First of all it’s probably worth explaining what Pinterest is:
Pinterest is a pinboard-style social content sharing website. The service allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections. The site’s mission statement is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting.”
Some Pinterest stats:
- Pinterest has approximately 12 million active users
- 2.2 million active daily users
- 2,702.2% increase in traffic since last year
- Retailers are seeing a huge increase in referral traffic from the site, with a 289% increase from July – Dec. last year, and the amount of traffic is over twice that of LinkedIn, Google+, and YouTube combined.
And for those who don’t know what a Social Media News Release (SMNR) is, here is a quick recap:
Many journalists use the Internet as their primary research source when compiling a story. SMNRs are designed with journalists and bloggers in mind. SMNRs encapsulate all the information, multimedia and images needed to prepare a story, while offering contact details for more information.
The SMNR template offers all of the core information found in a traditional press release, but additionally takes advantage of linking, multimedia and shareable features. It allows users to host downloadable hi-res images within their releases, along with PowerPoint presentations; PDFs and videos.
Once created, the idea is to then to share your SMNR amongst your contacts, as part of a blogger outreach campaign and with journalists. See some examples here.
So how can Pinterest be used to drive additional traffic to your SMNR?
Both Pinterest and SMNRs rely on the visual nature of images and video to make them a success. A good SMNR should have a varied amount of multimedia for the recipient to use and recreate the news they way they want to. So if your SMNR has a good amount of visual elements it’s a good start to getting them noticed and potentially pinned to a Pinterest board.
So when planning your next SMNR, think about the images you attach to your release. Would somebody want to pin one of your images to one of their Pinterest boards?
By adding creative images and video to your SMNR , there is an additional wealth of potential untapped traffic back from Pinterest to your SMNR, as you are the source. Your image might even get re-pinned several times over, giving you even more exposure.
If you are a publisher of image or video-heavy content, I do encourage you to head over to the goodies section of Pinterest and check out the ‘Pin It Button for websites’ advice. This is now a must for all SMNR publishers.
What images/video could be pinned from an SMNR?
- Products
- Spokespeople
- Logos
- Infographics
- Even the quotes or customer testimonials can be pinned if you use of a handy little bookmark called Pin A Quote.
Do you think SMNRs and Pinterest are a good fit? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.
