It's All Virtual

Check out my Pinterest Boards: http://pinterest.com/dshiao/

Introduction

Pinterest, an online pinboarding site, has gotten a fair share of press lately. In fact, TechCrunch shared exclusive data from comScore indicating that Pinterest hit the “10 million mark faster than any other standalone site in history.” Wow.

I’ve recently joined Pinterest, maintaining pin boards on Major League Baseball and social media, among other things. Based on my experience to date on the service, I thought I’d share five things I’ve learned about Pinterest.

1) Sharing Begets More Sharing.

I currently have 143 pins across 5 boards. Across those 143 pins, only 8 have received interactions, in the form of Likes, Comments or Repins. In some cases, those interactions were quite “strong” – a pin on Jeremy Lin received 24 Repins and 4 Likes. That being said, those 8 pins represent 5% of my total pins. This tells me that, while folks may visit and peruse my boards, the interactions stem from users seeing the pins on other users’ boards.

A few users Like and Repin a given pin, which then “promotes” that pin to their followers, who in turn share it with their followers. It’s not surprising, then, that a few pins receive the most attention and interaction.

Side note: it’s been reported that 80+% of Pinterest users are women. And it seems that the pins attracting interaction on my MLB Board (from women) are those of up and coming players, such as Mason Williams of the Yankees and Wes Timmons of the A’s.

2) Spend a Lazy Weekend Afternoon Shopping (Online).

Pinterest detects when you type a price into the description of a pin (e.g. “$100”) and overlays a price tag on top of the pin image (for example, this $5 Disney product). They then provide a “Gifts” option in the main navigation. When you click on “Gifts,” you’re able to select a price range (for instance, this $1-$20 set of gifts).

This is a neat way to browse through assorted shopping items curated by the Pinterest community. Beware, though. Another thing I learned is that Pinterest is inserting affiliate links in pins, which means that they may be earning money on the pins that you post.

3) The “Pin It” Button Makes All the Difference.

If you’re getting started, be sure to add the “Pin It” Button to your browser’s bookmarks bar. It made all the difference for me. When I first started, I’d find an interesting image, copy the URL, go to my Pinterest page, click “Add,” and paste the URL. Then, I’d have to click through the images that Pinterest found and select the one I wanted to use.

Now, I simply click the “Pin It” Button from the current page and it overlays all the images on top of the page (including the dimensions of each image). I click on the image I want, select my Board, then write the description. I’m done. And it’s made a huge difference.

4) Categories Are Selected by the Pinner.

When creating a new Board, Pinterest asks you to select the category (e.g. Art, Sports, Technology, etc.). Pinterest then allows you to browse by category, both on its web site and in its mobile app. While users have been pretty good about matching their pins to the corresponding Board’s category, it does mean that occasionally you’ll see an image that has nothing to do with its assigned category.

5) Boards of the Rich and Famous.

From the Pinterest site, you can select “About” -> “Team” and view the “Team” page: http://pinterest.com/about/team/. On this page, you’ll see photos of (presumably) the entire Pinterest team. And with a nice touch, they list an assortment of their pins and link to their Pinterest page (see this page for team member Ryan P). I’d like to see companies do this more often: let us get to know the team and let the team show the world how they’re using the product.

Conclusion

It’s been fun being a part of the Pinterest community. I’ll be interested to watch the assorted use cases that arise. We’ve already heard about it being used for planning weddings and sharing information at events. And oh, speaking of weddings, I have an anniversary coming up soon, so I’m headed to Pinterest to … do some shopping!

Related: 5 Things Virtual Event Platforms Can Learn From Pinterest

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