Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Pinterest – it’s not just for individuals anymore


 Second Article in a Series

Pinterest is increasingly in the headlines, from the Huffington Post to The Chronicle of Philathropy.   In the recent 2012 Digital Marketer Report from Experian, Pinterest is cited as currently being the 3rd most popular Social Networking site.  Quickly, Pinterest is no longer just the realm of artists and odd-balls, many companies and organizations now have Pinterest boards.  There is even reliable speculation that the reason that Facebook bought Instagram is to directly compete with the increasingly omnipresent Pinterest.

You may ask, what does this have to do with me and my organization and our Social Media strategy? The answer to that is multi-dimensional:  you can run contests, increase your brand recognition, and even entice new audiences. And what about using Pinterest to communicate with your internal and external Social Media partners?  From large to small, from corporations to nonprofits, fairly soon not having a Pinterest presence will be like not having a Facebook presence.  Now, Pinterest is becoming the norm, and soon not pinning for your company will make you seem old-fashioned.

Here are examples of a few nonprofits, large and small, that have a Pinterest presence:

·         Heifer International - http://pinterest.com/heiferint/

·         Operation Smile- http://pinterest.com/operationsmile/

·         Imagine a Way - http://pinterest.com/imagineaway/



Not only do any number of nonprofits have Pinterest boards, but there is even a man named Noland Hoshino who has collected the boards of nonprofits on Pinterest and created one amalgam of all their boards: http://pinterest.com/nolandhoshino/nonprofits-on-pinterest/.  Mr. Hoshino wrote in an article about Pinterest on JohnHaydon.com, a website for discussing Social Media marketing for nonprofits, that “Pinterest can generate a lot of traffic to your website because pins link back to their original source. For example, if you pin an image of a product from your business’ website onto your Pinterest board and a person clicks on the image, they will be directed back to your website.


What we are seeing is a Pinterest revolution in the business world.  Organizations are learning to communicate with their existing audiences and build new audiences with pictures.  Some have just a few followers, some hundreds – but either way, they are tapping into a new Social Media audience. Pinterest is not even a broadcast outlet where you can just “sell your product” or “create a demand”, you can reveal your essence, your mission, even your core values, all via images.

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