So what's all the fuss with Pinterest?

What’s Hot In Social Media?

Well Social Media is now a massive part of our lives and it is here to stay – whether we like it or not!

Website search marketing is developing at a rapid pace of change and go keep your website up there with your competitors – social media is a must for any company. But which one do you choose?  Where do you channel your efforts?  This can be he hardest task of all but our experience shows that a heathly mix of relevant social media sites can help to achieve great results with your search engine rankings.

This month we will be exploring Pinterest – one of the hottest new social media sites.  So what is Pinterest and what can it do for your company?

Pinterest was founded in Dec 2009 and allows users to save images and pop them into relevant categories on different pin boards – just as you would do with your good old fashioned cork pin board – you gather together all your favourite things, notes, photos, memos, party invitations etc and keep them handy.  Pinterest is a digital form of your pin board and is now available as an app for iPhones and iPads.  Since the app went mobile – user numbers have shot up, with reported users now sitting at around the 11 million mark. Pinterest is also one of the top ten social network services and drives more referral traffic to retailers than LinkendIn, YouTube or Google+

So how do you get started? Well as with most things, this starts by opening up an account and creating your profile or business pages.   These pages act as virtual shop fronts, with prices, ratings, video clips, ingredients for recipes etc  – which according to sources are extremely popular to women.   These are then linked to your blog, Facebook page or website via  ‘pin it’ or ‘follow me’ buttons.  Once users ‘pin’ an item, it gets a linked pin feed, whereby other users can then ‘pin’ and share items to their own Facebook or twitter pages.  Users can add URL’s, comments, likes etc and see what other users have also ‘pined’ onto their boards.

Pinboards can be used for all market sectors, but the most popular categories are food & drink, DIY & crafts, womens clothing, leisure and travel and home furnishings.

As with most social media marketing, negative comments can be very damaging to a company, so you need to stay ahead and make sure you monitor users comments – word of mouth is still an extremely effective marketing tool even it if is a ‘virtual’ comment.