Pinterest continues to grow as a visual social networking site where people are sharing photos, posters, and other images related to specific topics on their boards for others to see. Here is a good introduction video on the site (it is a couple months old), but you can get the picture with the new site and overall features of the site.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/29045733[/vimeo]
There are many ways people are using Pinterest – from shopping for various items of interest to showcasing business products and services to getting real-time feedback on designs and event planning. Cision had a great blog post on Pinterest as well as discussing some of the major brands and PR firms who are using the site strategically for their PR efforts.
For PR professionals in particular, this is a great way to generate another avenue for e-commerce and engage in conversation and dialogue visually with potential customers and other stakeholders. Incorporating visual elements within a PR and Marketing campaign is becoming more of an expectation for the industry presently in 2012. Why are PR firms doing this? Pinterest is a way to visually tell a brand’s story authentically through multiple categories where people have the power to comment, share, and redistribute this information to their followers and networks.
Another emerging area PR professionals may want to explore further as well as how this will determine social media influence. Is influence and reputation similar or different compared to other social media platforms? What makes some of the individuals on Pinterest a must-follow? Is it do to their activity online and sharing compelling visuals, or is it their engagement with their followers and fans? Or is it a combination of both? These are questions we have to answer in PR and determine for our campaigns and clients if these are going to be individuals we have to reach out to for our campaigns to establish a long-term relationship.
Metrics for Pinterest also need to be taken into consideration as well. Like Facebook (ex. Like button, comments, page views, link click throughs, etc), Twitter (RT, links, hashtags, etc), and other social media sites have their own list of metrics for businesses and researchers to look at in terms of evaluating their efforts using the social media platform during their PR campaign.
Inspiration is one of the results from Pinterest that really is generating the buzz for the social networking and visual tagging site. People can log in and search for various topics of interest or elements key to their daily lives (style, household design, travel, cooking, etc) and look at what other people are willing to share with the world, and they can draw on these visual cues to create their own unique interpretation. The overall purpose of Pinterest for users is to curate and share photos, posters, images, and pictures that you love. There is definitely great potential for PR practitioners and researchers to look further into the strategic application of Pinterest for PR.
Hope you all are having a great day.
Best Wishes,
Karen
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