Just Media, Inc’s Media Planner, Cristina Lehman, recently joined the Pinterest social networking site and offers her thoughts on this new and exclusive player in the online social world.
“I just recently discovered Pinterest and a couple weeks ago, I finally got my invite to join (yes, it’s invite only!). If you haven’t used or heard of Pinterest, it’s a really cool social networking site where users create boards and “pin” or post interesting photos from different websites or by uploading their own photos. The boards can be categorized by topic and then other people can comment on each photo. It was one of the top ten most visited social sites in 2011! Right now I see it as more of a B2C social site, but eventually, I can see it moving towards B2B as it gains in popularity.”
“Per this article on mashable.com (http://mashable.com/2012/01/10/pinterest-business-consumer-engagement/), there are a couple of ways that brands can utilize Pinterest to their advantage. I thought two of these would be a great way to interact with customers: “New product approval” and “display various sectors of a company”.
The first, new product approval, can be used as a pseudo-focus group. I think this is a great way for companies to introduce a product in the early stages and see how consumers react to it by how many “pins” and “repins” they get. They can also monitor comments on what they post.
The second, displaying various sectors of a company, would be a great way to showcase a company – its products, people and company culture - and that would help build awareness and further interest in a company. The article goes into further detail about these two and other ways to utilize Pinterest. I personally love this site and have never really been this into other social sites. It’s a great way to categorize things that you like and find new things you never would have known about.”
