Pinning Your Interests

Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram. All these social media platforms have something in common: they are well known and majorly used. Some platforms, however, aren’t as nearly as popular or receive the same attention as our “every day” applications do. A prime example is Pinterest. Although Pinterest has about 175 million monthly active users, most those users are females. In addition, Pinterest isn’t seen as a go to marketing resource for business with its seemingly limited demographic. However, Pinterest has a lot to offer and I’m a big fan of the platform personally.

Pinterest is incredibly strong with online shopping and extremely relevant for visual social bookmarking. It’s marketing strengths focus on three segments: consumer retail, do-it-yourself (DIY) projects and women. Breaking those segments down, consumers “pin” items they might potentially buy to their “boards,” while those who browse Pinterest for DIY projects often share ideas and women are a heavy demographic. Pinterest can be considered one of the best networks for consumer retail, especially for women.

Let’s take a step back and start with the basics. Setting up a Pinterest account is simple and much like setting up any social media account. You have a username, search options, a newsfeed and can follow people and let people follow you. The part that makes Pinterest unique is the “boards” and “pins” features. A board is a collection of items from the interest that are bundled together. You can name boards to match the theme of whatever you are adding to the collection; for example, “dream closet” or birthday ideas.” You can even add collaborators to boards. This means that you can invite others to pin to your board as well as comment. Collaborative boards allow you to share your ideas with others as a team. Pins are the individual posts that get placed in a board. Pins can blog posts, videos, images and products to purchase. Pins can be searched or uploaded directly. Your newsfeed on Pinterest will consist primarily of posted pins from those you follow and suggestions based on your interests. Your interests are revealed by what you search and pin to your boards. Followers can like, comment, share items that you have pinned.

Pins are often, but not always, attached to links that allow you to easily buy items you are interested in. There is also a feature that allows you to see who has tried pins that relate to tattoos, recipes, DIY projects, etc. This feature is important because people often trust the opinions of their peers over company advertisements. Pinterest is a great marketing tool because of the different features it offers. If you see a pair of jeans you like in a pin, you will likely be given a link to where those jeans came from and able to buy them. You are also able to see who else may have bought those jeans and what they thought of them. Although Pinterest is mainly female populated, the number of male users has continued to increase and is becoming an everyday favorite application used by many types of demographics.