Pinterest – For business or pleasure?

Pinterest is the latest social media explosion. It’s an online collection of bulletin boards in which you can “pin” your favorite things. Photos, recipes, craft ideas, wish items.

You can follow other pinners and allow them to follow you. See something you like? You can re-pin it onto your boards, and they can do the same. Sounds fun, doesn’t it? But effective as a business builder? It can be.

Five Fast Facts about Pinterest

1. 80% of Pinterest members are college-educated women, age 25-34. That’s your first- time homebuyer market!

2. Those on Pinterest spend a lot of time on the site – an average of 98 minutes/day. They are engaged and interested in what they find there.

3. Pinterest is mainly a visual media –a perfect venue for real estate marketing.

4. It’s growing faster than Facebook and Twitter did in their infancy.

5. Pinterest drives more traffic to websites than Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn put together.

Why is Pinterest so popular? Because it taps into popular interests. Repinly, a site devoted to statistics on Pinterest, recently reported that home décor boards were the most popular. What an opportunity!

• Create boards with photos of your listings.
• Launch a “wish” board for clients. Invite them to pin pictures of home features they like. Furnishings, paint colors, front porches, outdoor spaces, seasonal decorations. The idea is to get a sense for their tastes and preferences through the items they re-pin to your board.
• Develop community boards. A big part of what you sell about your service is the knowledge you have in particular geographic areas. Market that by pinning photos of the community at its best, such as restaurant recommendations, events, attractions, schools, and scenic areas.
• Use hashtags, just as you do in Twitter, to call attention to keywords in your pins or to search for pins. For example, #homes, #furniture, #patios, or #remodeling.

Explore this growing social media and decide for yourself how you might use it to boost your business. It’s not just fun; it may also be good business.