CMU:DIY

Tips: What is Pinterest and why does it matter?

By | Published on Friday 9 November 2012

Pinterest

CMU’s Sam Taylor explains how artists and labels should be employing Pinterest as part of their social media activity. 

Most people are more than familiar with Twitter and Facebook as channels to engage with fans and build new audiences, driving people towards key content and announcements. Recently, though, there’s been a lot of talk too about Pinterest, heralded as one of the fastest growing social media destinations.

The concept is very simple: Pinterest allows you to clip, collect, organise and present images of stuff you like from around the web, like an online scrapbook. In addition, you can “repin” content that other people have already added to Pinterest, meaning that great images have the power to be shared and reshared many times. Often portrayed as the go-to destination for pictures of cupcakes, cute dogs and acres and acres of pictures of people’s dream weddings, Pinterest is also a powerful platform for one of the current key concepts in social media – ‘curation’.

Why curation?
With more and more content online, it’s becoming harder than ever to navigate the web effectively and with this, people are looking to trusted ‘human filters’ to signpost content that aligns with their interests.

For musicians and labels, the increased importance of online curation has two impacts.

First, its increasingly important to provide content that it is simple for ‘human filters’ who want to signpost others to your work to clip and share.

Second, artists should become curators themselves, partly because that will increase the chances of other curators championing their work, but also because it is a truly compelling way to engage and excite existing fans. Artists collecting and curating content deepens fans’ understanding of their influences and provides an all important “peek behind the curtain” of the creative process.

Pinterest makes this incredibly easy, and allows curators to collect all sorts of different content – from static images, to video and SoundCloud tracks – to add to pinboards, along with descriptive text.

Top five Pinterest tips

1. Keep it simple: use striking imagery and don’t over curate – a few key pieces of content tell a better story than overwhelming people with lots of pieces. Remember; you are the filter, so be selective.

2. Create different pinboards for different audiences – for example, a DJ/producer could have a ‘live’ board showcasing images from live events, a ‘fashion’ board showcasing products from fashion/brand partners, and a ‘kit’ board focused on the pieces of kit that he or she uses to create the music.

3. Get started by discovering how many things have been pinned by others from your own website. By entering the URL http://pinterest.com/source/thenameofyourwebsite.co.uk into your browser Pinterest will show you all the boards that people have pinned your content to.

4. Remember, many people are no longer fans in the same way – they will discover music through photography through fashion through graphic design – Pinterest is a platform with high engagement across all these channels and the repinning aspect means that the cross-promotional power of Pinterest is strong – so long as you are using the right sort of content.

5. Pinterest heavily pushes integration between its platform and Facebook and Twitter – but you need to be very selective here. Remember that each platform has its own strengths, and they should be used together as part of a multi-channel campaign. Share only your most interesting key pins to Facebook and Twitter – there’s nothing worse than a constant stream of pins being auto-posted to these services, which will only serve to reduce overall engagement.

Sam offers more insights on social media strategies through the CMU Insights training courses. Click here for more information. 



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