One of the fascinating things about Pinterest is that the early adopters of the platform were not your typical set of early adopters like- folks like tech entrepreneurs, Silicon Valley investors, and social media experts and the like. \n
Rather the early adopters of Pinterest was predominatly midwestern housewives who gravitated to the platform’s and tapped into a deep desire to tastemakers and content curators share their aesthetic, their style, their interesting finds with others \n
So with that said.... For those of you who are not familiar with Pinterest, its a visual social network that allows users to save and share their favorite images and products from across the web. It looks like this. \n
Pinterest is the 3rd largest social network, after Facebook and Twitter. \n
and its growing fast. really really fast. its growing at a faster rate than twitter and facebook did 2 yrs after launched. its one of the fastest growing sites in the history of the internet. \n
So thats interesting. Why does it matter?\n
As opposed to the traffic driven from other social networks which is typically driven towards internet meme’s, youtube remixes of call me maybe, news articles, etc. A significant amount of the referral traffic from pinterest is being driven towards companies. \n
To put that in context, thats more refferal traffic than linkedin, reddit, youtube, and google+ combined.\n
3.6% of all \n
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Pinterest may be one of the few ways to access these valuable consumers. In fact, 1 in 4 Pinterest users are reporting they are spending less time on sites likes Facebook and twitter in favor of Pinterest. \n
I am going to talk about a number of tricks, concepts, and hacks to help your company master pinterest. \n
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Totsy pinned something about a month ago to Pinterest. It was a photo of fruit in a waffle cone. It garnered 1,130 repins, 200 likes, 8 comments, 95k impressions, and resulted in 800 new followers. Those 95,000 impressions meants that 95,000 unique users were exposed to Totsy on Pinterest. There are a few lessons here. \n
As with other social networks, there is a temporal nature of the content and the time during which you pin makes a big difference. \n
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As with other social networks, there is a temporal nature of the content and the time during which you pin makes a big difference. \n
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Here is a board by Stitcher Radio, a SF based startup that has a podcast app (im a huge fan of). They post pictures of their office, parties, and employees to make their pinterest page more personal and social. \n
This lesson is where probably 90% of the new businesses I see trying to make an impact on Pinterest fail. If you have a business account on Pinterest and someone has chosen to follow your pins, then chances are they are aware of your products have have visited your page to see what you have to offer. If your only plan with Pinterest is to only pin your products or images from your site, then chances are you will fail miserably.\nA great rule of thumb I like to tell my clients is only 1 pin per day showcasing a product. The rest of the pins should be advice, insights, or something funny that relates to the industry and account itself. Whole Foodsnever pins any sort of products to their boards, and for good reason. They have chosen to remain true to their core values and only pin about:\n\n
Whole Foods is a great example of this. They never pin any sort of products to their boards, and for good reason. They have chosen to remain true to their core values and only pin about:Caring about the community and the environment\nPromoting healthy eating and education to our stakeholders\nSelling the highest quality organic and natural foods available\nCreating ongoing win-win partnerships with our suppliers\n\n
This is a bergdorf goodman board with books they reccomend. They are a high end clothing department store yet they have ammased a following of 25k people by offering reading suggestions that appeal to their target demographic. Its been so successful They have turned it into a weekyl book club called FridayReads. \n
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Who’s talking about and engaging with your brand? Whats interesting about Pinterest is that a mjaority of the conversation and engagement around a brand is happening from one consumer with another, as opposed to coming from the brand’s page. For Triple Lift clients we have found that 79% of the engagement has nothing to do with the brand’s page whatsoever. If you look at Pinterest, there are no brands in the top 15 most followed accounts. So as a marketer we need to be thinking about activating that 79%. So, how do you empower your audience to be your salesforce. \n