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What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a highly visual social network platform that gives their users the opportunity to find and save new ideas, interests or inspiration by viewing the images and videos posted by other users. These videos and images can be saved to your own account but in this application, this process is called “Pinning” and the place where you pin these ideas to is called your “Board” but we will get to talk about all that later in this article.

Pinterest allows its users to utilize the highly visual nature of the application to share photos that relate to lifestyle, your interests, your work and your passion and also allow you to discover people who share those same interests with you.

Their goal is to “Connect everyone in the world through the things that they find interesting.” With Pinterest, you can also do the same things that you would normally do with a basic social media application like commenting on the pins of other users, following the boards of other users or friends, liking the pins of other users, sharing the pins of other users across other social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and also Email, repining the content of other users to your own board and also implanting some pins from the application to your blog or website.

In 2013, Pinterest achieved some really huge milestones because surprisingly, they outgrew the use of Email as a medium of sharing stuff. At that time too, they outperformed Facebook too. All of this was gained as a result of the 80% female membership population they had at the time.

Now, Pinterest is one of the social network platforms that is really growing speedily in terms of sharing content online and a lot of individuals and even businesses are realizing the benefits of Pinterest and leveraging on those benefits to display their products to a wider range of audience and hence increase the clientele database.

With Pinterest, both large scale and medium scale enterprises get the chance to create engagements with their customers with the use of beautiful infographics, great visual content and persuasive images thereby increasing their brand awareness, level of sales and online leads.

The Ideas that are shared on this platform could be in the form of anything like recipes to DIY’s, clothing, fashion, renovation ideas and child name ideas. It could be anything so long as it interests you. On Pinterest, these ideas are called “Pins” and a Pin always includes an image or video, a description of the content and a link to the source of the image on the internet which could be a website or a blog.

So, even though the general public refers to Pinterest as a social network, Pinterest is quite different from other social networks in the sense that other social networks involves their users putting up images and content about themselves and their lifestyle whether professional or personal so those networks like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are platforms where you want to display the best of yourself to the world while Pinterest is the place you want to come to when you need ideas and inspiration on how to become the best of yourself.

pinterest

What Is Pinterest Used For?

Interestingly, Pinterest is now the fastest-growing platform for online content sharing, according to a new report from online content distribution service ShareThis. The report analyzed the millions of monthly shares made through ShareThis in the third quarter of 2013 across more than 120 social media channels and two million websites and discovered that content sharing on Pinterest jumped 19.2% in the latest quarter of 2013, and LinkedIn sharing grew 15.1%. Facebook saw content sharing rise 14.7% while sharing on Twitter fell 7.6%. (see infographic below).

The new data offers a reminder that businesses should look beyond Facebook and Twitter when managing their social media outreach.  Says ShareThis CEO Kurt Abrahamson in a release: “The more advertisers understand how consumers are using all social channels — beyond Facebook and Twitter — the more effectively they can use social media to augment and improve campaigns,”.

Small businesses can capitalize on the Pinterest surge to market their products and grow their consumer base. Pinterest, a highly visual medium, gives businesses a chance to engage consumers with compelling images and colorful infographics that promote deals and new products. Pinning pictures of employees could also help customers identify with the people who work at the company, putting a face to a name.

pinterest recipes

Small business owners can also help facilitate conversations about their brands online by adding “share” buttons to their websites. These digital icons allow site visitors to easily click and share a piece of content through a specific Pinterest board.

All said, Pinterest like other social media channels, can help create brand awareness and possibly facilitate website leads, but we still believe that, for most businesses, search engines can provide better ROI and direct conversion of visitors into customers.

Let’s have the conversation though – contact us to discuss how we might be able to help your business with a solid marketing plan based on the marketing channels best suited to your business. Stay connected through our blog for information on Digital Marketing, SEO, Web Design, and more!

pinterest app

What Pinterest has to offer?

  • Pinterest Boards

Users can create several boards that showcase their interests. For example, a user can create a board about “Organizing My Home” and pin anything they find useful in restoring order in their home. They can pin from around the web (using the Pin It button that can be installed on a Chrome browser) or repin from other Pinterest users.

  • Pinterest Secret boards 

Regular boards are visible to everyone, but Secret Boards are only visible to you and anyone you invite to it. These are good if you’re planning a surprise party, and don’t want to let your friends or family in on what you’re up to.

  • Pinterest Group boards

With this, you can invite other people to collaborate on a board. BHG does a great job at this with their “Blogger Faves from BHG.com” and “Blogger Recipes We Love” boards.

pinterest home

  • Pinterest Send pin to friends

If you ever come across a pin you think your friend would like, Pinterest provides you with the opportunity to send that pin. The “Send” button can be used to share a pin to Facebook or email contacts.

  • Pinterest analytics

You can take advantage of Pinterest Analytics once you have verified your website. In the Analytics page, you can see Site Metrics, Most Recent, Most Re-pinned, and Most Clicked. If you’re a blogger or a business owner, these metrics come in handy because it tells you which kind of content your audience interacts with the most.

  • Pinterest Duplicate pin notification

This feature really comes in handy, especially if you’ve pinned a lot. Rather than browse your boards to see if you already have it, Pinterest alerts you that you’ve already pinned it.

what is pinterest

Conclusion

It is real hard not to quickly fall I love with Pinterest. It is so easy to use and can provide endless hours of entertainment. The platform is highly versatile and is great for entertainment or business marketing. This is not just a random opinion but the huge success and wide popularity of this design says it all. If you are not using Pinterest for personal or business we suggest you at least go and give it a look for yourself.

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Shafiq Armani
I'm Shafiq Armani, an expert in selling group buying tools. With more than 10 years of experience in the digital marketing industry
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