An In-Depth Look

What is Pinterest?

• “A virtual pinboard where people share and collect the things they love.” – Pinterest creators

• Social media site built on the idea of sharing images and content

• Images = Pins• Virtual Bulletin Board= Pinboard• Friends = Followers • Pinterest lingo: Pinning-verb;

Pinteresting & Pintastic-adjectives

Key Facts & Stats• User base grew from 1.6 million visitors in September 2011 to

11.1 million visitors in February 2012. • Became the fastest site to reach 10 million users. • In February 2012 , it was announced that Pinterest drives more

traffic to retail sites than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined, and Pinterest drives more traffic to blogs than Twitter.

• When it comes to engagement, Pinterest is second only to Facebook — its users spend, on average, 89 minutes per month on the social network.

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Best Practices

Pinterest Humor

Best Practices for Brands

• Avoid Self-Promotion: Sell your culture and people, not just your products.

• Cater to the demographic: majority of users are women.• Publicize your presence: Add the Pinterest button to its

websites. • Crowdsource: Ask fans to take pictures of themselves

with your product and tag you. • Engage with users: welcoming and encouraging

comments builds brand engagement• Use Keywords and Hashtags: Generates the likelihood of

receiving more views

Best Brand Use of Pinterest

Each of these brands have embraced the culture and best practices to succeed on the image-sharing site.

Best Brand Use of Pinterest Cont’d

• Pinterest gave a shout out to The Travel Channel for making use of the interplay between Pinterest and other social media sites. – The Travel Channel reached out to its Facebook Fans by

asking them what pinboards it should create.

• Bergdorf Goodman also earned a mention from Pinterest.– The department store asked Facebook fans to complete

the sentence "In the morning I never forget…" and then displayed the responses on a company pinboard.

Measuring ROI

• PinPuff: measures a user’s pinfluence aka the relative measure of your popularity, influence, activity, reach (& celebrity levels if applicable) on Pinterest on the scale of 100.

• PinReach: working to empower people and brands with the tools necessary to monitor trends, understand activity, and gauge impact, easily.

Pinterest & Public Relations

• Reputation management: PR professionals can create boards dedicated to the brands’ philanthropy and corporate responsibility.

• 2-way Communication: Pinterest allows PR professionals to communicate with their audience through comments, likes & repins.

• Spotting Trends: Browse Pinterest’s most popular pins to see what images resonate with the most people and use this information to craft similar pins for their brand.

My Analysis

• I’ve discussed the background of Pinterest, its popularity, best practices for businesses with examples, ways to measure ROI, and how it helps public relations efforts.

• After thorough research, my assessment of Pinterest is that it is a successful social media platform and it is innovative in design and sharing capabilities.

• Pinterest is a great tool for businesses to employ and I’m a loyal user myself.

Additional Sources

• 26 tips for using Pinterest for Business• Pinterest-What's the role for businesses• Pinterest for small businesses• 5 Brands engaging like pros on Pinterest• Which brands are winning on Pinterest • Pin Puff• Pin Reach