John MeyerIt’s remarkable how quickly social media has become a major component of business marketing. The days of indie music acts gathering contacts on MySpace are relegated to the distant past, replaced by Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Tumbler, Flickr, Periscope, and the current behemoth, Facebook. The power of social media to get a given message out into the cyber universe is incalculable. Suffice it to say that nothing compares to its overall reach or instantaneous results.
With social media still evolving as a marketing tool, it is essential to explore various platforms and the attributes they have that can best assist your business. One social media resource that merits consideration is Pinterest, as its popularity and visibility are on the rise.
The Popularity of Pinterest
So what exactly is Pinterest? Straight from the source, it is a visual bookmarking tool that helps individuals discover and save creative ideas. In layperson’s terms, Pinterest is a cyber bulletin board where users identify and bookmark items of importance. The “currency” utilized by Pinterest users is the pin, a simple marker that can link back to a specific source, be it web page, periodical article, product, or image. Pins are then pinned to boards, which can be set for public consumption. The more visible a user’s pins and boards, the more viewers can access the pinned content.
The use of Pinterest pins for promotion essentially breaks down into creating aesthetically attractive boards to lure new viewers. These boards can then be tracked and followed by interested parties. Think about the 1980s television commercial that had a person telling two friends about a shampoo brand, who in turn each told two friends, ad infinitum. Magnify that fictional “word of mouth” from a decades-old commercial with the actual power of modern social media.
Word travels quickly across social media outlets, and a handful of deftly created pinned boards can get your company name and offerings out almost instantly to the Pinterest community. And about that community … in only five years since its inception, Pinterest has amassed more than 40 million users. That’s a significant pool of potential consumers to tap into.
Pinterest’s Potential for Business
The concept behind Pinterest may seem rudimentary, but marketers can take advantage of advanced settings and more sophisticated usage. From rich pins and app pins to keyword sourcing to live pinning to advanced analytics, there are numerous ways to enhance Pinterest as a valuable marketing asset, all of which can finely tune a given target market of viewers, or expand the original user’s initial outreach. For business and marketing purposes, such visibility is analogous to casting an infinitely wide net into the ocean, and reeling in countless fish.
Now that our primer course in Pinterest is complete, how exactly does pinning translate into actual dollars for business users? Quite simply, the incorporation of buyable pins. As users view your pins, those that contain a blue price are “purchasable” — essentially serving as cyber welcome mats for e-commerce consumers. A quick and easy click will turn a Pinterest user into a customer in seconds, and your product can become a tangible sale thanks to a buyable pin.
Think about any big box entity that regularly features on-line or in-store markdowns, discounts, close-outs, etc. How are you, the consumer, attracted to those specials? By visual flagging, which is essentially what buyable pins are on the Pinterest site. The more you utilize buyable pins in your boards, the more opportunities you will have to sell to Pinterest users. And yes, these buying opportunities are compatible with iPhone and iPad, so users never need to exit the Pinterest app.
Over the last half decade, Pinterest has garnered tremendous support from users, and continues to make advancements in its potential as more than just a cyber community bulletin board. Combine the ease of operation, the massive user following, and the unquantifiable potential it currently offers, Pinterest is arguably as powerful a resource as any other social media offering as it pertains to on-line consumerism.
If you have not yet ventured into the realm of Pinterest as a business marketing option for enhancing your e-commerce, you are missing what more than 40 million users already indulge in. You might be surprised how effective a handful of pins can be at increasing your e-commerce revenue stream.
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