The Most Pinteresting Blog in the World

Pinterest-ed yet?

Okay, I’ll stop now.

You may have heard of Pinterest. It’s a social media site that acts like a kind of bulletin board. People see images they like (a food recipe, meme, or workout routine) and “pin it” on their board. Their board is visible to their friends, their friends can “repin” the post and it goes on and on. It might sound like Facebook or many other social networks, but Pinterest is different and it could have an impact on social media plans moving forward. 

How It’s Different:

In a recent American Advertising Federation (AAF) presentation, Mike Magolnick said Pinterest is revolutionary because it links the emotional with the commercial, which is something Facebook and Twitter have failed to do. You can’t get people to buy stuff on Facebook and Twitter lacks the emotion that Facebook has. Pinterest is the middle ground.

However, we are anticipating that soon marketers will be asking why their brand isn’t active on Pinterest. Well, while Pinterest is great for a lot of brands, it isn’t right for every brand for a number of reasons:

Pinterest is a feast for the eyes:

If your brand doesn’t have a unique way to sell itself through images, Pinterest might not be right for it. Pinterest is a colorful, pretty site to look at because of the collection of images on it. I mean, look how pretty this is. People pin stuff on their “board” because it’s eye-grabbing, it’s relaxing to look at, it’s cool to look at, and it’s usually something they would like to buy.

From our perspective, if you’re selling a service or something like car insurance, you probably don’t have a place on Pinterest.

Who is your target demographic?

What are you selling? Men’s cologne? Muscle cars? Bad news, 68% of Pinterest users are women and 97% of the people who “like” Pinterest’s Facebook page are women.

Pinterest is most likely working on a grand plan to even out this one-sided demo appeal as we type, but for the time being, Pinterest isn’t ideal if you’re looking to sell to men.

How are other social networks doing?

How is Pinterest going to affect the marketing ways of Facebook and Twitter? Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer right now. June was a huge month for Facebook as far as adjusting their site for brands as they made many “Pages” upgrades to accommodate marketers (for example, brand pages can now schedule Facebook posts). However, Facebook’s marketing role remains as questionable as ever. Twitter’s role remains largely the same and, arguably, the safest. Tumblr is growing right behind Pinterest, but that’s a topic for another post.

Social media is an ever-evolving landscape, and it’s continuing to grow. Pinterest arriving on the scene makes this growth even larger and even more exciting. All brands may not have a use for it right now, but considering the pace at which things change in this field, it’s best to keep an eye on it.