This is a guest post by Dominic Tarn, EMEA Head of Marketing for Pinster.
Social media marketing is set to get a lot more interesting during 2013. For startups this means getting ahead of the curve, because when you are competing against millions of other companies of a similar size in an attempt to capture the attention of hundreds of thousands of early adopters, you need to raise your game.
This means startups need to adopt two core aspects of marketing in the social media jungle: images and words. Content marketing is taking off in a big way. And so is the use of images, videos, and info-graphics.
28 million US visitors and counting
Pinterest is an image based social network which keeps on growing, having attained an increase of 2000% in 2012. comScore notes they had 28 million US visitors in December, up from 25 million in September. Pinterest is worth over $1.5bn, having so far raised $138 million.
What Pinterest means for your ecommerce startup
If you are an e-commerce startup then this is where you need to be. Not in a few months, but now. TechCrunch has christened it “Amazon, but social.” Might Amazon make it an offer it can’t refuse? Perhaps. Its true value lies in the demographics, especially for e-commerce and m-commerce companies alike, and particularly for those who sell predominantly to women. Forbes reports Pinterest is very popular with “college-educated females between the ages of 25 of 44.” Known as a ‘sweet spot’, for brands, due to their purchasing power, and prolific use of e-commerce and social networks.
Tracking your Pinterest audience
Which means as a startup you need to interact with this vast and growing body of users. Organic growth won’t happen overnight, but if you share and re-pin images related to your brand, like fashion designer Joy Cho (83 boards, 12.4 million followers, and counting) then using Pinterest will start to generate results. Equally, if you invest in an analytics tool, like Pinster, (recently launched their free beta) then you can gain a greater understanding of your audience, including how and when best to engage with them. You will be glad you jumped on the Pinterest bandwagon sooner rather than later.
About the author
Dominic Tarn is EMEA Head of Marketing for Pinster, a Socialrithmic product. Supercharge your Pinterest efforts.
