We’re in the middle of a Social Media revolution. There is information everywhere about Social Media and it is now an essential part of the marketing mix for many businesses.
I recently discovered Pinterest
Here I am: http://www.pinterest.com/amymorse184/boards
Pinterest users spend more money, more often and on more items than any of the top 5 social media sites and there are 70 million users worldwide.
It’s easy to see why.
It should come with a health warning – entire days can disappear down the Pinterest rabbit hole if you let them!
Market research can be fun
Businesses often fall into the trap of not doing enough market research. Especially in the early stages. They are enthused by their ideas and are desperate to tell the world.
The phrase ‘Market Research’ conjures up images of people on street corners with a clipboard, pestering shoppers or cold callers ringing at the most inconvenient times.
But it doesn’t have to be like that, and it shouldn’t be.
People avoid it because they imagine it will be tedious, expensive, time consuming and they don’t know what to do and where to start.
There are many ways you can find out information about your customers, competitors and the market places you are operating in and it can be fun too.
This is where Pinterest comes in.
If you are going to fall into a rabbit hole make it a constructive one
I’m trying to control my Pinterest habit, but even as I write this, to paste in the link I had to login and then I had to twitch the curtains and ‘pin’ a few more lovely things.
Pinterest not only works as a marketing tool but it’s great for doing research.
Here are 8 tips, to make Pinterest work for you
- Research – set up a board for your research project. You can keep it private if you wish. Pin all the links you browse so they are easy to find and reference in the future
- Think carefully about how to title your boards. Categorise your pins in an intuitive way so that you can find things again
- Set up themes of areas you wish to research – for example; A ‘my perfect customer’ board or ‘my competitors’
- Download a widget for your toolbar, so that whenever you are browsing you can quickly capture and pin things
- Pin regularly if you want people to find your pins, re-pin you and follow you
- Make your boards and pins relevant and interesting for your customers so that they actively engage with you and enjoy following your latest updates
- Use it to gauge people’s opinions on different products / services as a way to showcase your ideas and gather opinions – you could link it to a questionnaire and direct people to the appropriate board? This works really well if you have a visual product.
- Why reinvent the wheel. This fabulous person has a board to follow on Pinterest Tips (http://www.pinterest.com/kanter/pinterest-tips-and-tricks/)
The advantage of having an existing platform on Pinterest and having a following is that when you do come to market your ideas you have a potential customer base already in place.
Happy pinning!