I almost did not bother with Pinterest. It looked like a place for wedding boards and recipes, nothing to do with the stuff I work on. I made an account mostly so nobody else grabbed the name, pinned a few things, and forgot about it.
Then I opened my analytics this week and Pinterest was sitting there in my referrers, sending real people to a project I run. Not a flood, but way more than a network I never touch should be sending.
So now I am paying attention.
What I think is happening
Pinterest is basically a visual search engine that everyone keeps calling a social network. People are not there to chat. They are there to find and save things. And a pin does not die after a day like a tweet does. Something I pinned weeks ago is still getting clicks. It has a shelf life that Facebook and Twitter just do not have.
That long life is the interesting part. It behaves more like SEO than social.
What I am testing now
Since it rewards good images, I am running a small experiment:
- Making sure every article has one strong, tall, pinnable image instead of a tiny thumbnail
- Adding a pin button so readers can save things without leaving
- Pinning our stuff onto boards that actually make sense, with a real description, not just a dumped link
Early days, but the pins with a proper image and a helpful caption are clearly outperforming the lazy ones.
Where my head is at
I have no idea if Pinterest is a fad or a fixture. But it is teaching me something either way: a good image is not decoration, it is distribution. I have been treating pictures as the thing you add at the end. Maybe they deserve to be part of the plan from the start. Testing that theory now.
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