The Emergence of Pinterest: Why So Important?

Pinterest is a focal point because of its uniqueness and versatility but why is it so important? With the evolution into visual social media, Pinterest is a pioneer for this trend. This article will discuss many aspects of Pinterest, including how media outlets are utilizing it, the marketing interest (or disinterest), and the growth of the site. As in many other social media websites, users use Pinterest for a variety of reasons. This article will explore some those uses.

Many media outlets have found Pinterest and have created ways to utilize the technology for their benefit. Journalists and news organizations are finding a role for Pinterest and using the site for hard news and features. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal both have successful Pinterest pages that correspond so stories they’ve done including popular Pinterest board topics, fashion and weddings (Tenore). There are lots of fun events that new organizations cover that could be converted into a Pinterest board to keep the information top of mind to the consumer and to make the information more accessible and available to the user to be saved for a later time.

News organizations can also extend the shelf life of articles and features by resurfacing old content (like holiday recipes, and events like the Olympics) on their Pinterest pages (Tenore). Picture story boards can be created linking back to the old information, as far as an archive goes: organizations could use Pinterest to keep the information relevant. Pinterest is also a good organizational tool news organizations can use to respond to an event. The Dallas Morning News created a board to post all of the pictures viewers were sending in after a hail storm in their area. They needed a way to show the importance of the event and they did this by pinning all of the photos to be viewed at once (Tenore). All of these uses of Pinterest keeps the news organizations’ stories top of mind to viewers and keeps them in the presence of the viewers. The Today Show as well as the Weather Channel both find Pinterest to be a tool that fit naturally into their lifestyle type of content, fitting in with what they did already but giving them a new avenue to share the information with the followers (Rubino, 14). If viewers have the ability to pin that information to their own boards it becomes something that they want to keep and save for later, not just another passing news story.

Even though the platform is working for some news organizations, not all of them are excited to have another social medium to have access to, while others want to see the copywriting issues settled, some say it is too female audience skewed, while others don’t believe it is a good fit for hard news (Malone, 15). These are all valid concerns that happen with many social media platforms.

Because of the curating nature of Pinterest, marketers are finding this medium an interesting one for branding and promotion. Marketers are also using Pinterest as a tool to boost their website traffic and Pinterest is fast becoming an important part of referral traffic (Schlereth). Pinterest can also give marketers insights into the interests and inspirations of their audiences and not just insights into what users are up to, that other social media websites are useful for (Schlereth). This information can be an invaluable tool to advertisers and their media plans. Marketers do need to utilize this medium correctly, not just for promotions; the site should be organized around “passion points” that personify brands and evoke emotions. (Schlereth). Users like to be able to follow the content they crave and having too many promotional pins may lead the pinner to un-follow the brand or company. It is always important to make sure, for marketers, that their content doesn’t clutter their followers’ with junk.

Pinterest is a fast growing social media website with more than a 4000 percent growth between May 2011 and February 2012 with users spending an average of 64.4 minutes on the site (Schlereth). With the huge amount of success Pinterest has found, other websites are out their copying the format.

The Pinterest community is a majority of females leaving an open market for male audiences. With sites skewed more toward men, like dartitup.com, gentlemint.com, and manteresting.com, the virtual pin-board style of curating information does not appear to be going anywhere. There are also websites like Pinterest that cater to specific categories; trippy.com is devoted to travel, learnist.com is devoted to education and dropula.com is devoted to graphic arts, etc. Although Pinterest has sections for this type of content, other sites have created a space devoted to specific topics allowing users to focus their time on certain posts. These sites, however, don’t share the huge following that Pinterest does.

It will be exciting to see new ways Pinterest can be utilized and to see where Pinterest takes the brand. They are creating new features for the site as needed and seem to be dedicated to creating a satisfying user experience. As social media and as Pinterest evolve the importance of the media will evolve with it. Where do we go from here?

Sources

• Malone, Michael. “Stations Show Some Interest in Pinterest”. “Broadcasting & Cable, 12 Mar. 2012, 15. Web. 30 Oct. 2012.
• Rubino, Lindsay. “New Organizations Pin Hopes on Social Media”. Broadcasting & Cable, 12 Mar. 2012, 14-15. Web. 30 Oct. 2012.
• Schlereth, Laura. “Marketers’ Interest in Pinterest; The Buzz-worthy Virtual Scrapbook is Helping Brands Large and Small Project Their Personalities in the Social Sphere.” Marketing News 46.5 (2012): 8. Web. 16 Oct. 2012.
• Tenore, Mallary Jean. “5 Ways Journalists are Using Pinterest”. The Poynter Institute, 2012. 10 Dec. 2012. Web. 12 Dec 2012.  

