However, Pinterest is just like any other social channel: The number of FOLLOWERS you have doesn’t matter much if they don’t engage with your content. You want FOLLOWERS who become AMPLIFIERS by commenting, liking, and repining. For instance, L.L. Bean (@LLBean) is one of the top brands on Pinterest with millions of FOLLOWERS. But a recent study found that they have one-seventeenth the number of brand mentions on Pinterest as Anthropologie (@Anthropologie) which has about one-seventeenth the FOLLOWERS as L.L. Bean.5 Having a ton of Pinterest FOLLOWERS without any resulting amplification is like pinning a tree falling in the forest (nobody hears it).
Speaking of pinning trees, don’t go thinking that Pinterest is only for big brands. One of the most followed Pinterest users is Nick McCullough (@NickGardenGuy on Pinterest and @McGardens on Twitter) (Figure 17.1). Nick is the founder of a small, award-winning landscape design company in Columbus, Ohio (www.mccland.com). And as of this writing, he has nearly 3.7 million Pinterest FOLLOWERS. That’s more than 99.9 percent of all companies on Pinterest.
FIGURE 17.1 Pinterest Profile Where Nick Curates Images to Inspire His Landscape Design Efforts
So what’s Nick’s secret? Well, first of all, he married well.b Second, he was an early Pinterest adopter—something that’s hard to repeat. Third—and this is the part you can repeat—Nick sticks to pinning the things that inspire him: beautiful plants, landscaping, and outdoor amenities of every type. Instead of pinning a mix of things from across his various interests, he kept his pin board focused on plants, products, and people that inspire his landscape designs. This singular focus is what attracted his FOLLOWERS and keeps them engaging with Nick.
What Nick did not do was roll over at the first sign of Pinterest success. He’s been approached numerous times by brands looking to pay him to pin things, promote contests, or otherwise water down the focus of his pin boards, but he’s always turned them away. As a result, as his audience has grown, so have his Pinterest-fueled business opportunities, including:
Out-of-state jobs
Overseas partners looking for distribution
The opportunity to develop a product line of his own
The opportunity to write a book of his own
Much like YouTube did for Orabrush, Pinterest is presenting opportunities to Nick that he never would have had otherwise. The key has been to be true to himself, valuable to his FOLLOWERS, and never too promotional. It’s a lesson that many marketers could stand to learn about social media of every stripe. It’s not about what you need; it’s about what your FANS and FOLLOWERS want. And sometimes, they just want pretty pictures of beautiful things.
Pinterest for B2B?
Pinterest can even help B2B companies—you just may have to be more creative to find the value. Our content marketing team at ExactTarget (@ExactTarget) discovered that Pinterest is a great location to post images of the emails that we find innovative or interesting. The brainchild of Chad White (@ChadSWhite), Dawn DeVirgilio (@DawnDeVirgilio), Kristina Huffman (@krudz), and our entire design team (@ETDesign), The Email Swipe File, is a Pinterest board that captures email design ideas you can “swipe.” In short order, the board has become a resource to our clients, consultants, and salespeople alike as the look for ideas to inspire better email marketing performance.
Don’t have those kinds of visuals in your business? Then what about pinning images of people using your products? Or pictures of your EMPLOYEES? Pinterest won’t punish you for trying new ideas; so if you have the bandwidth, stick a pin in it.
SNAPSHOT: PINTEREST
FOUNDED: 2009 (First “pin,” January 2010).6
PROPRIETARY AUDIENCES: FOLLOWERS as well as SEEKERS and AMPLIFIERS.
EFFORT REQUIRED: Low to moderate depending on effort for asset creation.
WHO OWNS THE DATA: Intellectual property belongs to copyright holders, but you grant Pinterest a nonexclusive, royalty-free license relative to content you create or pin. Your FOLLOWERS are yours, but not portable to other channels.
USERS WORLDWIDE: 70 million (as of July 2013).7
SKILLS TO LEVERAGE: Coding (to embed “Pin It” button), creative, copywriting, and visual mindset to make “pinable” content attractive and inspire action.
GATEKEEPERS: Pinterest and its community of users.
STRENGTHS: Visual medium that appeals to aspirational desires and aesthetic personality of users.
Ability to control visual and explanatory content.
One of only social channels where women outnumber men 2 to 1.8
Has quickly evolved into one of the top referral sites for brands—particularly those with goods to sell.
Content-specific pin formats (product, recipe, and movie) allow for the inclusion of more specific information, which increases potential for user interaction (if not also purchase).