By now you have heard of Pinterest. This relatively new social networking site has been growing at a faster rate that any previous social networking site and is responsible for referring more traffic to websites than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube…combined!
Since I am not yet totally convinced of the value of Pinterest in our business, I have compiled some sources of information for you so that you can decide for yourself what you want to do.
First off, some statistics:
If you take a moment (actually nearly 3 minutes) to watch this video, you’ll get an idea of Pinterest’s make-up and growth: http://youtu.be/AfyByLwiIe8
For an excellent infographic check this out: http://www.modea.com/blog/pinterest-infographic. And another excellent infographic can be found here: http://www.repinly.com/stats.aspx.
Getting started:
Pinterest is an invitation only network but don’t let that scare you off. You can request an invite at: http://pinterest.com/invites/. Also, if you know someone on Pinterest, they can invite you. Or, drop me a line and I will send you an invite.
Pinterest has a great page set up to help you learn the ropes of how to use the site, get a “Pin it” button for your web browser and more. To access this page, go here: https://support.pinterest.com/categories/20033632-the-basics.
Like any other social networking site, Pinterest has it’s own set of things that you should and should not do. Amy Porterfield has written what I consider to be the definitive article on that, which you can find here: http://www.amyporterfield.com/2012/06/the-10-commandments-of-using-pinterest-for-business/
Some of my thoughts on how you might use it in real estate
1. Create a pin board for each of your listings. Pin pictures in it from your web site, blog or single property listing site. Since Pinterest allows you to link to a website from your pins, it is possible that people may click through to your site.
2. You could also create a pin board for your testimonials. If you use a free service like http://url2pin.it which allows you to create a screen shot of any website and then pin it, you could then copy and paste the testimonial in the description box of the pin. The service also allows you to upload and pin any picture from your hard drive, even if it is not already on a web site.
3. If you have created a Facebook business page and try to pin pictures from it, you’ll discover that Facebook has not allowed Pinterest to pin pictures. However,you could put the Pinvolve app on any or all of your Facebook business pages and and then pin pictures from your page via Pinvolve. You can see an example of that at http://www.facebook.com/JerryKiddTrainingAndConsulting Just click on the Pinvolve button there to see what I have done. You can get the app at: https://apps.facebook.com/pinvolve/ in case you want to give it a spin.
These ideas are just a beginning. I am sure that as more people get involved more creative ideas will turn up. If you think that using Pinterest may be useful in your business, go ahead and give it a try.
The one stat that sticks in my mind is the fact that Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube. That can’t be bad…
Are you using Pinterest in your real estate business? If so, how do you use it?
