Eye Candy: Will business see the big picture in Pinterest?

In the last year, and in the midst of the social (but highly un-social) revolution there have been a large number of social media startups to take the world by storm. Instagram, Tumblr, Flickr and LinkedIn to name a few, but none more than the growing social media giant, "Pinterest". Over the past three months Pinterest have grown their usership by as much as 155% per month and (naturally) presented massive growth opportunities for businesses  to visually promote their brands, their products and their company culture with the power of repins.
Although Pinterest has recieved much coverage in terms of the value of user engagement and brand exposure, there are still questions to the matter of how effective is Pinterest in generating ROI (return on investment) as users are not yet converting their (P)interest into actual sales. It is already proven that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter can do the trick, and it is said that Pinterest generates two the three times the amount of coverage and interaction than Twitter; so why is the P.R world so skeptical?


In an article addressing this very topic, P.R journalist Geoff Livingston says that despite all the rage about the new social platform, it is really too early to go nuts. "Outside driving traffic and Pinterest follower counts, most businesses don't have any outcomes to offer," he says. "Pinterest is a huge experiment in marketing". So far most of the articles declaring statistics about its success are predominantly referring us towards fashion or food retail, a department which has always been visually appealing and therefore cuts straight into the core of Pinterest users. But what does it mean for the rest of us?

Livingstone says the reality just doesn't meet the hype, not yet at least. "Experts who tout Pinterest as the second coming of Facebook need to answer the ROI question or damper the enthusiasm. Otherwise, we’ll be pinning burst bubbles in six months." Personally, I think this outlet for visual communication is a fantastic and promising platform for a similar style of visual engagement proved successful by many companies via Instragram, and it's proven that people are waking up to the opportunities it presents (155% growth per month!!). It really just depends on how people use it strategically. There is a massive opportunity for even tech companies and not-for-profits to engage with innovate ideas and an already proven example of this is General Electric, who pinned "bad-ass machines", their events and the history of their company and invited users to view and re-pin their company culture on a personal level. As a consequence of this, their top 10 most used links to their website following were coming from Pinterest.

I think that livingstone is right to question the value of Pinterest, especially in light of how quick everybody in the marketing world seems to have jumped on the bandwagon. I think that until we see results in business than there is no way to declare it the new big thing. Despite this, I believe in the power of Pinterest. It may not be the "new" big thing, but it is definitely the "next" big thing, and social media marketers need to be brave in order to see results in the future.

Check out the article by Geoff Livingstone, "What is the ROI on Pinterest?"

sourced from P.R Daily Online