Pinterest Best Practice January 2012
http://www.greenlightdigital.com

What is Pinterest?

A new social platform In
basic terms: Pinterest is a visual discovery social network. It is a way of sharing images of anything, from fashion to pets to pot plants. You can create your own online pinboards to suit any theme and share it with likeminded people. © Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

Why do people use it?
• To share, interact and discover. • Pinterest completely revolves around the premise of being creative and visual. Imagine all of your Facebook friends only ever posted photos and you’d be getting close to the kind of content available. • It is used for inspiration. Fashion lovers, interior designers, brides-to-be, expectant parents, budding chefs – they all use it to share their ideas and also get ideas from other users. © Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

Who is using it? •
Exact number of users has not been released yet, but in December 2011 Hitwise reported Pinterest were reaching 11 million visits a week. • 70% users are female and aged between 25 and 44. • Pinterest is now one of the top 10 social networking sites tracked by Hitwise. • It was listed in Time Magazine’s Top 50 Websites of 2011. © Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

Who is using it? ©
Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

How to use Pinterest

Homepage Add a pin from
a User panel including URL or your Settings, and your Choose which computer, or add Boards & Pins. category you want to a new board. look at. Search box How other Pinners have interacted with your pins and boards. Most recent pins from the people you follow. © Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

Profile page Rearrange how people
see your See your See which other boards. See your pins pins you’ve liked boards individually Followers and following. Other social media profiles. Your recent activity. © Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

Glossary Pins: These are the
individual images users post onto Pinterest. Boards: These are themed areas where users can collate a selection of similar Pins. A Board contains Pins. Repin: When users copy a Pin they’ve seen onto a Board of their own. Like: Sometimes users may not want to repin a Pin, so will just show their appreciation through ‘Liking’ it instead. They can also leave a comment. © Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

Sharing from Pinterest There are
a number of sharing options available when you click on a Pin. Social sharing: Facebook ‘Like’ and Tweet options. Embed: Allows the pin to be shared on blogs and external sites. Email: An image URL that can be shared over email. Pinterest has just been introduced as one of 60 new apps available on Facebook’s Open Graph. This is bound to vastly increase its usership and raise awareness. © Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

Pinterest and link building HOW
DOES IT WORK? - Pinterest allow you to share the images by copy and pasting the code on blogs and websites - The “source link” generated is crawlable and followed which can pass authority to the original source where the image was found in first place © Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

All pins are links When
someone pins an image from your website, it is added to a collection of all pins from the same site. © Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

How brands can use Pinterest

It’s different • Pinterest is
not a broadcast mechanism in the same way as other social networks. Brands will need a different approach to Twitter and Facebook. • It does not encourage product pushing, this means brands must look at creating Boards that are culture and lifestyle related. You can create Boards on trends, behind the scenes, preliminary sketches for products etc. • Pinterest is creative, so be creative in your output! © Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

Interact with other users •
Brands can learn a huge amount from their followers on Pinterest, as they are offering up a lot of information about their personal interests. • Pinterest provides great crowd sourcing opportunities. You can ask people to pin pictures of themselves with your product and then repin them onto a themed Board. • You can utilise the option of having open Boards to come up with competitions such as pinning an outfit to a Board or asking users to come up with their Board to share with others. © Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

Look out for affiliate linking
• Pinterest is driving the social shopping experience. Users are often buy hungry when visiting the site, creating an opportunity for brands to sell product to users who are actively seeking it out. • In reaction to this, Pinterest is testing affiliate links using skimlinks. Skimlinks is an innovative service that automatically replaces links to a product to an affiliate link if there is a program associated with it. • Brands should be aware that Pinterest can and will change links for their products if an affiliate program exists. © Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

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