Pinterest is the latest social network to cause a stir in the social media marketing world. So what’s going on?
The Pinterest revolution
Pinterest is a place where you ‘pin’ images you like for people to follow, bookmark and share. Here’s a very basic look at how it works:
- You join the Pinterest waiting list by applying using your email address, waiting until you’re sent membership login details. It took three or four days for my membership email to come through, probably because Pinterest is growing so fast they need to maintain adequate levels of resourcing at the server end… or the whole thing will keel over!
- You set up ‘boards’ to help you classify the images you’re pinning
- You download the Pinterest pinning widget to your browser toolbar, which lets you grab and ‘pin’ images on the hoof while you’re exploring the internet
- Every time you pin an image, Pinterest automatically creates a back-link to the place the image originated, for example your own website. These are ‘no-follow’ links, excluded by search engines when calculating site visibility in the results pages, so link juice doesn’t come your way directly. But the increase in ‘social signals’ and, ultimately, the extra traffic generated by your images can have an beneficial effect on your site’s search results prominence, as well as potentially driving warm human leads your way
- You can follow and un-follow fellow members and their boards privately, without their knowing
- You can add and delete images and boards easily in one click
Will it work for your business? It certainly won’t for mine, since nothing about my offering – freelance content creation – is the least bit visual. But if I sold fairy cakes, original art, antiques, clothes, cars or more or less any FMCG product, it’d be an invaluable member of my social media marketing toolkit.
