Time to get acquainted with Pinterest
Just when you think you understand the social networking world, along comes a new site that jumbles it all up again.
Just when you think you understand the social networking world, along comes a new site that jumbles it all up again. Pinterest.com is the latest addition to the world’s stock of online success stories. Is it yet another time-waster, or can British businesses get anything out of this one?
First it was Google, then Facebook, Twitter, GroupOn and so on. Now the newest fast-growing website with social leanings is Pinterest, which allows users to cluster media items – or pins – along themes and lets you ‘follow’ other people doing the same.
It’s popular with mums and other time poor, distracted groups, because it helps users drill down to the content that most interests them without having to spend time seeking it out on a search engine. Like all the best websites it’s less than two years old, yet Alexa.com ranks it the 110th most popular site in the world.
What’s more, it’s already grabbing the attention of big business. When you ‘Like’ something on Facebook, your friends here about it; when you retweet, likewise. And so with Pinterest popular items can be ‘re-pinned’ thousands of times. Firms in the US are already reacting to large amounts of traffic to their sites from Pinterest and have wasted no time creating their own collections.
Which businesses will benefit? Well, the two essential things to note are that Pinterest works best for things that can be collected and are visual in nature (recipes, do it yourself tips, fashion lines etc) and that it has a big female audience (about 70 per cent of users). Goldman Sachs may not be jumping for joy but M&S should probably take note.
The good news is that the same rules of social media engagement apply. Users that sell overtly won’t get anywhere, but those that take time to nurture an audience, pin regularly and usefully, and who give their followers what they want will no doubt benefit from hordes of new fans.