Should you be Pinterested?

September 20, 2012 by Matthew Rhodes

Pinterest is an online pinboard, allowing you to discover and share visual content.

In the same way you might tear pictures out of a magazine and pin them up, you can pin images of your own or from any website.

It's Social

Aside from the clean easy-to-use interface, the social aspects of pinterest are what make it appealing. You can follow others, 're-pin' or 'like' content and post comments.

Your pins reflect your personal taste and interests.

It's Growing Fast

Pininterest is the fastest growing site in history, reaching 11.1 million users in Feburary 2012.

Along with 'Like' and 'Tweet' buttons that have become so prevalent around the web, 'Pin It' buttons are also starting to make an appearance.

It's Generating Traffic

If you spend enough time on Pinterest, you might come across something that interests you enough to click through to the source website. This is known as a referral. In January 2012, Pinterest sent more referral traffic to external websites than Yahoo, Bing, Twitter and LinkedIn combined.

How much of this referral traffic is translating into sales is up for debate but a number of businesses are already investing into carefully crafting their Pinterest presence.

Not for Everyone?

Businesses where the visual aspect is important are obvious choices for pinterest. It's not suprising that tourism, photography, food and fashion are hot topics.

If your business just isn't that sexy, there is still potential. A few possibilities are:

• Posting content that gives an insight into your company culture.
• Become the taste authority, or person to follow for a given interest or topic, that's related to your industry.

Is Pinterest Good for SEO?

There is some SEO benefit in being on pinterest but like other Social Media, doing it just for SEO is doomed to failure.

Any benefits to SEO are really a byproduct of being genuinely social and active on Pinterest, not self-promoting and spammy.

Keep Your Eyes Pinned

The reality is that many businesses would be wise to first cover the basics: quality site content, SEO fundamentals and even email marketing.

The phenominal growth of Pinterested has come back down to planetary levels recently but it's still early days. The scope for business may seem quite narrow at present but things could change.