Why Pinterest Doesn’t Make Sense for Your Business

“Top 5 ways to use Pinterest”; Grow your business with Pinterest”; “Don’t miss out – start Pinteresting today”

Every where I look, there are articles, comments and tweets about Pinterest. So I thought I should take a serious look at it and how it can apply to business. I quickly came back to my original opinion – it all depends who your audience is.

As with all social media platforms, you have to know where your customers are looking. It doesn’t matter if it’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or LatestCraze.com, there are only two good reasons to have a presence on a particular platform

1) Your audience is engaged in that community

2) There’s a unique and compelling way you can use the platform to help your customers

So, Pinterest is great if you have a very visual product; if your customers tend to “collect” information before a purchase; or if it’s a product that people might be an enthusiast of, and want to share with their friends. It can be a fun way of engaging your customer community with an online contest – perhaps submitting favorite photos of a lighthouse if you’re a tourism company in Maine for example.

The products I market, though, don’t fit these criteria. Electronic components are typically small black pieces of plastic, hidden inside consumer products. They do some very cool things when put inside a TV or cellphone, but honestly, a photo of them just isn’t very interesting. It’s true that I could try pinning some funny ways of showing them in a photo, but I’m not convinced it will add value to my brand.

I give TTI Inc credit for trying a few different approaches with similar electronic component products. I’m not convinced yet, but I’ll keep following, and maybe they’ll inspire me.

So, I’d argue that, in many cases, Pinterest doesn’t make sense for your business, especially B2B. If you’re like me and your products aren’t visually exciting; you don’t have a group of enthusiasts who will share their own photos; or you can’t think of a great way to use it to help your customers, then consider focusing your resources on your existing social media platforms.

As always, ask yourself “Where Does it Fit in Your Digital Marketing Strategy” before rushing in “because everyone else is doing it”.

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One good thing that came out of this – I’ve now found a good place to collect all those interesting infographics that keep popping up to show how digital marketing is evolving.