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What is Pinterest About? We’ve all heard of it, seen it on our Google searches, and even thought about making an account on it. As one of the leading social media platforms, Pinterest is an excellent tool for both social media marketing and business accounts that want to spread their marketing presence. But to establish oneself on the site, it is crucial to know the basics of Pinterest and how to use it, and what the public perception of the platform is.
Table of Contents
What is Pinterest
Pinterest is a platform used by people to share and explore various bits of information or images in the form of “pins.” According to the Help page of the main website:
“Pinterest is a visual discovery engine for finding ideas like recipes, home and style inspiration, and more.”
The platform began development in 2009 and was launched in 2010 during an area of rapid expansion of social media. It took a year or two for the site to explode in popularity, but by the end of 2011, Pinterest was firmly entrenched in the popular culture of the Internet.
Initially, the site was highly driven by older females, focusing on topics like fashion, cuisine, and other topics akin to the HG-TV network. Over the years, though, other genders and age groups began to establish a presence on the site. There are currently more than a billion pins across the platform, and this number rises dramatically every year. Indeed, everything from video games to fashion to hunting is now very well represented on the platform.
How does Pinterest work?
Pinterest users create accounts as they would on most other social media sites. Users can explore the website or download the app on their mobile phones. Once they establish an account, users can begin to pin interesting information, explore things related to their lifestyle, or even use the “lens” feature to take pictures and find related topics of interest.
What is Pinterest for?
Much like Facebook or Twitter, users have a “home feed” that lists a bunch of Pins that the site’s algorithms have tailored for the user in question. People also can search for new ideas or boards and can even use Pins to purchase items!
What exactly is Pinterest used for?
It’s highly image-driven, much like Instagram; however, whereas Instagram is predominantly used to promote self-made images like a typical social media platform, Pinterest involves categorizing and promoting the content of other people and “spreading the word,” so to speak.
It’s a very lifestyle-driven site, with results and matches that are tailored toward a user’s interests. That latter point is what makes Pinterest highly appealing for businesses – in other words, Pinterest marketing – because it allows Pinterest business accounts to promote and market their products and ideas with the help of the user base.
How to use Pinterest
Pinterest also allows users to organize their passions to the nth degree. This is also perfect for businesses because it enables users to access our information more quickly and efficiently.
We can pinpoint our target audience using the platform and ensure that they remain engaged!
Pinterest: How to use
Pins are organized on a Pinterest Board. Users can categorize their passions easily and share a collection of pins with other users!
This is a perfect way for ideas to spread quickly – users aren’t sharing a single idea but rather a collection of the best ideas for a specific topic. Businesses are exposed to their target audience for free.
Is Pinterest social media?
There is some debate on whether or not Pinterest constitutes a social media platform. On the one hand, it is an image-based user-driven medium on which popular topics eventually rise to the top, much like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter; on the other hand, the focus is more on engaging with other content rather than creating user-generated content.
Perhaps it is best to describe it as a business and marketing-driven site due to the longer duration of posts/pins and the more robust and targeted marketing options. It’s a highly optimized, visually oriented, and heavily customized search engine for many people. That extra degree of personalization, networking, and engagement is what elevates the platform into the social media category.
Why do People Use Pinterest more than other social media?
Nearly two-thirds of users leverage Pinterest and Pinterest Boards to find products they desire; the rest use them to find references, inspiration, and ideas that could eventually make them prospective customers. This is a huge pool of potential clientele that any social media marketing initiative should tap into!
If Pinterest is not a social media platform, what is it then?
Ultimately it does not matter if the zeitgeist considers Pinterest a social media application. The advantages will be evident by the end of this article: any tool that can help you sell your product is at least worth consideration.
How to search for people on Pinterest?
You find people on Pinterest almost exactly as you would on anything other social media platform. When you search for a name, Pinterest doesn’t include people in the search results by default. It shows pins. All you have to do is change All Pins to People in the search result settings, and you will see all the results for the name you entered. If the person you are searching for is using their profile picture, it will instantly find the person you are looking for.
Pinterest account creation
Pinterest account creation is quick and easy.
Sign up for Pinterest
On Pinterest’s homepage, look for the Sign-Up button. You should find it in the top right corner. When you hit the Sign-Up button, you land on a page that gives you three options for account creation.
You create a Pinterest by entering your email, or you can use your Google or Facebook accounts to log in.
Set up a Pinterest Business Account
Social media marketing is what modern e-commerce is all about, and creating a Pinterest business account will help you leverage the potential of this platform. It may be wise to create a business account that is separate from your account to prevent a mix of information or awkward conflicts of interest. To do so, you could select the “linked” account option, convert your page, or create an entirely separate account. However, keep in mind that for a new business account, the email address must not be related to a personal account. The option to create a new business account is readily available from the Sign Up page on Pinterest.
Pinterest available in
Not only is Pinterest available on your web browser, but there is also a mobile app and even options to link to Facebook and Instagram! The world is more connected than ever before, and Pinterest is on the cutting edge. Everyone has it at their fingertips, and this won’t be going away any time soon!
In short, what advantages can Pinterest bring to my business?
The word “inspiration” is commonly used to describe Pinterest. As we discussed earlier, Pinterest has roots in highly creative endeavors, and creative people are always looking for new sources of inspiration. Even if you aren’t marketing a specific product, it may be useful to generate content that inspires creatives of your market segment rather than enticing them to buy.
Building brand loyalty can start with cultivating inspiration! Even something as simple as describing interesting holiday activities or other real-world applications of your products, like recipes, will give you free marketing and engagement without coming across as a sales pitch.
So how exactly can Pinterest help your social media marketing presence? There are four major advantages, and we’ll go over them one at a time:
Visibility
Search engines like Google can detect important information from pins and make those highly visible in search results. In other words, a heavy Pinterest presence will have a more significant impact on Google searchers than those on other social media platforms. Moreover, Pinterest posts have a higher “shelf life” because they remain active for much longer than tweets or other spur-of-the-moment posts on social media.
SEO
As mentioned above, specific keywords from your pins will enhance your search engine optimization. Moreover, Pinterest boards are full of keywords, categories, and other catchphrases that people will be looking for on a routine basis.
Virilization
For those unfamiliar with this buzzword, “virilization” is the act of a post or product “going viral” and becoming very popular as more and more people share it exponentially. Think about huge social media stories from a marketing perspective. If one of your posts is pinned heavily, more and more people will see what you have to offer – especially on a site that emphasizes the categorization of interesting things.
Target Audience
Pinterest is all about categorizing information and searching for things that are precisely in a person’s wheelhouse. This exact and targeted marketing allows you to dive into your target segments without missing anyone or wasting time pitching your products to people who won’t care.
All four of these advantages are linked and are just multiple sides of the same coin. In short, the significant advantage Pinterest produces is an insanely specialized and optimized platform that will allow you to reach your customers in a highly granular fashion!
Hopefully, it is now very easy to see why Pinterest is perfect for your social media marketing. Pinterest board usage is at an all-time high, so don’t fall behind your competitors and leverage the platform to extend the reach of your business.