It is time for ad agencies to pay attention to Pinterest

Pinterest has great potential for ad agencies: storyboards, branding strategies, concept ideas, campaign ideas, design ideas, even organizing agency pitches.

Time Magazine named Pinterest one of the top 50 websites for 2011. It is one of the hottest new social media sites with enduring specialties that qualifies it as the next ‘Twitter.’ Its value through venture financing has soared from $40 million to over $200 million in only a few months.

Pinterest (pronounced to rhyme with interest) is a vision board-styled social photo sharing website and app where users can create and manage theme-based image collections. The mission statement of Pinterest is to connect everyone in the world through shared tastes and the “things” they find interesting. Wikipedia

A site like Pinterest helps provide a place for discovery, saving and sharing.

Pinterest is like a giant scrapbook of ideas. When you find things of interest, this new platform allows you to upload those images as Pins and place them on customized , themed Boards and organize and share them on any topic that you choose. Others can follow your Boards and add comments. You can also allow them to post to your boards.

A ‘Pinterest Picture’ is worth 1000 words.

People tend to be “eye-minded”. I think this is one of the primary reasons this site has become so popular.

Studies by educational researchers suggest that approximately 83% of human learning occurs visually.

There is a soothing quality in using Pinterest.

Once you spend some time understanding how it works you’ll find it fun and very addictive. I’ve personally spent hours on it.

Here is a listing of my boards, which include some that are business related and some that are personal:

Pinterest is still far behind site visitors comparative to Facebook, but it is making up for it in the amount of time spent on the site. An incredible 88.3 minutes was spent in November, according to comScore. This number is third only to Facebook (394 minutes) and Tumblr (141.7 minutes) and is also twice the amount of time that the average user spends on Twitter and 10 times the time spent on Google +.

Here are a some ideas on how to use Pinterest for your agency:

Showcase your agency’s brand in a unique way
Great potential for internal use with your agency’s creative teams – storyboards, branding strategies, concept ideas, campaign ideas, design ideas, even organizing agency pitches
Enhance visual thinking and planning
It has important potential for your clients’ social media marketing mix
A great way to keep tabs on what is hot
Potential for greater SEO (you can embed Pinterest to your agency’s website or blog)
Organize areas of focus of the agency – keep up and share what is hot within your agency niche or industry focus
Interact with your audience by testing campaign ideas and concepts

To help you get started I recommend Rob Lammie’s a Pinterest: A Beginner’s Guide to the Hot New Social Network

Please email me if you need an invitation to Pinterest or would like to submit your agency’s photo to the Advertising Agencies’ Offices Board.

Filed Under: New Business Trends, Social Media Tagged With: Ad Agencies, Advertising, Michael Gass, new business, Pinterest, Social Media

About Michael Gass

Michael is an international new business consultant to advertising, digital, media and PR agencies. Since 2007, he has led in the use of social media and content marketing strategies to make agency new business EASIER.