Remember the line “For men may come and men may go, But I will go on forever” by Alfred Lord Tennyson in his famous poem ‘The Brook’.

I feel quite the same way about the platform ‘Pinterest’. It’s here to stay. It’s a goldmine for marketeers. The site taps into our primal hardwiring to hunt and gather. We want to keep things that make us feel good and we like knowing they are kept somewhere safe; like a treasured shoebox full of life’s memorabilia. A pin on Pinterest garners interest with constant re-pins for a very long time whereas a Tweet or a Facebook post lasts for a few hours. This visual creative bookmarking tool which helps you discover and save creative ideas has been growing by leaps and bounds every year. Where it radically differs from other platforms is that the emphasis is on the discovery and curation of other people’s content and not your own. This is right on trend with social media’s emphasis on “Rich Media” – if you noticed Twitter and Facebook’s enhanced video and image viewing options.

 
This is the reason new companies or brands around the world might find that Pinterest is the number one source of web traffic after Google. It has captured the interest of so many businesses, from retailers to photographers and designers, who are using it as a portfolio or product catalog. Customers and clients can say which products they love (shoe, bottles, furniture, hair clips) and want to buy for themselves, and their friends can further the endorsement by pinning the pictures to their own walls. That’s what makes it one of the fastest growing websites in history used by more than a 100 brands. In fact Pinterest drives more web traffic to other sites than Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube combined.

 
What makes this platform incredibly unique?
1) 75% of the people say that Pinterest is the place they find new interests and 67% said it’s the place they come to express creativity.
2) It also has an interesting solution to the problem of having one social media account but various interests. On Pinterest, one can curate boards that are totally not related. This allows you to either follow all of a user’s boards or just the ones you find relevant. This gives it an edge over the Facebook model where content segmentation lies in the hands of the page or profile and not the member or friend.
3) But where I believe this platform has created magic is by letting the user have a community board feature that allows the admin and other specific people to pin. This multi-tiered curation model under a single profile is one of the main reasons why Pinterest has captured the imagination of social media junkies around the world.
4) For advertisers, this platform is like Google Ad Words, if Google Ads showed up in a beautiful, colorful, inspirational story board where people go to dream about the life they want to lead.
5)Technically superior in different ways. Universally readable, in 31 languages. Kanji, Roman, Cyrillic—the app is legible no matter what language one reads or what screen size one has.
6) Pinterest let’s you show off your ”taste” and this is something is a sign of social status, therefore people are just likely to be interested in this kind of visual content

Pinterest is GOLD! It is perfectly positioned for high value, targeted online and mobile advertising. After all, it’s a site where people go to pin pictures of what they want to buy, wear, decorate, visit, eat. That can be served up on a platter to advertisers — they can market straight to the consumers they know want them. Furthermore, they’ll be doing the marketing while the consumers are imagining life with similar products.

The Feel Factor:
For a company of its size, Pinterest’s users are creating content at an unprecedented pace. Unlike on Facebook and Twitter, where users have to actually think of new content to post, Pinterest is not about what is happening right now. Users are not prompted to think about “what are you doing?” In fact, they are not prompted to think at all, they are prompted to feel.

The Differentiating Factor:
Photos + Sharability = Instagram/flicker.
Photos + Payment = E-commerce sites.
Photos + Opinions=Facebook.
Photos+ Opinions + Sharability (Repinning) + Advertisement =Pinterest.

In the near future, another social media verb “pin” will likely be as commonly recognized in our lexicon as “tweet” and “Like.” I hope you found the article Pinteresting!

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