Part Two – A Brand’s Dream Ambassador
Pinterest is making Brand Loyalists more relevant and powerful than ever before. Throughout my career in digital & traditional advertising, clients have always been interested in ways to advocate and give a voice to their Brand Loyalists. Pinterest is a hotbed for Brand Loyalists and Early Adapters when researching products, shopping online and reading blogs that allow them to clearly, easily and swiftly “pin” product images and videos with a click of a button. Those pins are instantly organized in a message “board” for all other pinners to find and re-pin, re-pin and re-pin. As the re-pinning happens that Brand Loyalist has essentially provided a mini-advertisement for the brand, showcasing an image, endorsement and link to purchase.
Don’t Ignore the Power of a Super User
In Part One, we saw how brands can feed Pinterest with fantastic product images and videos that either focus on their products, brand promise and/or brand voice. On the flip side the end-user has the ability to “pin” images and video from any website at will, with one caveat. Currently you can’t pull pins from Facebook.
And end-user has three options. She can “pin” an image directly from the website using a “pin” (a button dropped into the users bookmark), upload the URL and pin images found on that page, or upload an image from her computer.
Walk in the Mind of a Pinner
Sometimes I hear people say that they don’t understand Pinterest, or that it’s too complicated. But Pinterest actually has a clean and easy user experience and real life purchasing power.
Here is someone’s board that I found on a random search:
I noticed a fun gift idea . . .
. . . which I re-pinned . . .
. . . after re-pinning, I thought of a girlfriend who would enjoy this gift. So I went back to my board . . .
. . . clicked on the gift idea . . .
. . . and went to Amazon.com and purchased it.
It really is that simple. And now when I go back and look at the original Pin, it’s been re-pinned 171 times with 90+ likes and dozen of comments. And it will get plenty more traffic after this has been posted as well.
The ease of embedding and social sharing within the Pinterest user experience has changed the blogging and online retail game, especially for etsy.com, where Pinterest has become the number one source for traffic.
Changing The Way Bloggers Work
Pinterest users are Brand Loyalists and Early Adapters, and they shouldn’t be ignored. They are “pinning” images in insightful and creative ways to organize, plan and define their personal and professional style. Bloggers and storeowners on Etsy.com are seeing huge traffic increases from Pinterest and are rethinking how they post images to ensure the Pinning user gets what they need.
I recently stumbled on a pin reviewing an article written by Mommy Blogger of The Nester that discussed how Pinterest is changing the way people blog. The author discussed how she’s changed the way she shoots photography to ensure images capture the entire thought not just a glimpse of a picture—and that change was driven so Pinners can remember why they pinned a specific image.
Calling All Brands
Anthropologie is a chic and funky store dedicated to women’s clothing, home accessories, jewelry, shoes, and intimates, and its consumer demographic is ripe for fan acquisition and interest via Pinterest. There are hundreds of pins taken directly from Anthropologie’s eCommerce site with a simple title description of “Anthropologie.” All Brand Loyalists need is a simple brand title to entice other users to pin, re-pin and purchase.
With one click users can now obtain this exact look:
Pinterest can easily be added and embedded to a brand’s email campaigns and as social callouts.
Why So Obsessed?
What does this mommy blogging, obsessed, female-driven social media next big thing mean? It means that brands need to keep Pinterest top of mind. More than a social media fling, Pinterest is a full-on marriage.
Brands should be keeping a close eye on links that are coming into their site. There is a good chance that you’ll see traffic from Pinterest. Land’s End did a fantastic job using a contest around the holidays, but now that the holidays are over brands should look at Pinterest as a way to grow their Ultimate Fans, follow them, feed them easy-to-pin content, and then watch the pin’s lifespan as it helps increase brand awareness and eCommerce sales.
I often think of my Mom when I’m “pinning.” When I was a kid, she would read magazines to bide her time in waiting rooms. And when she came across a recipe or a DIY project that she wanted to try, she would scan the room and when the coast was clear, tear it out and add it to her collection. Essentially Pinterest has filled that void, but instead of tearing pages out of magazines, users are “pinning” images on their “board.”
Wanna See An Obsessed Pinner In Action:
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