An interest in Pinterest

Pinterest: it’s the new social media phenomenon that has had a meteoric rise in popularity since its launch less than a year ago. For those yet to experience the addictive (at times all-consuming) realm that is Pinterest – here’s a quick 101. Pinterest is a virtual pinboard which lets you organise and share everything cool that you find on the internet. It’s genius, really. The internet is chock-full of images of amazing places, beautiful homes, recipes, art, funny-looking animals and unbelievable videos and sometimes you stumble across something that you don’t want to lose. Instead of saving the link to a document on your desktop or printing the page out and being left with piles of scrap paper – now, you can Pin it. Pinning an image off a website will transfer that image (and the link to the source website) onto one of your Pinterest Boards. These pinboards can be organised according to your interests – I have one for recipes, one for clothing, one for places I’d like to visit one day and so on and so forth. Or, you can scroll through a live feed of images that other people have Pinned, and Repin them to your own Boards - saving you the hassle of doing the web searching yourself, and often showing you things you never even knew you wanted. It’s an intriguing kettle of fish, this one – a brilliant concept. It has opened up a world of uninhibited online sharing that (in my mind) far surpasses that of Facebook or Twitter. The crucial point of difference that Pinterest has over other social media sites is that the sharing is unrestricted. Anyone can see anything that anyone else in the world has Pinned at any time – it’s quite remarkable. Most interesting is that this all-inclusive news feed provides an easy way to follow global trends (which, by the way, are currently: anything to do with s’mores and cupcakes that look like animals). But the question on every brand manager’s mind is: what does Pinterest mean for my business? Pinterest means that any brand images you have that are unique, strange, pretty or lead to something useful can spread like wildfire – it’s the quickest way for things to go viral, and your content leads back to your website, which can greatly increase page visits. It also gives small companies ‘discoverability’ – you don’t need to be a major brand to be seen, as Pinterest shows people products/brands/styles they wouldn’t usually come across by plugging key words into a search engine (or think to search for at all). Here are some tips to help make Pinterest work for your brand: - Follow, Repin and Like others: if you like their style, they make like yours and follow you back - Create boards beyond your products and brands, but related in some way: for instance, if you’re an airline, Pin amazing travel photos; if you’re a health brand, Pin healthy living and fitness messages; a pregnancy brand, Pin other tips useful to pregnant women - Add a Pinterest icon to your website - Make sure you generate visually appealing content that links back to your website or blog - Provide images that lead to a list of useful tips (e.g. how to make your own beer) - Don’t go overboard with the same old brand images: you don’t want to alienate other Pinterest users by spamming them with boring content! I believe that this one’s here to stay: you can only explore Facebook for so long before the select group of people that you are ‘friends’ with run out of things to say or show you. But there’s always something new on Pinterest – the potential for procrastination is huge, but so is the potential for your brand. It may be time to show an interest in Pinterest! Find the pr shop on Pinterest at www.pinterest.com/theprshop/ Alisa Keall-Grant, on behalf of the pr shop