PINTREST- Is It Worth Your Attention ?

Recently several of DotSign’s clients and many people I know in the business arena had been asking me about the increasing buzz on one of the newer social media member “Pintrest”. Pintrest’s site received nearly 11 million total visits during the week ending December 17, 2011 and over 420 million page views in the United States in the month of October.

What Is Pintrest?
If you haven't heard about it yet, here is a quick description.
It is a big collage of pictures on a virtual cork board.

Pintrest allows visitors to “pin” images and videos, of things that interest you or you think may interest others on to your virtual board. These images and videos can be of anything you would like to share – Friends, food, events, places, things, gifts, infographics etc. If you find and image on the internet that interests you, you can categorize it and “pin it”. From here other people can repin, like it or comment on it.
Pinterest also has a “Gifts” tab. You can search gifts based on their images, double click on a gift image and it takes you to the respective site where you can order that gift. In some ways it is another directory you can be listed on.

Pinterest for Small Business ?
So how can small businesses make ties with Pinterest ? Similar to twitter or facebook there is a “Pin It” button that can be incorporated in your website or blog. Incorporating this makes it easy for someone to pin and image from your site and in turn traffic to its site. For example you are a pastry shop owner and have a Wedding cake image on your website. Let say the bride to be pins that picture on her board from there everyone else can see it and the chance that it will get shared increases.
Potentially this can increase the traffic to your site and hence the popularity of the products / services you offer. Now I don’t know if this is any different or more effective if you do the same in facebook or twitter.
Will NOT work for all Business
Pinterest is also like a rummage sale. Like any social network there is a huge amount of junk that is being shared. So it’s the same trick as in other social media network – Adding interesting content frequently and having that shared by others more.
Access if you have a website that can handle eCommerce. If you cannot quickly convert sales on your website Pinterest probably is not for you. Sharing content is great but unless those images shared can induce an impulse buy and a completed sale it’s not worth the effort.
Compared to product industry service industries will have a harder time making effective use of interest.
 

My Take from DotSign:

1. It’s for business who can “pin” your products and make other “Re-pin”.

2. Mostly Visual: If your product is based of a visual appeal and an impulse impact- Then its worth taking a look.

3. Demographic: WOMEN! - Pintrest is popular with women who are interested in making things – food, fashion, crafts or what not. If your business involves this demographic and domain, then you have a reason to add one more social media domain in your “To Update” list

4. Click to Sale - Pinterest may be worth it if you can quickly convert the visit to your site to a sale.
Poke around, hit the Pinterest site Like every social networking site, it never hurts to build a familiarity , see how it works and kill some time (huh ?!)

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