LinkedIn may be king of business-to-business social media, but don’t rule out Pinterest. The pinning site most commonly associated with consumer purchases and planning for events such as weddings is increasingly becoming a useful space for B2B brands, Pinterest Head of Brand Strategy Kevin Knight said during a presentation at BMA15 on Thursday.
“B2B brands are part of the way people live on Pinterest,” Knight said, which he clarified is less a social network than a tool for self-exploration. Brands interested in Pinterest should focus less on increasing their followers and more on creating content that others will share, he advised.
One-third of all millennials in the U.S. are active on Pinterest, and many of them are using it to not just plan consumer purchases but to pin tips associated with running a small businesses or writing more compelling blog posts. Content created by brands comprises 67% of all pins, according to Knight.
B2B brands such as Marketo Inc. and HubSpot have picked up on the trend and seized the opportunity to pin content for others to share. Pinterest offers an analytics tool for businesses to track what boards, or lists, users are pinning content to, offering insights into how content marketing resonates.
Knight said brands interested in getting started with Pinterest should start by simply pinning content from their site. By promoting those pins, they can begin to gain traction and then analyze the results to optimize efforts. The key is to think of Pinterest as different from Facebook and Twitter, which capture what users are doing or thinking in the moment.
“Pinterest is about the future,” he said. “It’s a tool people use to plan their lives. Many millions are using it to make their careers better and make their businesses more successful.”
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