We are engaged in a a new learning project, named Pinterest.
Pinterest is all things fascinating. It reminds me of being a high school girl again and decorating my locker before the first day of school. But instead of a pile of Cosmopolitans and Seventeen Magazines, I have a 17′ screen MacBook Pro and a mouse.
But, it’s basically the same idea. What once was an entire summer of plugging through countless magazines, page by page, until you found the exact right imagery or saying that resonates with your soul…has now become hours and hours paging through images of categorized web images. Until finally you have the exact right images and sayings that pictorially define your essence….at least for the time being. (“Thank god I could delete my marriage pinterest board,” a friend recently said to me at lunch after a gnarly breakup. )
It also happens to be that Pinterest is somewhat of a rabbit hole lined with either cat nip or cocaine. You might begin but looking up a recipe for a chicken dinner. It was such a simple task. But that cake on the same page looked too delish to just ignore, so you take a (really quick!) look at a couple baking photos, you tell yourself, now on the 13th cake recipe. Oh! And then there are the baking gadgets (that you really need! if you are going to baking that cake), baking sayings, recipes, plating, colors. And oops, that white cake looks so good in that beautifully designed, monochromatic white house…..which inevitably sends you down the “white path.” Four hours fly by and you are still glued to your screen, crafting a small sense of identity from the myriad images that plaster our web-centric lives. It’s become a very white and frostling-like reality you’ve “pinned” and cultured.
At the end of your Pinterest binge, you know not only have that chicken recipe, but you’ve accidentally market an entire house remodel complete from the architecture and home decor to you panties drawer. (in a crisp, clean white!! )
That’s step one.
Step one leads to an interesting step two.
Real Pinterest users know that the true value comes in the search power. Unlike searching for pictures or images in Google Images, Pinterest only gives you really crafty or curated answers to questions you want to know, but still in that “pictures are worth a thousand words” way. Like, for instance, the other day I wanted to think about good vacation ideas. I typed in “fabulous vacations” into the Pinterest search box, and look what I found:
Amazing, found on Pinterest
Are you kidding me?!? “Yes that is exactly what I was looking for, Pinterest. Thank you,” I thought. And BOOM, it landed on my “vacation inspiration” board for future reference about this really good idea I had.
Pinterest for the business and marketers.
As for a business Pinterest can be tricky. You don’t necessarily want to sell your product as much as what your brand stands for in an image-wise sense. Agloves values simplcity, silver, science, good design, keeping people connected, lovers, texting, iPhone, gadgets, women, love and adventure. We try to match those ideals to our Pinterest account with the classic showing not telling sort of approach. But man! Does it take long. You really have to uncover the old high-school girl in you, who happens to have countless summer hours to spend with your scissors and folder, to find the gems that live on Pinterest.
Nevertheless, this site is booming, according to Compete, Pinterest.com’s unique visitors increased by 429% from September to December 2011, with a 3.3 million subscribed userbase. In December 2011, it also beat out big names like LinkedIn and Google+ on Hitwise’s list of the top 10 social networks, currently sitting at #5. (Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/31147/The-Ultimate-Guide-to-Mastering-Pinterest-for-Marketing.aspx#ixzz235NBfsVl)
It’s time to get “on board.”