A facebook friend of mine made a comment about Pinterest that I responded to. So, as you know, I was notified of all the follow on responses. I was really surprised to see this:
Wow! Really?
Immediately, I thought of five men who I follow on Pinterest.
Reg and Aaron are huge in the social media world. The other three (Lennon, Ryan and Rex) are my Oklahoma City friends, successful businessmen in their own rights.
I was relaying this information to David and discussing the different ways people are using Pinterest and remembered another friend of mine, Dan Gordon from Samuel Gordon Jewelers in Oklahoma City. He (note I said he and not she) held a Pinterest contest at Christmastime.
And then I had to know.
I know for myself, when I post a recipe or craft project from my blog to Pinterest, my blog traffic TRIPLES. Yes, that’s right, triples.
So I asked Dan how his Pinterest contest went over. And he replied:
“I believe we had close to 40 participants pinning hundreds of items on the Samuel Gordon website. SamuelGordons.com website traffic went up over 400% for close to 5 consecutive days. Then stayed steady at 200% up for at least 5 more days afterwards. Also, we had Twitter and Facebook posts of pics. Brand awareness exceeded expectations. Now My boards have taken on a life of their own and some days I go without pinning anything I get over a dozen pins or more even if I’m not on the services for multiple days on end.”
Wowza! Doesn’t sound like a sad woman who will never have any happiness to me.
Every day, I see a few more articles about how people are using Pinterest to grow their business, market their non-profit, or create brand awareness and I think it’s awesome.
Although I am currently a twitter user who uses twitter for its originally intended purpose, over the past couple of years, I used twitter (and other social media platforms) to grow my business. I am endlessly fascinated at the cleverness of people in business figuring out ways of using each new social media platform to their benefit.
Now, I will say that the young man who posted that Pinterest is for sad women is a college student and maybe isn’t old enough to know any better. But I sincerely hope he’s not a marketing student or maybe he needs to be paying more attention in class!
Great points Lauri!! Sometimes it is hard for others to see the bigger picture with a narrow (traditional) view. Pinterest seems to be a great avenue for many and those with creative skills and minds understand how to leverage it’s marketing capabilities.
BUT…I can remember a time when school marketing departments were poo pooing Facebook and Twitter only 5 years ago, stating it had no relevance in the marketing world. Some have to be eating their words today!
Angela
Which is why you need to keep an open mind in all things to see how to best use them for your own purposes. I know that social media offered me a way to grow my business and bring awareness to it on a $0 budget. Valuable!
Thanks for the mention and including me Lauri. If anyone says Pinterest is a waste or make fun of it, they have no idea what they are talking about. It’s a general demo that can be easily identified by us the users as opposed to relying on data from the site itself. If you sell a visual product, you have to be here. It’s only getting bigger. I’ve heard last count was 11 million users and growing everyday. A website traffic generator, an identifiable demo, and users that are making virtual wish lists. It really doesn’t get much better from a relevancy standpoint. If you do as much as I do online. When you see an opportunity to connect with people that actually want to see what your are broadcasting, it’s not only refreshing, it’s smart and efficient and a ton of fun all at the same time. Pinterest is just one of many social niche site out there and this is a trend we will see much more of going forward. A relevant topic or subject social site that directly correlates it’s purpose to a more specific end user group. Thanks again! Appreciate! Have a great week. _DG
And thanks for sharing all of the info with me, Dan. I knew I wanted to write a blog about Pinterest for a while. The little facebook comment just wrapped it all up for me.