The Transition: Move to Visual Social Media

There is no doubt that visual social media is overtaking text based social media. More and more social media users are skipping words and expressing themselves with visual elements such as videos and photographs. Videos are shared 1200 percent more than links and text posts combined and photos are liked 200 percent more than text updates (Bullas, The Facts and Figures). More social media sites are moving to the visual and storytelling formats, with Pinterest and Instagram as visual sites and Facebook adding the timeline feature to express information as a story. Pinterest is referring more traffic than Twitter, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn and Google+, via photo and video posts (Bullas, The Facts and Figures).

At the beginning of social media, we started with blogging, with long text heavy posts. Then we moved into the Facebook updates and our posts became shorter. Eventually microblogging was born with sites like Twitter giving the user a maximum of 140 characters to express themselves. Now with Pinterest and Instagram, most of the time users are skipping words and posting only pictures.

Why is this evolution taking place within social media? One opinion is that this shift seems to be caused by “our overwhelming preference for mobile devices” with 78 percent of Americans using their mobile device to access the Internet and only 68 percent that do it from a desktop or laptop computer (Connor). Generally, it is easier to upload a picture taken with a mobile device than to type a status or tweet. Another theory explaining the shift toward the visual is that using visualizations in the A.D.D culture we live in today helps readers remember content more than just words and visuals make meaning easier to understand at a glance in the multitasking culture (Trewe). In addition, editing tools have become easier to use and more readily available (Trewe).

One theory I haven’t found any explicit mention of is the use of signs/symbols/pictures that are used throughout our culture. From denoting the men’s and female’s restrooms to traffic signals to navigation through an airport, our culture uses pictures and signs all over the place, ensuring people from different cultures and that speak different languages are able to interpret meaning.

The transition to visual was an inevitable one considering the immediacy of the culture of today. Today, there are 2.5 billion camera phones in use, creating a massive increase in photograph creation; 10 percent of photos taken by humankind were taken in the last 12 months, as of May 2012 (Bullas, 6 Powerful Reasons). This statistic is staggering and shows that visual media is on the rise due to the importance of this medium to culture. The sharing aspect that the culture had developed with the use of social media also gives users a reason to take these photos; more than the want to preserve memories.

Images are important, not just in purely visual media, but in blog posts and articles as well, with articles that have images receiving 94 percent more views. Visuals are also important to consumers, with 67 percent of consumers noting that a quality picture of the product is “very important” when making purchases (Bullas, 6 Powerful Reasons).

The use of images is an important aspect in our culture and this evolution towards visual social media was something that was bound to happen considering the technological advances and the lack of focus in the culture and the need for immediacy.

Sources

• Bullas, Jeff. “6 Powerful Reasons why you should Include Image in Your Marketing (Infographic)”. Business 2 Community, 2010-2012. 28 May 2012. Web. 16 Dec. 2012.
• ---. “The Facts and Figures about the Power of Visual Content – Infographic.” Jeffbullas’s Blog, 2012. N.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2012.
• Connor. “Embracing Visual Social Media”. Pongr, 2012. 30 Aug. 2012. Web. 16 Dec. 2012.
• Trewe, Marti. “More Reasons for the Rise of the Visual Web.” AGBeat, 2007-2012. 6 Jul 2012. Web. 16 Dec 2012.

Getting Started

This website is part of a project for my Master's degree program in Communications at Penn State University. It will consist of articles that discuss the evolution of social media; focusing on the shift toward visual social media (specifically Pinterest).

This project will look at the evolution of social media – from a text heavy way of communication to a visual means of communication. In the end, I’m going to bring it all back to Pinterest and discuss why the transition in important to our culture

First was the blog, a text heavy way for bloggers communicate their thoughts/lives/viewpoints. Whatever the purpose was, there was unlimited space. Next came sites like Facebook where posting updates had limits but a user had space to communicate their thoughts. Next came Twitter, where users were limited to posts of 140 characters or less. Eventually social media moved into a visual way to communicate, with sites like Instagram and Pinterest.

OK, so we have a new form of social media, so what?

–Scholarly: the evolution from words to pictures/signs/symbols has occurred elsewhere in human lives. The use of images is used all over to denote a word or phrase, without using written language, ensuring people from different cultures and different languages are able to interpret the message. With new technology that puts the world at our fingertips, our culture is becoming more immediate. Show me in a picture instead of with words; let me figure out the meaning at a glance

–Industry: in the marketing world, a shift in technology and how consumers use media has a direct impact on business practices

Project Execution:

The project articles start off being broadly about social media. Giving background details about the space and what occurred. The articles will begin to focus on Pinterest and how the visual social media is being used.The end result of this project will entail a blog with all of the articles that I wrote on the various topics I will cover. From that blog, those posts will be pinned to Pinterest on various boards: social media, trends/transitions, cultural changes, advertisers and consumers