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.
PWP