Member Article

Pinterest - The Visual Web

Pinterest is an online visual pinboard that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, hobbies and more. By using images and videos, you tell the user a story by pinning valuable content for the community. Users can browse other pinboards for inspiration, ‘re-pin’ images to their own collections and or ‘like’ photos.

With 10 million users and almost 70% of these are women between the ages of 25 and 54, it is the fastest growing social platform on the web. Pinterest is driving more traffic than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined. Users spend, on average, 15.8 minutes ‘pinning’ per day, compared to 12.1 minutes by Facebook users.

You can share pins to Facebook and Twitter, boosting social sharing, so more eyes can see your visual content.

Strategy

• • Think colour, tone, design and themes. Imagining Pinterest as your company’s magazine/catalogue is a strong strategy.
• • Visual inspiration can sometimes be a challenge, so take the time to find images that are fun to share. If you find them interesting and thought provoking, others probably will too.
• • Invest time to find relevant content, interact and build relationships.
• • Define your boards. Organise your pinboards into categories that define the products and services you offer.
• • Be creative and plan. What topics convey the personality of your brand?
• • Create boards that engage with visitors and don’t necessarily promote a specific product, but teaches consumers more about your brand.
• • Find and know your audience. Is your brand already being pinned?
• • Interact and engage. Once you find users are pinning and promoting items from your website, interact and engage with them.
• • ‘Repin’, ‘like’ or ‘mention’ are great ways to start conversations and interactions.

Pinterest is an incredible viral tool and visual platform which makes it perfect for businesses like photographers and designers. Being on Pinterest can help:

• • Get Discovered and drive more traffic to your site.
• • When an image from your site gets Pinned, the Pin links back to that page on your site. Links can also be added to the pin description box.Links help SEO.
• • Link Building is a major part of search engine optimisation. Off site links to your site are a big factor in how well your site ranks in the search engines. Along with that, social mentions now factor into search engine ranking.
• • The Pinned links from your site, get a “followed” link back to your website. Because Pinterest has a very high domain authority incoming links to your site are even more valuable.Increase brand awareness.
• • Brand exposure in a visual and fresh way.
• • Encourage and allow people to share, comment and interact with each other.

Copyright Concerns

Copyright infringement is the major hiccup faced by Pinterest right now. To summarise, concerns have been raised recently about how Pinterest and ‘pinning’ is infringing on various sites and copyright holders. To resolve the issue, Pinterest created an “opt out” option for website owners who would like to prevent pinning from any of their web pages. Pinterest also set up an entire page on their site about copyright infringement and how to report an issue. For more information on Pinterest and how we can help you get the most out of your brand, get in touch today!

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Katrina Brownless .