin the Volvo model S60 T5 AWD along with their favorite road trip destination, stops, attractions, outfits, songs, and other items that make up their ideal trip will be entered to win one four-‐day lease of the aforementioned car. Winners receive additional road trip perks, including a two-‐night hotel stay and gift cards for gas,
food/beverage, clothing, and music. Three winners will be selected with the most re-‐pins, likes, and comments.” Already 600 people have participated in the “Volvo Joyride” campaign and it has brought over 790 followers to the Pinterest account. Volvo has done something really special. Not only do fans get to come back to the brand and interact, it also creates new fans of the brand. As a brand loyal Ford girl myself, when I participate in contests such as Volvo’s, it creates a new love affair and Ford and I become long lost friends. When brands get consumers invested into contests such as these, it creates new brand fans. Another way to engage consumers is through the gift section on Pinterest. In the navigation bar under the main Pinterest page there is a tab button labeled gift. This function is perfect for retailers because it essentially lets consumers who are looking to buy something get direct access to the purchasing site of the product they want on Pinterest. All business have to do is write the price in the caption and a small grey banner with the price will automatically appear in the top left hand corner of the pin, all the business has to do is copy and paste the link of where that particular product is on your website and where the consumer can actually check out and buy it. Also, when you put the price of the item in the caption it also allows consumers to search items by price. Aggregating content by directly guiding consumers to your sight is great but how will businesses know it’s successful? Tracking referral traffic and leads is
essential in understanding where your customers are coming from. Understanding where your customers come from is vital in understanding how to market to them as well as creating engaging content to mold brand fans out of those customers. Companies can track how many people that are coming to their websites from Pinterest by using tracking tokens at the end of their source links. URLs generally have tracking tokens after the landing page information (Pitre, 2010). For an example of what a tracking token look like, focus the attention at the bolded part of the URL that is the tracking token. http://www.yourwebsite.com/your-‐landing-‐page/?utm_campaign=test-‐ campaign&utm_source=email Companies can use tracking tokens along with analytic software to access information about who is coming to your website from the Pinterest pages tracking token. These tracking measures allow businesses to analyze the return on investment from the marketing strategies taken on Pinterest. This also allows companies to figure out which pins are bringing them the most traffic. What was successful about that pin? Was it the content? Was it the picture? Companies can analyze this information and keep the same ideas that were successful and implement them in future strategies. The Future of Pinterest
The picture sharing social media website has undoubtedly seen growth since its creation with an estimated user count at 25.3 million. Just recently Pinterest installed a couple of changes to its website that I believe put them on the map of powerful social media sites. In August, Pinterest made the decision to open the site to anyone. Yes, anyone. That means no more waiting around for an invitation. This is a huge step for Pinterest because this allows users to get access faster; therefore this may be the single reason why Pinterest made the top 50 lists. Moving from a closed beta to an open beta brings so much opportunity because open betas serve the dual purpose of signifying a product to new customers. Anytime a company can present their products to a new customer it give the company the opportunity of developing new brand loyal fans, something companies always strive to achieve. Not only is access easier with the transition to open beta, Pinterest has stepped it up in their privacy department. Now pinners can pin at their own discretion with the ability to block and report other users. Now that Pinterest is joining the social media band wagon, Pinners now have the ability to block and report other users. To block someone, pinners must go on the naughty pinners profile page and click the little flag to the right of the picture. Once clicked, pinners have the option to report for nudity and pornography, personal attacks, graphic violence, hate speech, inflicting self-‐ harm, spam and other.
So what does this mean for businesses? It means that they have to be more selective with the content that they pin. Before, business could pin as their hearts desired and their followers would see their content. Now, their followers may not even be viewing those pins. It is more crucial now for promoters to understand their followers and listen to them and accommodate to what they want to see.
Conclusion
When it comes to marketing any type of business on a social media site it all comes down to one concept, content. Engaging content that your audience wants to hears is the tool to having a successful marketing campaign on Pinterest. Many business attack the social media site in the wrong way by filling up their pinboards as you would fill up a shopping carts, full of things your own businesses would sell such as products and services. Taking things from this paper, hopefully one learns that bringing traffic to your company just doesn't come from pinning your own products, it comes from the content that brings the consumer to your product by using broad key words and call to action statements and related stories that surround your brand. Remember, marketing a business on Pinterest should be all about conveying the lifestyle that surrounds your brand. As always, the golden rule to Pinterest is, the amount of compelling content your Pinterest account generates directly reflects the amount of repins your pins recieve. Repins and likes lead more traffic to your
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