Pinterest: from time-suck to marketing tool for smart business owners

As promised, Intern Mauri is back with more information about Pinterest!  Here's a more in-depth overview about how you can make money on it.  Enjoy!

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Yesterday, we posted about the growing popularity of Pinterest. To recap,it's an online scrapbook of sorts, and it lets users share common interests through photos of recipes, clothing, books, hobbies and much more. In fact, Pinterest's mission is to "connect everyone in the world through the 'things' they find interesting" -- a lofty goal indeed, but one that seems to really be taking off.

Did you know that you can use Pinterest as a marketing tool to promote your products or services, though? The site, which launched in 2011, has had an unexpected effect on businesses. Last month, the social media news site Mashablecalled Pinterest the "top traffic driver for retailers." A subsequent Mashable article named Rachael Ray, HGTV and Diapers.comamong the top 10 Most-Followed Brands on Pinterest, proving the site to be a cost-free marketing boon for big brand names.

But it's not just the big names that are seeing results. Small business entrepreneurs are using it to call attention to their businesses or the brands they sell. Artisans of every stripe have begun using the site's Pinboards as portfolios of sorts, presenting their own artwork to be shared and "repinned" by other users. Clothing stores and boutiques also use Pinterest to pin the items they sell. Even the medical community is getting in on the act. In short, if you can take a photo of your product or service and post it on your website, it can be pinned on Pinterest.

There's even a widget for the site similar to the popular "like us on Facebook" widget, for businesses to encourage Pinterest users to follow their boards.

So the $64,000 question is: do people end up buying what they see on Pinterest? According to what my friends tell me, they absolutely do. "I use it as a wishlist for products I want to buy someday," said John, who always seems to have his fingers on the pulse of the latest Web trends. "I also pin on crazy products that I find but could never afford." Michele, the mother of two young girls, uses it not only to shop for her kids but also herself. "I was out shopping last week for new jeans and I was frustrated," she said. "My friend texted me a pic from one of my style boards and I went looking for something similar."

I'll readily admit that I cringed when my friends first invited me to Pinterest. I'm typically an early adopter on these types of things, but with so many social networking sites to keep up on, not to mention trying to maintain a life offline, I felt like I had no time to use what I saw as yet another time waster. Like many newer social sites, however, Pinterest wasn't really marketed toward early tech adopters. They did the smart thing and went for people who make the at-home purchasing decisions, particularly women between the ages of 25 to 44.

And as someone who falls right in that age group, once I got on a roll and started realizing all I could do with it, I noticed myself how beneficial it could be toward making purchasing decisions and, most importantly, helping out local businesses.

What do you think? Are you using Pinterest, or do you plan to? If so, how has it helped your business so far, and if not do you think you'll use it in the future?

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What the heck is Pintrest

Ahh, Social Media.  Just when you think you finally have a handle on what it is, it throws you for another loop by introducing yet another service.  In this case, we're talking about the newest entry to the Social Media world, Pinterest.  If you're on Facebook or pay attention to this stuff at all, you've probably seen posts from Pinterest starting to invade your newsfeed.  They are usually pictures (I keep seeing pictures of food, which is making it very difficult to not want to eat, but that's an entirely different story) since that's the main thrust of Pinterest.

So, just what is Pinterest?  In a nutshell, Pinterest describes itself as a virtual pinboard.  Users collect photos and link to products and other pictures that they like via their own virtual pinboard.  Clearly, this is one of the biggest differences between Pinterest and other Social Media platforms: it is almost entirely visual, putting it in the realm of networks like YouTube and Flickr.

Like other networks, Pinterest users can comment on photos and interact with each other.  Pinterest also seems to be more brand heavy than other networks, with people frequently interacting with big companies.  Indeed, Pinterest has been a huge boon to brands and networks that are on it - Pinterest is actually generating more traffic to websites that YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+ combined.  That's really impressive.

It's growth has been extremely fast as well.  Pinterest has over ten million registered users and over ten million unique monthly visitors - a faster growth rate than any other independent website ever.  


Is Pinterest here to stay?  That remains to be seen.  Can you make money off of it as a small business owner?  You bet.  How?  Intern Mauri will discuss that one tomorrow.
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