Adotas

Where media buyers start online

Featured Author

As VP/Group Director of Social Marketing, Noah Mallin helps lead the Digitas Social Marketing Practice, where he applies his insights to social strategies, tactics, and technologies for Fortune 500 companies. Prior to joining the agency, he worked as the Director of Strategic Development and Director of Social Media at Reprise Media, a digital marketing agency in New York. Before that he worked at Business Wire, developing cutting-edge digital public relations tools and platforms to distribute PR and IR content worldwide.

A well-respected leader in social, Noah frequently speaks at prominent industry events with organizations such as the Online Publishers Association, MediaPost, the Business Development Institute and more. You can follow him on Twitter at @NoahMallin.

More articles by Noah Mallin





Features

Why Do Marketers Need To Know About Pinterest?

Written on
Feb 21, 2012 
Author
Noah Mallin  |
Share
Why Do Marketers Need To Know About Pinterest?

DIGITAS – Should marketers reciprocate the lack of interest the platform has shown them? Not necessarily. Twitter and Facebook also launched without any developed outreach to marketers. Marketers do need to tread carefully, as emerging platforms are tricky and often less forgiving of missteps.

This is an excerpt from a client letter issued recently by Noah Mallin, vice president/group director of social marketing with Digitas. Click here to read the whole report.

Here are key reasons to look at the platform:

• Rapid Growth – Pinterest is growing incredibly quickly. Unique visitors increased 429 percent from September 2011 to December 2011, according to Compete, and Pinterest has said that daily users have grown 145 percent since the beginning of 2012, bringing it into the Top 10 of Social Networks. Pinterest is the fastest site to reach 10 million users ever, according to Compete.

• Traffic Referral – Pinterest is already becoming a key traffic driver for certain brands, though still eclipsed by Facebook and search traffic. There have been claims that Pinterest is nearly as big a referrer as Twitter, but many sites have a very difficult time attributing traffic to both Twitter and Facebook, so this may not reflect a true picture.

• User Friendly – Pinterest’s intuitive user interface and clean design allow for a quick learning curve, making it as easy to consume content as it is to create.

Why Might Marketers Want To Wait and See or Take a Pass Altogether?

1. Pinterest thrives on content – the brands that have done well there are able to generate dozens of new and compelling images weekly. If you do not have a source for this content (such as quarterly catalogs or other in-house publications or a rich and constantly refreshed website), Pinterest is not for your brand.

2. Brands with limited resources should ask whether this channel is flexible enough to warrant time and attention, compared to channels with bigger and broader scale such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

3. Pinterest has very limited functionality and does not include distinct brand channels or any advertising options.

4. Outside of travel, fashion, food and home décor, most verticals have limited ongoing interest among Pinterest users.

The Five Things a Brand Must Have to Succeed on Pinterest

1. Compelling visual content and lots of it. Seriously, lots.
2. A persistent footprint in the home décor, travel destination, recipe, design, or fashion space.
3. Resources to identify, curate, and distribute content on an ongoing basis.
4. Clear, relevant destinations to drive traffic back to.
5. Realistic goals and KPIs – currently traffic referral may be the simplest and most direct outcome from a Pinterest presence.





Reader Comments.

Leave a Comment

Add a comment

No Tags
Article Sponsor

More Features


  • Once Facebook goes public, what's the most important thing it'll need to do in order to live up the expectations of its real value?

    View Results

    Loading ... Loading ...

Latest News

News Archive

Spotlight

Sponsormob Leads the Way Into RTB for MobileADOTAS – For more than half a decade, Berlin-based tech firm Sponsormob has remained relevant in an industry characterized by [...] more...

Adotas Partnership