You just walked in to the general store of your small community. On the wall in the entryway, one of the townspeople has mounted a series of bulletin boards. You curiously notice how people, primarily women, come in to the store and pin pictures of interest to the town on the boards.
For example, one woman enters and posts photographs from the recent graduation at the local high school. Another stops in to mount a series of photos that depict progress of the construction of the community center. Yet another towns person drops by to contribute recipes to the board that have proved to be quite popular with her neighbors.
You notice in short amount of time you have watching that these boards have attracted a lot of attention. Other members of the community enter the store, and look at the photographs. Surprisingly, they don’t add to the collection but instead post comments that they write on index cards under the photos.
Later, in talking with the manager of the general store, you discover that users of the boards have even told many of their friends, “You need to go down at the general store and check out the bulletin boards!”
If you can visualize the process we just described, you have a general understanding of the social networking phenomenon known as Pinterest. This visually-oriented site, sometimes referred to as an online scrapbook, is quite different from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other text-heavy social networking sites we have previously discussed in this blog.
What is Pinterest?
For a formal definition of the site, we turn to Pinterest.com. “Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Pinterest allows you to organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web,” the site says.
A pin “is an image added to Pinterest. A pin can be added from a website using the Pin It button, or you can upload images from your computer.” If users find your content valuable, they may choose to repin (or share) your entry with their online friends.
Pin boards are organized on Pinterest by topic so that they can easily be discovered and shared by new users. These users can then add to and comment on the content posted on the pin boards.
How popular is Pinterest?
According to Experian Hitwise, Pinterest became the third largest social network in the United States in March 2012, and is now larger than LinkedIn. Further, comScore reported that Pinterest is the fastest site in history to surpass 10 million unique visitors. These users are primarily women, age 25 to 34. In the United States, 83% of Pinterest users are female.
How can you attract attention on Pinterest?
“I think photography is the number one thing to get noticed and get your items pinned and repined on Pinterest,” says Beth Quinn of Beth Quinn Designs, LLC. “Eye-popping photos will spark more interest.”
Phinally
“Still having a hard time wrapping your head around the appeal of Pinterest?” asks Debbie Hemley of the SocialMedia Examiner. “Think of Pinterest as . . . a user-friendly way for people to move through content, whether on their desktop or on a smartphone. It’s a visually appealing way for users to interact with products and ideas.”