Greenlight shares some helpful insight into the new Social Media darling, Pinterest. Learn what you need to know so you can begin to engage visually with your community. Enjoy!

1. Pinterest
Best Practice
January 2012
http://www.greenlightdigital.com

2. What is Pinterest?

3. A new social platform
In basic terms:
Pinterest is a visual discovery social
network. It is a way of sharing images
of anything, from fashion to pets to pot
plants. You can create your own online
pinboards to suit any theme and share
it with likeminded people.
© Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

4. Why do people use it?
• To share, interact and discover.
• Pinterest completely revolves around the
premise of being creative and visual.
Imagine all of your Facebook friends only
ever posted photos and you’d be getting
close to the kind of content available.
• It is used for inspiration. Fashion lovers,
interior designers, brides-to-be, expectant
parents, budding chefs – they all use it to
share their ideas and also get ideas from
other users.
© Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

5. Who is using it?
• Exact number of users has not been released
yet, but in December 2011 Hitwise reported
Pinterest were reaching 11 million visits a
week.
• 70% users are female and aged between 25
and 44.
• Pinterest is now one of the top 10 social
networking sites tracked by Hitwise.
• It was listed in Time Magazine’s Top 50
Websites of 2011.
© Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

6. Who is using it?
© Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

7. How to use Pinterest

8. Homepage Add a pin from a User panel including
URL or your Settings, and your
Choose which computer, or add Boards & Pins.
category you want to a new board.
look at.
Search box
How other
Pinners have
interacted with
your pins and
boards.
Most recent
pins from the
people you
follow.
© Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

9. Profile page Rearrange how
people see your
See your See which other boards.
See your pins pins you’ve liked
boards individually
Followers and
following.
Other social
media profiles.
Your recent
activity.
© Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

10. Glossary
Pins: These are the individual images users post
onto Pinterest.
Boards: These are themed areas where users can
collate a selection of similar Pins. A Board
contains Pins.
Repin: When users copy a Pin they’ve seen onto a
Board of their own.
Like: Sometimes users may not want to repin a Pin,
so will just show their appreciation
through ‘Liking’ it instead. They can also leave a
comment.
© Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

11. Sharing from Pinterest
There are a number of sharing
options available when you
click on a Pin.
Social sharing: Facebook ‘Like’ and
Tweet options.
Embed: Allows the pin to be shared on
blogs and external sites.
Email: An image URL that can be shared
over email.
Pinterest has just been introduced as one of
60 new apps available on Facebook’s Open
Graph. This is bound to vastly increase its
usership and raise awareness.
© Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

12. Pinterest and link building
HOW DOES IT WORK?
- Pinterest allow you to share the
images by copy and pasting the
code on blogs and websites
- The “source link” generated is
crawlable and followed which
can pass authority to the
original source where the
image was found in first place
© Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

13. All pins are links
When someone pins an image from your website, it is added to a collection of all pins from
the same site.
© Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

14. How brands can use Pinterest

15. It’s different
• Pinterest is not a broadcast mechanism in the
same way as other social networks. Brands will
need a different approach to Twitter and
Facebook.
• It does not encourage product pushing, this
means brands must look at creating Boards that
are culture and lifestyle related. You can create
Boards on trends, behind the scenes, preliminary
sketches for products etc.
• Pinterest is creative, so be creative in your
output!
© Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

16. Interact with other users
• Brands can learn a huge amount from their
followers on Pinterest, as they are offering
up a lot of information about their personal
interests.
• Pinterest provides great crowd sourcing
opportunities. You can ask people to pin
pictures of themselves with your product
and then repin them onto a themed Board.
• You can utilise the option of having open
Boards to come up with competitions such
as pinning an outfit to a Board or asking
users to come up with their Board to share
with others.
© Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

17. Look out for affiliate linking
• Pinterest is driving the social shopping
experience. Users are often buy
hungry when visiting the site, creating
an opportunity for brands to sell
product to users who are actively
seeking it out.
• In reaction to this, Pinterest is testing
affiliate links using skimlinks. Skimlinks
is an innovative service that
automatically replaces links to a
product to an affiliate link if there is a
program associated with it.
• Brands should be aware that Pinterest
can and will change links for their
products if an affiliate program exists.
© Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012

18. Greenlight
Level 14
The Broadgate Tower
London, EC2A 2EW
+44 (0)20 7253 7000
rfi@greenlightdigital.com
Thank You http://www.greenlightdigital.com
© Greenlight Marketing Ltd, 2012