Much to my colleagues dismay – Pinterest is becoming the hot new girl on the interwebz. You see, my coworker, a female (this is important) loves Pinterest – says it’s her own little heaven away from the angst laden posts of Facebook. Last year, Google made a splash with their big announcements, their “Search, Plus Your World” feature and Facebook with it’s Open Graph, hell let’s throw Twitter into the bunch with it’s updated look. While all this happened… one little startup was creeping it’s way to the top – and not on the coattails of the supposed “early-adopters” great reviews and pushes for friends to sign up, it was done on the coattails of the most dominant shopping force this world has ever seen – the female, see how I did that? I told you it would be important.
Female, The Great!
Women, by nature, love to communicate:
“Women are communicators, they love to talk…”
“(They) have a larger corpus collosum this allows women to transfer information a lot faster than men.” - (Men Vs. Women – Yahoo)
So when Pinterest got the first woman hooked, well it was only a matter of time that they would get their other friends signed on – she was able to easily communicate the information she took in. The platform isn’t overwhelming, you literally pin something you see through various means and enjoy visual content. One of the most brilliant things I have seen is Pinterest’s ability to hook the female – most startups reign in early adopters and move from there, however in Pinterest’s the early adopter was your everyday female internet user. How?
Visually sharing!
Sharing is super easy, the user can share via the official Pinterest Chrome Browser extension, pinmarklet, a pin button on sites that utilize it as well just pinning inside Pinterest from the content the user is fed from their friends’ pinning habits. The visual content is fed across the users screen and presto, we all get inspired. Pinterests success is due in part to the visuals and most women love visuals. It’s true, they do:
“The use of colors is important to girls and they tend to prefer imagery which uses a variety of colors…”
As opposed to their female peers, when it comes to images, boys like action, suspense, danger and rescue.” (Uncovering the Gender Bias among Educational Games – Clemson University)
It only makes sense that something as visual without movement, say… like YouTube/Vimeo, is so hot amongst the fairer sex. It was easy, they understood it because it lacked ‘geek’ know-how that’s typical of a lot new media that annoys most mainstream users, and it was fun ( Click to Tweet This).
What’s being shared
In my own personal boards (A board is a defined field where you can label your pins) I have things like food, destinations, clothing styles for each family member and more, the lists could surely go on – I think that might be what is so addicting. I consume so much media throughout my daily internet habits, when I see something pin-worthy, I pin it. My co-users, they are pinning for weddings, travel destinations, do-it-yourself tips (DIY) and more.
How does this help my business?
Statistically speaking women dominate consumer markets, they are the power shoppers. So it’s in your best interest to be where they are – Pinterest is where they are. In fact, I’d say Pinterest might be competing with CafeMom for the “Site most liked by women” category. (Ed. Note: Completely a theoretical concept, you probably don’t want to quote me on that) But one truth is this just released data – Pinterest drives more traffic to websites than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube (which is the second most used search engine) combined (Click to Tweet This). This sort of traffic is astronomical!
People are sharing content their friends want to see, then it’s shared more, but the link is always the original – so when followed back, the traffic flows to the original source of the content, such as… your site. Imagine you are a party rental shop, you have ‘Pin’ buttons on all your pieces of product, subsequently someone (typically a woman) is planning their party, so they pin the stuff they like for inspiration. Now their friends see that stuff, repin, like, comment… whatever, either way, the traffic comes back to that original rental shop which then starts the research process that the typical user goes through before making a purchase decision. Voila! You have made a B2C connection by being actively using Pinterest or their official buttons and you also get the inbound traffic though backlinks:
Because Pinterest is a massive social network, the domain authority is excellent. Consequently, it will be indexed constantly by search engines. The more items people post on their boards that link to your website, the more your site will benefit not only from traffic but possibly (no guarantee) from rank quality scores too. (B2C)
Take a look at what two brand early adopters like Gilt Home and Chobani Yogurt are doing. It’s not necessarily about the brand, it’s more about the visuals that fill the consumers desire, to place stuff in their boards. Chobani does very well in showcasing their product, but they also deliver a value in following them: recipe inspirations, food concepts and even fitness, called: Chobani Fit.
To sum it up – Pinterest undoubtedly needs to be considered while you go over the digital element of your marketing strategy, the ROI could lead to quality customer connections. How are you already using Pinterest? How about social media overall? Let us know in the comments.
