A blog entry by Helen Alfvegren, media planner at PHD.
Pinterest is essentially a website where users can collect images that inspire, excite, or make them happy. This virtual pin board can include anything from gorgeous dresses, tasty recipes, or motivational quotes. Despite still being invitation-only, it was one of 30 most visited sites in the US. Between 12 January and 12 February, over 103 million Americans visited and “pinned” something on Pinterest.
If you’re new to Pinterest, search for things you like and you’ll be guaranteed to find something you could pin and subsequently find users to follow. User keywords or hashtags.
If you want to spread a particular image on Pinterest, you can choose to Repin, Like, or Comment. If you like the image, it’ll end up in the Like-feed on your profile page. If you Repin something (which is similar to Tumblr’s Reblog or Twitter’s Retweet), it will end up in the Pin-feed. Comments work in much the same way as Twitter (with an @) and a user will be notified if you mention her. And it will most likely be a “her” – about 80% of users are female.
You can of course pin images to your Pinterest yourself. Upload an image or pin something from the web, but don’t forget to credit the owner of the image or first ask for permission.
If everything works correctly, the image you pin will always link back to the webpage it was originally published on. This is great for companies that have a webstore, as they can drive direct traffic to a specific product. The images can be easily embedded in a blog or website and will automatically link back to Pinterest.
When you repine or pin, you can choose to sort the images in a folder, or Board. As a new user, you get a few suggested default Boards which you can rename. If you come across a person you want to follow, you can choose to follow all their pins or just specific boards you’re interested in. Those that follow you see what you’ve pinned or repined, but not things you’ve liked.
I’m sure you’ve noticed the hype around Pinterest in the past few months. This has led to a huge number of companies to start their own branded Pinterest boards. Here’s a list of the “usual suspects”:
Here’s an exhaustive list of 250 companies on Pinterest (mostly North American).
If you want to start a company Pinterest board, make sure you read the terms and conditions first. For some brands, Pinterest is a great way to work with images. Etsy and GAP are great examples of this. For other types of businesses, you might need to be a bit more creative. See HubSpot as an example of how a bit of quirky creativity could help promote the brand.
A couple of additional tips to those of you interested in Pinterest.
You can add a Pin It button to your webpages, products, or images. You can find this button under Goodies. Also, if you want to track if anyone has pinned any of your images, just use the following URL: interest.com/source/webaddress.com. For example: http://pinterest.com/source/gap.com/ or http://pinterest.com/source/mynewsdesk.com/
If you want even more Pinterest stuff, check out my collection on GimmeBar and feel free to follow my Pinterest boards if you are interested in vintage dresses, furniture, and all things in between!
Helen Alfvegren works as a media planner at PHD. She has a passion for communication through images, text, and video. She blogs at helalf.se and tweets as @rockspindeln (in Swedish).
This blog entry was originally published in Swedish on helalf.se.
Re-posted with permission!
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