Join the Movement

Now it’s your turn, readers! Seeing that you have gained so much knowledge from these posts regarding the ins and outs of Pinterest and how to best utilize it, it’s time to put it to use!  We know that this social media site is growing in users by the minute.  Also, their development team is always making improvements so that the users can get the most out of their experience.

It is completely free to join and takes less than a minute, all you need is an email.  So follow the link below to create your own account and become part of the Pinterest generation!

LINK:  Pinterest.com

HAPPY PINNING!

Gartner’s Hype Cycle

Gartner’s Hype Cycle is a graph that charts the overall life/adoption of technologies.  Pinterest has only been around publicly for a little over 2 years now and I believe it falls right past the Peak of Inflated Expectation.  I remember last year when every single friend of mine was dying to join Pinterest and how they had to log on everyday to look at the pins.  At that point in time, Pinterest was on the rise up in the Technology Trigger phase.  However, once everyone got an account and it was no longer ‘the cool thing’ to have, I think it shifted over the Peak of Inflated Expectations.  And that leaves it where it currently sits, just over the peak, on a slight decline.

What does that mean for the company?  Simply that now less users will be signing up for an account.  They have had plenty of time to generate a huge number of followers and many of them will still remain loyal.  The hype cycle mainly apply toward new users and suggests that less of them will be seeking out Pinterest.

Worthy of Attention

One of the Pinterest co-founders, Ben Silbermann, was quoted saying:

“Pinterest is a visual site, and a lot of people are visual by nature. […] But at its core, Pinterest is a site that connects people who are passionate about the same things. In the same way that people who use Facebook are excited to connect with people they care about, people on Pinterest are excited to be inspired by people with similar tastes.”

Studies have also shown that Pinterest is now responsible for a larger amound of referral traffic than Reddit, Google+, LinkedIn and Youtube.  Now those are impressive statistics!

Wanelo- Pinterest’s Rising Rival

Wanelo is a blend of both Pinterest and Fancy.  Its name stands for Want, Need, Love.  Their website sums it up as “a catalogue of  products organized by people.”  It is like Pinterest in the way that you have one single page where you can save product pictures that you like.  And like Fancy, you can buy most of the products, but not all; which is where it’s lacking in comparison.

Wanelo was founded in October of 2010. It has developed a steady user base and features “1.3 million products from 24,000 different stores since its launch.”  I believe it is on the rise to potentially become the next Pinterest.  It can learn from Pinterest and critique its own business model to best fit its consumers.  Currently, its biggest complaint from consumers is the difficult nature of purchasing from Wanelo.   Because, instead of purchasing straight through their site like Fancy, you are directed to other individual sites which then make you create an alternate account on their site to make a purchase. Right now it appears that that is their biggest hinderance but once they get all the kinks figured out, I’m sure they will only gain a bigger market share in the online shopping/ social media realms.

FANCY- The Biggest Competitor

In my opinion, thefancy.com, a company launched in February of 2012, is Pinterest’s biggest competitor.  Fancy is a photo-sharing based site just like Pinterest.  It’s slogan is “Discover amazing stuff, collect the things you love, buy it all in one place.”

Like Pinterest, Fancy gives people the option to ‘fancy’ items that they like, similar to pinning items on Pinterest.  However, Fancy has an upper hand in the fact that they allow consumers to buy all of their featured products directly from their website.

Do you have a FANCY account? Which aspects of it do you prefer or dislike compared to Pinterest?

I’d love to hear feedback! And keep a look out for my next post that will be about another up and coming Pinterest rival.

Pinterest as a Marketing Tool

Why should all you marketers out there look to Pinterest as the next big arena to show off your businesses? WHY NOT!?

To begin, “from a marketing aspect, it doesn’t matter which network has the most users.. but which ones has the most users you can influence, and convert to buyers, visitors, etc.”  Pinterest is a very unique social media outlet because it gives you a very precise insight into your consumers wants.  Since the whole site is fueled by consumers pinning and repinning the products that they love, it gives your business a hands on market research tool that can be used to better satisfy their customers.

Best of all, your consumers can pin images straight from your company’s website which creates much more web traffic for your business’ web site and also exposes your products to many a much broader range of consumers. Lastly, when consumers see that their peers approve of certain products, it may make them more trusting of your brand in a way that your company wouldn’t be able to appeal to them otherwise.

The Growth of Pinterest

According to Nielsen’s 2012 Social Media Report, Pinterest is here to stay. It was quoted saying that “the big three sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) are about to become the big four […] Pinterest showed the most growth year-over-year for social desktop usage, social web usage and social app usage.”

As the graph shows, Pinterest has experienced a +1,047% increase in users in 2012 alone.  The next closest competitor was Google+ with an +80% increase, which is not even close to the vast numbers Pinterest is experiencing.  This graph supports what many professional social media analysts are saying in that, with experiencing this much rapid growth, Pinterest is a website that is here to stay.

Stay tuned for my next post!

The Pinning Generation

Pinterest is still a fairly young company but last year alone, 2012, Pinterest grew from 9 million to 40 million users.

While the user demographics are going to vary slightly depending on geographic location, it seems that no matter where you look, females are going to make up about 80% of users.

Also, the two largest age brackets of Pinterest users are 35-49 year olds and 25-34 year olds.  Additionally, over 75% of all Pinterest users are white, with Hispanics making up most of the remaining 25%. Here is a comparison of the main intrests between users in the United States versus the United Kingdom.

Keep an eye out for my next post about the growth of Pinterest as its own brand!

Pinning 101- The Basics

This post will give a quick tutorial of how to navigate Pinterest.

PIN- A pin is born from any image or video you see on the web.  If it is something you like, you use the PinIt Bookmarklet to post it right onto your personal board.  Also, you can upload photos straight from your own computer.  All pins can be repinned by other users.  They also will all link back to their original source.

BOARD- A board is the place where you manage all of your pins.  You can make several boards and organize them by topic.  Also, you can invite others to join in on viewing your pinboards!

FOLLOW- The follow button is how you manage which boards you follow. You can choose to follow all the boards that another users has or you can choose to just follow your favorite individual board.  And if later on you decide your not interested in the contents of that board, it is just as easy to Unfollow.

Here is link to a video tutorial that will give you a little more visual reference on how to use the basics of Pinterest:

LINK:    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtmmGA0M_yk

Keep a look out for my next post detailing the demographics of Pinterest’s users.

All About Pinterest

As put best by the Pinterest team themselves, “Pinterest is a tool for collecting and organizing things you love.”  

Pinterest is a fast growing, photo-sharing social media site that allows users to build and maintain theme-based pinboards.  It allows users to browse other users photo boards and gain inspiration.  The site development began out of San Francisco, CA in 2009 by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp. It is managed by Cold Brew Labs and funded by a small group of entrepreneurs and inventors.  The site was launched in March 2010 in a closed beta arena and began as an invite-only site.  It is now a site open to everyone!

Stay tuned for my next post about the basics of Pinterest.