Pinterest is rapidly becoming the most highly coveted social network that consumers and social media marketers can’t stop buzzing about. This visually interactive social platform engages its users to discover, share, and curate photos into categorized interests and idea boards for virtual (and contagious) community sharing. With that said, Pinterest recently hit a record high of 11.7 million unique monthly visitors in January - making it the fastest independent website to surpass 10 million UMVs in the US. So how can brands leverage this kind of magnetism to grow their online community and business? 

The first rule of thumb is to create rich content that promotes brand personality. Like most social media platforms, Pinterest is a great tool to add multiple dimensions to a brand by showcasing what’s behind the logo/product. This means don’t just post images of what the brand sells, but post photos that convey why the brand does what it does (what is it passionate about? What does it value?), convey its voice and identity (who/what does the brand represent?), and promote its lifestyle and interests (healthy? Adventurous? Eco-friendly?). In short, leverage Pinterest to let people discover the passionate side of the brand via rich pages of visually stimulating, collective images that can speak louder than a Tweet or a Facebook post.  

The second rule of thumb is to be engaging. The majority of time spent on Pinterest should be on interacting with (and learning about) the brand’s community by practing any number of the following: discovering what kind of things other people are pinning, and re-pinning the ones that are relevant to your brand, creating collaborative boards where users can contribute their own content, holding contests and promotional campaigns, using hashtags for searches or projects, using the brands’ other social media networks to drive more traffic to Pinterest, adding to the conversation via tips/opinons/descriptions of a pin, - and remembering to update your boards frequently so users will always be coming back to your site for new content.

Most often, Whole Foods and Chobani have been called on as prime examples of brands who use Pinterest successfully, and rightfully so. However another one worth mentioning is kate spade new york, a modern women’s designer brand described as “quick and curious and playful and strong,” who owns their social media strategy across the board -  from Facebook, to Twitter, to Tumblr, to YouTube, and now Pinterest. Despite only having 6 pin-boards, they have over 1000+ users following each board that’s focused on the theme of “living colorfully” - a clear reflection of their brand identity. In between these dazzling images, a few kate spade items are speckled throughout the boards, which in turn are amplified by the complimentary lifestyle visuals surrounding it.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is an example of using the visual power of Pinterest to strategically connect a brand’s core identity with its audience on a level of passion, intrigue, and influence without the hard-selling of a product. Could it be your next social media marketing tool too?

{images from Kate Spade’s Pinterest}