Gini Dietrich LOVES Pinterest (You have to listen to this week’s Inside PR to hear her enthusiasm.)
Gini has been testing the reach and impact of Pinterest. She pinned some pictures of items from a friend’s ecommerce store on her pinboard. Then, she and her friend watched her Google Analytics. Pinterest generated lots of traffic to her friend’s ecommerce site- it was the number three traffic source for the four hours after Gini pinned the pictures. That’s pretty impressive, especially given the ease with which content can be posted to Pinterest. But it goes beyond that. The conversion rate for people who arrived at the site via Pinterest was higher than the conversion rate from any other source of referrals. Pinterest drives traffic and the traffic it drives is engaged.
Martin Waxman has been experimenting with Pinterest as well. He’s found that the tags he attaches to Pins are important. Clearly, in his view, people are following tags that reflect their interests and they will look at new content that is tagged into one of those categories. (This raises a whole other question about “tag SPAM” on Pinterest.)
I’m interested in Pinterest’s impact on other existing services. I’ve moved my photo-taking from Instagram to Pinterest because I like the ease with which I can tag, organize and then browse my photos on Pinterest. I’m also drawn to move some of my social bookmarking – at least for the highly visual items – away from the two services I have been uising, Diigo and Delicious.
I find the simplicity of Pinterest makes it a tool with many possibilities – much like Twitter was at its outset. A basic concept that appeals to a common urge – to express ourselves – and because of its simplicity allows people to use it in the way that makes sense to them.
Pinterest may not work for all companies and products. It may be best for highly visual products. But if you sell items that you can showcase visually, you should explore whether Pinterest is for you.
Our discussion about Pinterest starts at 7 minutes 15 seconds into this week’s episode of Inside PR.
We are: Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and Joseph Thornley on Pinterest.