If you haven’t heard of the newest, hottest social site, Pinterest, you may want to reevaluate your priorities. I can say this now, of course, because I when discovered the site, I also discovered it had already been around for almost two years. Somehow this virtual petri dish of creative inspiration existed in the digital underground for quite some time before it became what it is today – an emerging mainstream destination. So what is Pinterest? The site is self-described as a “virtual pinboard”. It’s a social bookmarking site that allows you to organize the ideas you find on the web into unique boards. More so, it’s a creative circle where people from all walks of life come to share ideas from party themes to food, home décor, vintage passions, and a little bit of everything in between. I personally describe it as DIY Crack. Had this site been around when I was planning my wedding, I’m fairly certain I would also be the founding member of the Pinner’s Anonymous Support Group. When you come across a “Pinner”, one of the first statements you will often hear is, “It’s SO addictive.” The design world is murmuring too about the intentional or not-so-intentional page formatting that offers a seemingly infinite scroll and endless stream of fresh ideas. I’m not a gamer, but I imagine trying to complete a game is probably very similar to trying to reach the end of a Pinterest board. And in both cases, there is an innate desire to get there. When you think about a sticky website, Pinterest is a downright honeycomb. So it’s clear we’ve uncovered a natural gathering place for consumers, particularly us 20- & 30-something women who make up about 60% of Pinterest’s traffic (according to Hitwise). And being that my personal and professional lives often collide, my next question naturally is, how can brands tap into this burgeoning channel? Time magazine placed Pinterest third in their list of the five best social media sites of 2011. Estimated unique visitors to the site increased by over 400% during the last four months of 2011, according to Compete.com. Pinterest is driving more referral traffic to retailers than Google+. In fact, it’s the fifth highest source of social networking traffic, according to Experian Hitwise. But just like with every other social channel, pushing your wares direct to consumer can be a sensitive and highly strategic task. Pinterest is now one of the top referring sites to Etsy, which makes perfect sense. Both sites promote and attract a DIY audience, so to execute the idea you found on Pinterest, you’re referred to Etsy to buy the materials. The bookmarking site is doing the same favor for HGTV. Pinterest also offers tools that make it easy for users to share, including an iPhone app and a “Pin It” button that gives browsing users the ability to pull any image from any website and post it to one of their boards. The source link is automatically pulled so proper credit is attributed to the original creator. On the flip side of this, brands can also include their own “Pin It” buttons on product pages or blog postings to encourage social sharing through Pinterest. And the site happily acknowledges that their button is designed to look and functions just like the Facebook and Twitter buttons, so that when they are placed together, they can collectively increase your social awareness. And coincidentally, just like Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest was developed without a business plan. But I don’t think founder and young entrepreneur, Ben Silbermann is worried. Pinterest is a great example for brands in unlearning a long-standing strategy. It’s no longer about the hard sell. It’s about tuning in to your audience’s interests and empowering them to express themselves wherever and whenever they desire. And it takes patience. There is some serious time and effort required to harness the social sphere. So if you build it, there’s no guarantee they will come. But make it about them and make it easy, and you may be surprised at the turnout.
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