Thoughts on Pinterest

I could try to ignore Pinterest. There’s a lot of women using it. And by a lot, I mean basically 70% of their user base. Why wouldn’t a woman love it? They can run around the web find things they love (or as Aaron Mentele would say, “yummy things”) and “pinning” them to specific boards. For once, women have a social network they can flock to. It puts those of us that work with social media in an awkward corner. We’re faced with a huge social network that has an overwhelming majority of women. It’s really something we’ve never seen before.

Today I decided to sign up and see what the craze is all about. I created a few boards, one where I pin cars I want, one for photos of Disney Parks, another for logos, and finally one for photos I’ve taken. Within 15 minutes of pinning items to these boards, at least one pin had a like or re-pin. None of these people I knew. They were just random. People just love browsing through stuff on Pinterest. They’ll just sit there, sift through things and either like them or re-pin them.

For retailers, Pinterest is a fantastic way to show off products quickly and gain attention with no cost. You could pin one of your new dresses and have hundreds of re-pins within 30 minutes. Pinterest is the go-to place for clothing or any other retailers that are targeting women. Seriously. It lives up to all the hype it’s being given. Once Pinterest integrates ad pins (which I fully expect them to do) I’m sure we’ll see even more retailers hoping on board. Even if you’re not a retailer, it might be a good idea to sign up for an account too. Re-pin and like pins relevant to your business. For instance, if you’re running a home improvement blog, go through and re-pin home improvement stuff. People will see you doing so, visit your profile and eventually end up on your website.

So to wrap up my thoughts: I really do think Pinterest is a great idea that’s going to be up there with the major social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr). Its click-through rate crushes other social networks. My only itch is that it’s too female heavy right now. If they were to make it more appealing to males, more businesses wouldn’t be so hesitant not to jump on board. It’ll be interesting to see what direction Pinterest goes now and how they plan to make a profit. We could see a Twitter-style business model where they rack up the investment funds for a few years then try to figure out how to make a profit. Don’t turn your radars off from this site. It’s going to be making huge waves here soon.