February 11, 2012
‘’A picture is worth a thousand words’’.
Pinterest is a social network that allows users to select images from any website and collect them on their profile. Images, or ‘pins’, are stored in categories, or ’boards’ and from here, you can ‘repin’ other users images to your boards, and also ‘like’ them. With a user base heavily including females currently ( 58% of unique visitors according to Neil Patel of quicksprout.com), it has become one of the fastest growing networks in 2012. What is interesting, however, is the way the site is content based. While flicking through pins, it is the image you look at first, followed by the user. This is interesting in comparison to Facebook, for example, where you scroll down your timeline to read the profile name followed by the status.
Jason Falls of entrepreneur.com says Pinterest registered 7 million unique visitors in December 2011, which has risen from 1.6 million in September. It’s growing. Having an interest in sports and social/digital media, I began using Pinterest in October 2011, and started collecting infographics. You can check out my two boards (Sport Infographics, Social Infographics) and get an idea of how Pinterest can be a useful tool for storing informative pieces you stumble across on the web. The ‘Pin It’ bookmarklet is an extremely handy tool that allows you to send an image from any site to your Pinterest account in a matter of seconds, and give you the option of sending your new pin to your Twitter or Facebook account.
Now, being sports fans, you may wonder how Pinterest may be of use to sports brands. Well, I’m seeing big dogs on Twitter, such as @garyvee, using Pinterest as an e-commerce source, linking to his favourite bottles of wine. Pinterest allows brands to attach a price to an image, giving it an extra dimension. In terms of sports clubs, they could possibly engage with their fans through match day/training photos, or promoting club merchandise. They could possibly ‘repin’ their favourite fan photos to a board dedicated to the fans, displaying the match day experience as a fan of their club.
As Pinterest continues to grow in popularity, as it drives more referral traffic than Youtube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined (source: http://blog.shareaholic.com/2012/01/pinterest-referral-traffic/), SC1 Sports always aim to deliver the latest and greatest news and opinion to our followers and have decided to start using Pinterest to reach out to a new audience. We will be using it for three purposes:
-
The #RaiseYourGame Board
Imagery of those sporting moments where athletes have taken that extra step to reach their goal. These won’t only be pinned by our selves, it will be by anyone who sees an image that encapsulates the phrase we love to use.
-
Matchday Stat Boards
If you are an avid follower of our work (and if not, how come?), then you may know we provide performance analysis to football and GAA matches. We plan to Pin the graphs and other images we use to illustrate our analysis and share them with your fine sport-aholic selves. This allows users to store a collection of analysis and locate them easily rather than flick through our posts.
-
Health and Fitness Video Tutorial Videos
Pinterest also allows you to Pin videos as well as images, and we want to provide some tips of the trade to get in shape. Keep your eyes peeled for these (still a work in progress at the minute).
Why not get involved?! View our profile.
Pinterest is a nice way to spend some time if you like photography, and with Sports Photography a growing section of the sports industry, Pinterest could well become the epicenter of collecting those iconic sporting moments.
This entry was posted in Digital Sport. Bookmark the permalink. ← The Next England Manager Setanta Sports Cup 2012: It’s Here! →
Nicely done, Stephen. Pinterest’s growth is worth watching for sports brands and anyone interested in social media. As a digital marketer, I’m curious about its potential and will be watching how it matures as a site in 2012. Those brands with the courage – and resources – to include Pinterest in their 2012 social media strategies will be ahead of the game.
My only concern right now would be a lack of support for brand pages (no metrics, for one) and push-back from users on having marketers invade their new favorite space.
Check out the Milwaukee Bucks Pinterest page for an early #SMSports leader in this space. http://pinterest.com/milwaukeebucks/