I am always looking at new social media outlets to see if they have any applications for business-to-business marketing. Recently I took a really good look at Pinterest. I was introduced to the service by my daughter, who is getting married this summer. She and her friends have been using Pinterest to share ideas for a host of wedding related items like clothes, shoes, food, decor. If you’ve been involved in wedding planning lately, you have an idea of the range of things you have to consider.
So how does it work? Once you have signed up for an account, you can create a number of boards to virtually “pin” images from the internet. You can annotate the images, and the images contain a link back to the original website. If you include a price in your annotation, a price overlays the corner of the image on your board. You can share your board with friends, and follow their boards.
So what’s the business application? I see it as a great tool for project planning. For most projects, we do a lot of research on the internet. Instead of taking notes, you can just pin an image from a supplier’s site to an appropriate board. Share your boards with colleagues, and have them contribute by pinning more ideas. Imagine that you are designing a new website. You can scour the internet for ideas, pin the ones you like, and share your findings with your website designer.
Check it out at www.pinterest.com. The service is “by invitation only” at the moment, but I clicked on the link to request an invitation, and was invited to join within a few hours. Be sure to read the “Getting Started” information, accessed under the About/Help menus.