Over the weekend, legendary TV host Larry King Tweeted to his fans that he was now “experimenting with this Pinterest thing” and encouraged fans to follow his board. Another example of how Pinterest isn’t just for women between the ages of 25 and 55—although this is Pinterest’s largest demographic. Increasingly, small and large businesses and nonprofit organization are getting on this revolutionary social media platform and the results have been stunning. At P Jones Communications Inc. and Paws PR, we’re seeing an increasing number of clients realizing that incorporating Pinterest as part of their integrated marketing communications plan results in an exponential increase in free exposure to their audiences.
Pinterest is an effective marketing tool because it offers unique things to businesses and consumers alike. “Referral traffic” has become the buzzword when talking about Pinterest from a business perspective. According to this recent article by Tech Crunch, Pinterest sends out more referrals than Twitter, StumbleUpon, Bing, and Google all combined. The secret to the way Pinterest sends out so many referrals lies in the way the site itself is set up. The website lends itself easily to massive re-pinning. This means that because Pinterest is based off of pictures rather than words, any eye catching photo can be grabbed and re-pinned numerous times to various boards by many users, and thus gain exposure across the entire Pinterest community. The images that businesses and nonprofit organizations post on Pinterest that are re-pinned will lead other Pinterest users to their Pinterest account or directly to their website; every photo on Pinterest has a link attached to it.
Pinterest’s social interactivity comes not only from re-pinning, but also from being able to “like” and “comment” on other pins. Companies and nonprofits gain exposure when they proactively engage in conversations happening on other users’ boards. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, Pinterest users interact much more with people they do not personally know because Pinterest is more about the images and less about the information of people’s personal lives. With this continual and speedy passing along of information, it’s no wonder both small and large businesses are finding Pinterest to be a good way to gain publicity and exposure.