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.
