Should Pinterest be Part of Your Content & Social Media Strategy? Part 1

Posted July 14, 2012

In Content Strategy, Social Media Marketing

This is part 1 of a 3-part series to help you navigate the latest social media darling, Pinterest.

Several recent client engagements have given me the opportunity to dig into Pinterest and evaluate all that this popular new platform has to offer businesses. From a content strategy perspective, the platform provides much of the same benefits as other photo sharing sites/tools, but Pinterest’s structure, functionality, and social sharing components offer some unique opportunities for ANY company who might benefit from telling their story and communicating with customers via photos and video.

Quick User Stats Update (as of April 2012)

The growth and popularity of the platform is eye-opening. A recent comScore report says that Pinterest is now the third-largest social networking site with more than 18 million monthly unique visitors. The average visit lasts 14.2 minutes. The gender tide is also turning. While still leaning towards females, male Pinterest usage has grown, now up to 32% as of April 2012.

Stating the Obvious

When you first jump on Pinterest and browse through the existing categories, it’s pretty obvious which industries are no-brainers to use the platform, such as:

Arts / Crafts
Consumer Electronics
Fashion ==>
Food / Beverage
Health & Beauty Products
Home Décor
Lifestyle / Recreation
Travel

Using Fashion as an example, one of our clients (an apparel manufacturer) has seen a steady increase in referral traffic and sales from Pinterest over the past few months, most of which has been organic sharing of product photos from their website. Evaluating their data has helped us make the case for a more robust strategy for Pinterest board creation, daily pinning, and engagement with targeted Pinterest users.

The Not-So Obvious

What I’ve really enjoyed about these recent client engagements is getting a chance to think about creative ways that other, not-so-obvious industries might use the platform. New Pinterest categories are being added to the platform, and it’s not hard to make a case for many of these:

Advertising/Marketing Agencies — Promote your design portfolio
Automotive – Promote vehicles, interiors, customer photos
Education – Curriculum or topic-based boards
Healthcare / Medical – Patient education, infographics
Home Remodeling / Contractors – Inspiration boards, before/after shots
Hotels / Resorts / Casinos – Experiential / lifestyle shots
Printing / Packaging Companies – promote capabilities and inspiration boards
Local Government / CVBs — Capture the visuals of your community
Manufacturers – Promote products, show behind the scenes
Real Estate / Property Management – Experiential photos of individual properties
Restaurants – Food shots, experiential / lifestyle

Part 2 – What Should Your Pinterest Strategy (Content/Engagement) Look Like?

In part 2 of this series, we’ll walk through six different strategic approaches that we’ve experimented with on Pinterest. To be notified when part 2 is posted, click here!

Brody Dorland

Brody leads the DivvyHQ team with more than 20 years of experience in the trenches of corporate marketing, advertising agencies, entrepreneurship and establishing himself as one of country's top digital marketing strategists. Brody's primary focus is helping companies and marketing agencies shift their mindset, structures and processes so that they will think, act and consistently deliver like publishers.