What is Pinterest?

According to Pinterest,

“Pinterest is a Virtual Pinboard.”

“Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.”

“Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.”

I use Pinterest to discover and collect new recipes, crafts, decorating ideas, trends in interior design and style, plan my dream wedding and more.

A six month US audience trend by Quantcast shows that Pinterest is getting more popular by the day.

How can Marketers use Pinterest?

There are only a handful of brands using Pinterest as a distribution channel. Like Twitter and Facebook, gaining followers creates an audience to share content with. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, the audience using Pinterest is very distinct.

The Pinterest audience is definitely female and drawn to aesthetics. Anything girly, handmade, delicious, well-designed or stylish will be found here.

Again, Quantcast confirms the obvious – Pinterest users are interested in the following categories:

Marketers looking for a unique, highly targeted, likely influential audience should dive head first into Pinterest while it is relatively devoid of commercial profiles. Pinterest is a new platform and its user base is made up of innovators and perhaps some early adopters who are likely influencers in social media, art, design, and a host of other categories.

Who are the early birds?

DIY network and Pepperidge Farm* are two brands using Pinterest as a content distribution platform. The customer bases of these two brands probably have a lot in common with Pinterest users.

What is likely to work well.
If you keep the audience in mind, it is clear what kinds of content will work well on Pinterest. Photos reign over links, status updates, blog posts and other text-based content. (Videos work well also.) Anything related to the predefined categories on the site is bound to fit in: art, design, crafts, wedding, geek, and more.

Are you using Pinterest personally or professionally? Share why you like it in the comments.

*Full Disclosure: Pepperidge Farm is a client of Tenthwave, my employer. I am not directly involved in Pepperidge Farm’s Social Media Strategy nor was I asked to write this post about them.