Should you care about Pinterest?

M uch has been said about Pinterest, the world’s newest social media sweetheart. We have seen many platforms come and go very quickly in the Social Media Globosphere, but Pinterest is one of those which YOU want to pay attention to.

Why should you? Well, Pinterest got 13 million users in just 10 months, making it one of the fastest growing websites in history.

Another interesting fact about Pinterest is that it’s being used by more than 100 brands. In the United States, most of its users are female, still in the U.K., they’re male. Either way, the people who use Pinterest are the ones who are so in love with the site that they can’t stop talking about it.

Do you need more reasons? Check this out. Pinterest is actually sending more traffic to other websites than Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube combined! You heard right; COMBINED.

But, what the heck is Pinterest?

Much alike to Reddit or StumbleUpon, Pinterest is a virtual bulletin or cork board that lets users find and collect images and videos. Unlike other photo sharing sites, the emphasis here is on the discovery and collecting of other people’s content, rather than uploading your own. Although, of course, you can upload your own content. It has to start somewhere.

This is without doubt in trend with social media’s continued accent on rich media — ring a bell on Twitter’s enhanced video and photo screening as well as the recent changes to Facebook’s image viewer?

Pinterest: How does it work?

Pinterest gives you the opportunity to use visual resources like photos or Infographics as a kind of social currency — Pinterest’s “likes” and “repins” are the equivalent to shares or retweets — at the same time it’s supplementing web pages, blog posts, or other text-based media.

You may easily place images from other sites to your Pinterest Boards using the “Pin it” task bar button, or you can just look around in the Pinterest playground to find out, like, or “Repin” material that others have already found.

They way Pinterest looks like is the main reason why so many businesses are paying attention to it. You may see from retailers to photographers and designers, who are using it as a dossier or product catalog.

Consumers and clients can tell which products they love the most (shoes, paints, furniture, shirts … you name it) and want to acquire for themselves, and their friends can further the endorsement by pinning the pictures of the things they just fall in love with to their own walls.

How do you keep things in order on Pinterest?

Each account on Pinterest is allowed to have multiple Boards. This is a very cleaver solution for having ONE social media identity with different interests.

Many people own and manage multiple Twitter accounts (at least two); one for business and one for enjoyment. But on Pinterest, you can collect boards that are unrelated and they don’t get in the way nor clutter your followers’ streams.

That’s correct, you follow people on Pinterest (like you do in Twitter) but you can choose to follow all of a user’s boards or just one — so that you can find the content that is most relevant to your interests.

This type of following up is not like Facebook, where content segmentation lies in the hands of the Page or Profile only, not the friend, fan, or member.

Can you control who Pins you?

Yes. You can create boards that only the admin can pin to or boards that allow the admin and other specific people to pin to that particular board. Or you can create a “community board” that anyone can pin to. This multiplicity of ways to collect and share information has made Pinterest something that people likes very much, including me.

Small Business & Pinterest

Pinterest does not have brand pages — so you get no metrics yet in comparison to Facebook’s Fanpages. However, even when Pinterest is still in its early developing stage, brands can still get involved with it.

Get use to the platform, play with it as as a user first, and then put that knowledge to work for your BRAND identity and presence.

What’s to come?

The same that happen with the “Like” or “Tweet”, “PIN” can be the next social “verb”, and given its current growth, we can expect more things to come for this site to take all over our lives, just like Facebook and Twitter already have.

You think your BRAND has no business being on Pinterest? Stay tuned for Ideas to make Pinterest a part of your Social Media Marketing Strategy.

Vice-President of Unlimited Concepts / Uconcept.com – He is a Social Media Specialist, as well as a Web Graphic Designer, Online Entrepreneur, Social Media Administrator, and Consultant. Michael has worked throughout the years helping businesses owners and individuals to to put their businesses on the Social Networks in order to gain social proof and to perform effective and practical approach to Social Media Marketing.

“Should you care about Pinterest?”